Websites for Churches

UPDATE: Our sister site, MinistryPath.com, now has online giving with PayPal built in. All you have to do is enter your PayPal email address and the rest is automatic! It’s super easy…check it out!

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, PayPal has a great solution for accepting donations or offerings on your church website. You don’t pay any signup fees or monthly fees, so it only costs you money when someone actually makes the gift. PayPal takes about 3% of the gift, so I can understand if this solution is not for you, but many churches provide this to their members for a lot of different reasons – reasons we won’t get into right now.

This post will show you how to easily add an “Online Giving” module to your church website using the payment processor PayPal. See an example here before you get started.

Step 1

If you don’t have a PayPal account, go to PayPal.com and sign up for a Business Account. Select “Website Payments Standard” as your option for the account. Follow the signup procedure step by step. It’s pretty self-explanatory.

Step 2

Once you get your account set up and approved by PayPal, copy and paste the large chunk of code below into the html on your church website. I recommend setting up a separate page for your online giving module. The only thing you have to change in the code is your paypal e-mail address in each of the three sections and the URL for your 3 images. To change the email address, scan the code below for the line that has this code:

<input type="hidden" name="business" value="your paypal email address goes here">

Remember, that line will appear three times, so add your paypal email address to all three locations/sections.

To change the URL for your payment images (there are three), look for this line (again, three separate times):

<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"><input class="paypal_submit" type="image" src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/images/give-once.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make a One-Time Gift">

Update the URL to match the URL location of your payment images. You’ll have to create those on your own and upload them separately.

Here’s the code to copy and paste:

<div class="give">
        <form name="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_blank">
    Make
                      a<b> ONE TIME</b> gift of $
                      <input type="text" size="2" name="amount"  VALUE="" maxlength="6">

                      .00</font> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
                      <input type="hidden" name="business" value="your paypal email address goes here">
                      <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="One-Time Gift">
                      <input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1">
                      <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"><input class="paypal_submit" type="image" src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/images/give-once.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make a One-Time Gift">
      </form>
      </div>
      <div class="give">
          <form name="paypal3" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" onSubmit="return checkMe(this);" target="_blank">
           Set up a recurring <b>WEEKLY</b> gift of $
                      <input type="text" size="2" name="a3"  VALUE="" maxlength="6">
                      .00</font> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick-subscriptions">
                      <input type="hidden" name="business" value="your paypal email address goes here">
                      <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Automatic Weekly Gift">
                      <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="Recurring">
                      <input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1">
                      <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
                      <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-SubscriptionsBF">
                      <input type="hidden" name="p3" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="t3" value="W">
                      <input type="hidden" name="src" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="sra" value="1"><input class="paypal_submit" type="image" src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/images/give-weekly.gif" border="0" name="submit2" alt="Set Up an Automatic Weekly Payment">
              </form>
           </div>
           <div class="give">   
        <form name="paypal2" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" onSubmit="return checkMe(this);" target="_blank">
    Set up a recurring <b>MONTHLY</b> gift of $
                      <input type="text" size="2" name="a3"  VALUE="" maxlength="6">
                      .00</font> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick-subscriptions">
                      <input type="hidden" name="business" value="your paypal email address goes here">
                      <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Automatic Monthly Gift">
                      <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="Recurring">
                      <input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1">
                      <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
                      <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-SubscriptionsBF">
                      <input type="hidden" name="p3" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="t3" value="M"><input class="paypal_submit" type="image" src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/images/give-monthly.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Set Up an Automatic Monthly Payment">
              </form>
            </div>

If you have any questions, contact me at info {at} steeplesites(.)com and I will help you out. UPDATE: Head on over to MinistryPath.com to see how we’ve done this work for you already. All you need to do is enter your PayPal email address…no coding required!

Tags: online giving, paypal offering

This entry was posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 4:18 am and is filed under Free Stuff, technology, tips & tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.