BamaDad;80397 wrote: After reading about your various credit card experiences, I was wondering if anyone has tried using PayPal or similar service to allow credit card purchases online through the PTO website for shirts, yearbooks, donations, etc.. and what your experiences have been.
I have been considering this for our school website.
Thanks.
Heh, 5 years later ... we have PayPal set up for our PTO and used it for our auction. We had about $8k in credit-card (most of which I typed in by hand ...) and paid $250 in fees, which is about 3%. This beats "PaySchools" (for PTO Today Plus members), which charges 4%.
Curiously, though, PayPal only wants to let me transfer $500 per month into the PTO's bank account. At that rate, we won't be done transferring this year's money until after next year's auction! In order to lift the restriction, PayPal wants *my* SSN.
Our fall fundraiser is a postpay. We do have problems collecting money, but we make more money doing postpay than we would with a prepay...even when you count in the 10-12 families that did not send monies in.
CC are a great idea if you think that you can justify the costs. For us, it is much easier to just accept cash and checks. Think about your treasurer, too when deciding if to accept cc.
After reading about your various credit card experiences, I was wondering if anyone has tried using PayPal or similar service to allow credit card purchases online through the PTO website for shirts, yearbooks, donations, etc.. and what your experiences have been.
I have been considering this for our school website.
I am one of those people who has sworn off post-pay fundraising. We are in an affluent area, with only 2-3 checks bouncing per year. Our community is very generous and our fundraisers usually exceed expectations, even prepay. However, we tried a postpay fundraiser last year at the middle school. Never again. Even though we earned more than the previous year, collection was a major pain. At what point should the officers just give up chasing those who owe $20-$30? And how far should you go to collect $500 from someone who should be able to afford it? Collection agency? Instead of the project being basically over the day the goods arrive (prepay), the officers carried the collection burden for months and months. Maybe some of that had to do with it being a Middle School where parents are less active, but it was enough to make me a pre-pay zealot regardless.
And as far as credit cards go, we got set up and used them at our last auction. Definately think it increased sales, but there are some pitfalls (technology, fees) to watch out for. We went through a local company who sets up credit card accounts for others, but we still hit some snags. Worth looking into for an event like this, though.
Thanks so much for your great idea! We may be able to do that, ie, use a trusted friend's credit card account. Also, Costco has an account free of monthly charges, if you're an Executive Member, which I am, so we may try that route. Again, thanks for sharing!! [img]smile.gif[/img]
For our silent auction last year we did accept credit cards and it did increase our sales. One of our board members was in charge of researching credit card machines etc. he found it would not pay for itself with us only using it 3 or 4 months out of the year. So he ask a friend of his that owned a credit card machine for his business if we could use theirs and they were more than happy to help. The friend gave us the cash (minus the 3?? or 4 precent) and we were not stuck with the monthly fee nor machine. You must really trust the business person helping you. This worked for us!
