Do you like to solve the “Donations aren’t supported in this organisation’s country” error on PayPal? Solving the error will enable you to receive donations through your site.
Many bloggers and freelancers aim to use donations to support their sites. They often use PayPal for this purpose, given its trust and international reach.
In this post, I will provide a solution for the error “Donations aren’t supported in this organisation’s country” and enable you to receive donations using PayPal.
Reason for Error
Before solving the problem, let’s know the reason for getting this message. If one is getting this error, that means donations have certain restrictions in their country. Sounds confusing? Let’s see some examples.
In the USA, a nonprofit organization seeking donations has to provide certain documents like Articles of Incorporation and IRS 501(c)(3) as evidence. Further, a pre-printed bank statement or voided check, information about how the money will be used, a mission statement (if applicable), and a fundraising letter (if applicable) are also needed to have a lower transaction fee applied to received funds.
In India, foreign donations are not allowed unless one is registered with the Ministry of Home Affairs as per Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act. Refer RBI circular in this regard.
Finally, it means receiving an amount in the name of donations won’t work using PayPal. If you operate a WordPress site, most of the donation plugins there won’t work correctly for the same reason.
Way Out
Don’t lose hope. There is an easy way out here. We have to implement a business solution for receiving payment for content.
So, a change of thinking is required from here onwards. Now, a freelancer has to think that the money he is getting is not a donation but a non-fixed voluntary payment for his content.
The step-wise process for implementing such a business solution for receiving payment is as follows:
Step-1: Convert PayPal Account to Business Account
There are two types of PayPal accounts: Individual accounts and business accounts. You will probably have an individual account using which one can only send money. For receiving payments, a PayPal business account is required.
You need not have to open a new account with PayPal, as you can convert the existing one into a business account. The detailed process for such a conversion is given in the below post.
Step-2: Login to PayPal Business Account
Once you have successfully converted to a business account, then login to your account. On the dashboard, click on the menu ‘Pay & Get paid.’
After that, click on the item ‘PayPal Buttons‘ under the accept payments category. The following page will then appear.
It contains several options regarding payment buttons to choose from for our purpose. Click on ‘Smart Buttons‘ as this is the closest to one that we like to implement.
Step-3: Set up PayPal Button
There are three types of smart buttons possible:
- Fixed Price: In this type of button, the donation amount is fixed for all payors.
- Single-select list: Here, a payor can choose an amount for the donation from a list of options.
- Variable Price: Variable price button is the most flexible one giving an option to a payer to decide the amount of donation.
Choose a desired type of button, customize it as per your requirement and paste the code on your donation page inside a custom HTML block. As an example, you can refer to the donation page of my site.
I want to point out that the variable price button from PayPal has an issue: the button shows up under block preview but does not appear on the preview/live page. In that case, one can see the modified code which I am using on my site to receive donations.
Summary
In this article, we have seen a solution for the “Donations aren’t supported in this organisation’s country” error on PayPal. This requires conversion from PayPal individual account to a business account and setting up a payment button.
If you face any issues while setting up this button, then please drop a comment below. I would be more than happy to help you out.
Happy blogging!