With the rise of mobile-based payments and online donations, there is no denying the fact that nonprofit organizations are searching for innovative ways to expand the respective payment options. Venmo -a leading peer-to-peer payment service app, is a famous option that will grow the overall trend.
Venmo serves to be a convenient and simple way for sending and receiving money -right from the smartphone. With the help of an effective fundraising platform, supporters are now able to leverage Venmo to ensure donations to the causes they are concerned with.
What is Venmo and How Does it Work?
Venmo is a pioneering P2P or Peer-to-peer mobile-based payment service that enables account holders to transfer money to other account holders. By linking the respective bank account, debit card, or credit card to the application, users of Venmo can consider requesting, sending, and even receiving payments without any exchange of checks or cash. This makes it a convenient option to ensure paying someone back.
Users are capable of automatically withdrawing payments with the help of a few simple steps -selecting either cashing out instantly to the respective bank account (for a smaller processing fee) or within a span of 1-2 days (completely for free). On the other hand, they can also consider leaving funds in the Venmo account. Therefore, it becomes easier and convenient to divide the tab at some restaurant, send over birthday money, or divide up utilities and rent.
Venmo has currently extended its overall scope. It aims at becoming more attractive for businesses -even nonprofits for receiving money with the help of the platform.
What Should Nonprofits Know About Incorporating Venmo into the Fundraising Strategy?
For a significant amount of time, it was complicated for nonprofits to ensure the acceptance of donations through Venmo. Venmo was not originally intended at sales transactions or fundraising. Therefore, there were several restrictions as well as risks to the creation of an account and solicitation of donations. Moreover, Venmo was not able to provide relevant support for user-generated donation campaigns. It was because it was complicated to verify different organizations while clamping down on the presence of fake profiles throughout the expansive network.
During one instance, it was discovered that the users had gone ahead with setting up unauthorized Venmo accounts for organizations like Planned Parenthood and the Red Cross. If the donors will send funds to the unintended individual, there was not the presence of any built-in payment protection mechanism for the organization.
In the past few years, Venmo has grown immensely in the overall popularity -especially amongst the younger population. Some of the stats revealing its massive growth are:
- More than 7 million users of Venmo remain in the 18-34 years range
- Venmo boasts over 50 million active users
- The app was successful in processing more than $160 billion in terms of total payment value
All of these pointers indicate the scale to which Venmo can be helpful to nonprofit organizations.
How to Set Up Venmo for Nonprofit?
A primary step towards using Venmo for nonprofit transactions will be setting up a dedicated account on the platform. As Venmo is yet not able to offer support to nonprofits like PayPal, therefore, it is not possible to set up a dedicated account for a particular nonprofit organization.
Currently, you are expected to set up a standard Venmo account for the nonprofit organization -quite similar to a personal account. It is important to ensure that you have access to a separate account for the nonprofit organization. In this way, you are not required to use your own personal account for this purpose. You can make use of the name and image of the organization such that supporters are able to know about the right account.
Benefits of Using Venmo for Your Non-profit Organization
While it is still not possible to set up a dedicated nonprofit account on Venmo, you can receive a wide range of benefits out of the platform. Some of the ways in which Venmo can help in supporting your non-profit organization are:
- Ease of Use: The incorporation of Venmo into the dedicated set of tools of your nonprofit organization will allow the respective donors to ensure secure and easy donations -directly out of the smartphones, whether donors are at the comfort of their homes or with your organization at a fundraising campaign. With the help of the easy-to-use application, donors are able to complete their transactions within some seconds. There is no requirement of filling out confidential payment information, inserting a credit card, or even writing a check.
Another major benefit of utilizing Venmo is that your supporters will not always have the requirement of searching for the nonprofit account in the app. Venmo offers its users with a QR code that you can share easily. Once the scanning of the QR code takes place, it will redirect the end users to the Venmo page. In turn, it allows you to transfer money by connecting accounts -almost instantly.
Venmo also extends its payment option with the help of PayPal Checkout. In case your nonprofit organization makes use of PayPal Checkout, your supporters are able to select Venmo as the primary payment option while executing the transaction. This will allow donors to transfer with the help of Venmo directly from the website. There is no requirement of navigating the application on the smartphone.
- Audience: As more individuals are turning to digital applications as the preferred method of receiving as well as sending money, Venmo turns out to be the latest and the most famous option for the younger population. It turns out to be a great way to reach out to potential donors who might be already facing the inconvenience of donating -like the total time taken to enter payment information With the help of Venmo, users are willing to ensure a donation as they are able to ensure donations seamlessly.
The users of Venmo also maintain the respective funds into the Venmo account for the next time they will be paying someone back. This will make the chances of donations quite higher for them because the money is already present in the account. There is no requirement of transferring funds from a card or bank. Therefore, they feel more inclined to donate as the money is already present there.
- Involvement: The prospective target audience you are able to reach with the help of Venmo will also affect the overall involvement you can have with the supporters in the respective application. Venmo features a social media variant of feed that will show to your friends and who they are transferring money to. It also enables individuals to like as well as comment on the same. It can serve to be a useful tool to the nonprofit as the method of creating ample involvement with the donors.
With the help of this feature, you are easily able to go through all possible donations that are made to the organization while instantly liking them or commenting on them. This serves to be an effective way to instantly thank the supporters right after they have made the donations. You can also make use of pictures, GIFs, and emojis for communicating the gratitude towards donors. They are also able to comment back -resulting into newer involvements.
Another innovative way to leverage this feature is by livestreaming the Venmo feed -either during a virtual fundraising event or an in-person event. In this way, all the supporters who will be viewing or attending the event can observe the donations coming in while responding at the same time. You can also go ahead with thanking every donor directly for the respective donations. This also results into the process of ample social proof -people looking forward to others to analyze what the right solution is in the particular situation.
- Fees: Another reason why utilizing Venmo will be beneficial to the nonprofit organization is that it will offer more money to any fundraising event. You will receive more money in the manner in which your nonprofit will be receiving more with the help of donations because of the way in which Venmo fees have been set up.
Some of the fees to consider for setting up Venmo account are:
- No amount while signing up, absence of monthly fees, and no amount while sending money through a linked bank account or card
- There is no amount for transferring to the bank account
- There is only 3 percent fee while sending money with the help of a linked credit card
- If you require money more quickly, you can consider doing instant transfer for one percent of fee
- While receiving donations, there is the absence of any processing fee for the initial 30 days.
Conclusion
Venmo delivers an innovative solution for nonprofit organizations in terms of sending and receiving money. As Venmo is a part of the PayPal family, you can think of using both applications for handling the fundraising needs of your nonprofit organization.