Nick Ward is thinking about sick children – "the kiddos," he calls them. At the 170 Children's Miracle Network Hospitals around the U.S., they arrive daily in the hope that they'll be healed.
Ward is vice president for digital marketing there, and no one knows better how much money it takes to help the kiddos. He intends to blow the lid off
CMN Hospitals’ previous records, raising a billion dollars a year by 2022.
With goals this ambitious, every dollar counts for CMN Hospitals. But consumer philanthropy in the U.S. grew less than 2% in 2015, according to the
latest study from Giving USA. And even types of giving that grow much faster – like mobile and online donations – still make up too little of the budget to help most charities keep pace with increased demands. That means less funding than Ward needs for new technology, like an MRI that can be rolled into operating rooms to view surgery results immediately.
It’s that need to create new sources of donations that fuels
PayPal Giving Fund, whose free services to charities are provided in partnership with PayPal. The Fund provides access to fundraising programs on
eBay,
Humble Bundle,
StubHub and
PayPal, to participating U.S. and UK charities. These programs raise more than $35 million every year for charities as a result of millions of users buying, selling and donating on those sites.
"We want to create opportunities for charities to raise new money and make sure that PayPal Giving Fund is serving them as well as it can, creating the kind of interactions they need to attract and engage supporters," says PayPal Giving Fund CEO Nick Aldridge.
The large customer base of the marketplaces participating in the Fund widens the reach of nonprofits as big as the American Red Cross and as small as the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation.
Signing up for PayPal Giving Fund is free and easy: Any U.S. or UK charity with a PayPal account can enroll online using their PayPal account. Once approved, they’ll appear in a directory of more than 30,000 U.S. and British organizations. The Fund works very closely with PayPal but is a separate legal entity, a registered charity in both countries.
PayPal Giving Fund also helps charities to extend their reach to more donors. The
American Red Cross, for example, has a sophisticated donor and financial operation but its partnership with the Fund helps the 135-year-old charity reach a new group of coveted younger donors, says Nancy Anderson, who manages the nonprofit's corporate partnerships.
"We're not always great at reaching that younger Millennial demographic or providing a lot of opportunities for people giving electronically and PayPal has been really the only way we have been comfortable doing that,” she says.
The Fund sends the donations raised by their partners to selected charities in monthly payments and provides them detailed earnings reports, too. The reports are easy to read, says Ward of CMN Hospitals: They show the source of each gift, which helps his charity fulfill its promise that every penny will go to a children's hospital in the giver's community.
"We make it possible for those transactions to be cost effective and pass them on to the nonprofits in a single convenient monthly payment,” Aldridge says. “From their perspective, it's just extra money for their mission."
Charities receive their money with no strings attached, helping them to clear another hurdle: Often, large donors and foundations restrict their gifts' use, leaving nonprofits scrambling to pay for basics like staff salaries and overhead. It also makes it hard for them to spend on innovation, development and new ideas, Aldridge says.
The PayPal Giving Fund “brings charitable giving into a 21st century user experience," he says.
A theater production unfolds at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation in New York.
Maureen Rutkowski, project director at
Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation, in Montauk, New York, extolls the freedom that her foundation has gained since joining the Fund. Located in an historic building, which was recently restored and houses a community center in half of its footprint, the foundation is raising funds to build aquatic and cultural centers in the other half.
Rutkowski knows all too well from experience the difficulties of fundraising without an expert partner.
Needing a better system, the foundation joined the PayPal Giving Fund in 2014. This move allowed them to easily take advantage of several programs powered by the Fund, including the ability to sell special experiences for their events on eBay with no fees. Where previously the foundation had used three incompatible platforms for receiving money from donors, all the funds raised from eBay sales are deposited in their PayPal account.
"The money just flows to us," Rutkowski says. "It was a beautiful thing when that relationship started," she adds, laughing, remembering the chaos before.
PayPal Giving Fund Partners
Partnerships with four big internet businesses allow more people to give more often. Charities also enjoy exposure to new pools of support:
- PayPal encourages active users to give through seasonal fundraising campaigns and promotions.
- eBay sellers can donate a portion of sales to a charity, earning fee credits and special exposure for eBay for Charity items. Buyers can make purchases to support a favorite cause and can add a donation at checkout.
- Humble Bundle encourages buyers of digital games and eBooks to support charity, allowing them to choose a portion of each purchase to be donated to the charities of their choice.
- StubHub donates its commissions on ticket sales for charitable benefit events to support the charities holding those events.