Tool or Package For Designing Site For a Small Non-Profit Accepting Donations

Question

I deal primarily with custom .net WebForms and MVC based applications, but someone came to me and asked for help with creating a small website for their non-profit organization for which they will need to be able to accept donations.

My preference would be to use a simple CMS, and I have heard of Shopify and the Shop Plugin for WordPress, but they really don't need that level of e-commerce. Basically what I am looking for is some advice for using a simple mini-CMS, be it WordPress, Squarespace, etc, and integrating some method for accepting and keeping track of donations.

My initial thought was to use WordPress and then link to Paypal.

Answer 1

Note: WordPress has grown up since a few years ago. It can easily be used as a full-on CMS serving hundreds of pages based on custom data types.

As far as collecting donations, any ecommerce/shopping cart solution is massive overkill for accepting donations. A PayPal link is definitely the fastest way to go. Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to do it.

Note: some people do not like PayPal, so consider adding multiple buttons. Here is the Google Checkout version. Or 2co looks like they will support it now (or Real Soon Now).

Answer 2

Squarespace - an alternative to wordpress. Get the complete guide - https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206796007-Templates-and-design

After your setup the website - Find the step-by-step guide on how to accept recurring donations on Squarespace website for your non-profit websites. https://donorbox.org/nonprofit-blog/squarespace-embedding/