But be careful when shopping for a vendor to process your secure online transactions. Some vendors offer special rates for nonprofits. When you walk into a restaurant, you use a credit card, they swipe it through a machine, and it receives an authorization number. We do the same thing online. To accept credit cards, nonprofits and for-profits alike must have a merchant account.
Most banks offer merchant accounts, but generally only to organizations with a physical storefront.
Companies like iTransact, which already work with banks, also serve as a gateway through which nonprofits can establish a merchant account. Though some nonprofits also farm out the job of tracking transactions, most elect to track their own, or at least analyze transaction lists generated by an outside vendor. But since many nonprofits have offered online giving for a comparatively short time, reports on results are still sketchy. Nonprofits that administer multiple local chapters should also plan how to structure online giving so that gifts are distributed fairly among localities. When one enterprising local Salvation Army chapter in the U.S. offered online giving, it received contributions from a disproportionate share of international donors, probably because it was, at the time, the sole online donation outlet.