Access and donate to PayPal Giving Fund charities via an API

Question

I would like to access the list of PayPal Giving Fund charities so that a user of my site/app could eventually donate via credit card or PayPal.

I have looked into other APIs, like Just Giving, Orghunter, Charity Navigator, all in which don't have a large variety of charities.

If you've ever visited the site https://www.humblebundle.com the idea is very similar to this. To give you an idea, it'd go something like this:

• I select charities for the user to donate to for a certain category (environment, animals, etc), save to db to retrieve specific charities later

• User sees charities to divide their donation using sliders. They have the possibility to swap out charities if don't like selection

• User enters amount and enters their credit card or paypal account

• I make the connection to PayPal API to make donation

• User then gets a receipt or something like a tax receipt

I guess the questions I'm asking are:

• Is there access to a list of Giving Fund charities via an API
• Is it possible to donate to charities from the Giving Fund list via the API
• Would this API be available to an Australian PayPal account
• If there is no API for Giving Fund, is it possible to retrieve a list of charities to do this via another route in PayPal
• Will there be any restrictions on the Apple and Android stores if this was an app

Thank you so much for your time!

Answer 1

Have you checked out www.pandapay.io ?

To answer your questions:

Is there access to a list of Giving Fund charities via an API

PandaPay has a database of every 501c3 in America, check out Pandasearch: panda-search.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com

Is it possible to donate to charities from the Giving Fund list via the API

Yes, check out www.pandapay.io/docs

Would this API be available to an Australian PayPal account

PandaPay currently only works for USD, and payments to US-based charities. That being said, most international charities have a US branch to access the American charity market (largest in the world, by far)

If there is no API for Giving Fund, is it possible to retrieve a list of charities to do this via another route in PayPal

Is PayPal really a necessary factor for your use case?

Will there be any restrictions on the Apple and Android stores if this was an app

PandaPay is closely modeled on Stripe's API, and thus iOS and Android SDKs can easily be written for easy usage in mobile applications.

PandaPay API: https://www.pandapay.io/api-reference

Stripe Example: https://stripe.github.io/stripe-ios/docs/index.html

Answer 2

OrgHunter can authenticate more 501(c)(3)s (affirmative or revoked) including a large number of those with affirmative determination by virtue of the fact that they are subordinates of "Group Exemptions".

In addition, the OrgHunter database includes the most robust set of charity data attributes.

Access to the dataset/platform is by API or WordPrss, Drupal, Concrete 5 plug-ins. In addition, there are .NET and standard PHP implementations.

Comparing Just Giving, Orghunter, Charity Navigator, and PayPal Giving Fund is like comparing apples to oranges to bananas to kiwis.

Just Giving focuses on tools and systems for charities, corporate programs, and campaigns on an international basis, although they did just "acquire" the assets of "JustGiving.org" as a way to expand their footprint in the United States. OrgHunter is a platform supplier inclusive of data, donation processing and compliance, upon which tech philanthropists build software and web apps connecting and routing diversity of donors to diversity of charities. Charity Navigator focuses on ratings. And finally, the PayPal Giving Fund serves PayPal customers by enabling them to make donations to a charity of choice with the following two requirements/caveats. 1. A charity MUST ENROLL in the PPGG to receive donations from the PPGF, AND 2. to receive grants, the charity MUST ALSO create a PAYPAL ACCOUNT into which the PPGF will deposit donations. Unless the policy has changed within the last two months, the PPGF will ONLY deposit grants into a PAYPAL account, otherwise the donated funds are distributed elsewhere. This is in part why the PPGF is now dealing with a class action lawsuit that asserts that PPGF was engaging in deceptive practices.

A couple of comments about your idea, particularly as it is reflected on https://www.humblebundle.com.

1. In all circumstances, the moment someone starts doing any sort of fundraising online, they are subject to the various fundraising and solicitation regulations of the 50 states, because "online" by definition crosses state and international borders. The IRS may determine if a charity is a legit charity, but the states govern and regulate the conduct of fundraising and solicitation.

2. People cannot solicit for a charity or use charity brands or trademarks without explicit permission. That means that if you want to feature, promote and fundraise for a particular subset of charities, you will need to get the charities to opt-in or buy-in to your process or program. There are companies that do this, however it is a daunting, full time job.

3. An alternative to enrolling and managing charities is to give users/customers the opportunity to designate a charity of choice, and thereafter "route" their contribution through a 501(c)(3) "Donor Advised Fund" to the destination charity. That is what the alliance of OrgHunter and Make My Donation do. They integrate the most dependable charity database with donation processing and regulatory compliance into a cohesive platform that is easy for software and web app developers to build into their applications that are used to support all sorts of good causes.