As a volunteer webmaster for several non-profits, including the Red Cross of Central Virginia and Holy Rosary Catholic Church, I am often asked to create donation buttons for an event or fundraiser. This step by steps guide will take you through the basic steps of creating a button that you can insert into your website or email message.
[NOTE: Some countries restrict access to the donation features of PayPay including most of Latin American. If the option to create a donation button does not appear in your account, your country likely has rules against it.]
- Log into your personal or business PayPal account
- Click on the “Merchant Services” tab at the top of the page
- In the “Features you can use right now” area, click on the “Create payment buttons for your website” box.
- Open the “Create PayPal payment button” page and complete the first of three steps outlined to create the button:
- Step 1:Choose a button type and enter your payment details
- Donation Button Process:
- Enter the organization or service name
- Customize the text or appearance
- Choose a button type, i.e. Use smaller button or display credit card logos.
- Select a contribution amount and merchant account ID
- Donors can enter their own information or you can provide a fixed amount for them to donate
- Donors can enter their own information or you can provide a fixed amount for them to donate
- Donation Button Process:
- Step 2:Save your buttons (optional)
- Save the button at PayPal if you plan to make a similar button in the future
- Step 3:Customize advanced features (optional)
- You may want to allow your donors to include a special message or provide their shipping address here.
- You can also take them to a different web page after they make their donation
- Step 1:Choose a button type and enter your payment details
- Click the “Create Button” icon.
- Follow the final three steps to copy the code for insertion in an email or web page
- Click Select Code to select all the button code.
- Copy the code (CTRL+C for Windows, CMD+C for Mac — or right-click and choose Copy).
- Paste the code into your own website or email (CTRL+V for Windows, CMD+V for Mac — or right-click and choose Paste).
- To paste the code into a web page…
- Open your website editor
- Log into the admin section of your website
- Navigate to the page you want to edit
- View the “source” code of the page
- Scroll down to the section you want the button to appear and paste the code
- View the page to see if it displays appropriately and save!
If you would like a brief personalized training session on creating a donation button for you own website contact me!
The Ink Blog 
Really Helpful post , I am looking to create donate button for my blog , But not able to get exact steps how to implement , Thanx for sharing
Glad this was helpful Charle! Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for sharing.. 🙂
Glad it was helpful! 🙂
I am trying to put one on my blog but I have to update to a business account. I don’t know what type of account to choose for a blog.
Hi Zada, to make PayPal work on your blog you will need to purchase and host your blog on a private web server. WordPress provides a guided transfer process for a fee: http://en.support.wordpress.com/guided-transfer/. They also have do it yourself articles: http://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog
I can’t see donation button option anywhere…please help..
Follow the directions and you’ll see it!
I can’t see “Features you can use right now” area in “Merchant Services” tab…
Contact me via email and I’ll see if I can help you! brian (at) loebigink.com
Hey Brian..thanks for sharing..
very detailed and Screenshots really help to figure out process..
I have a problem in the process…
In Step 4..(A)
i can’t see “Donations” option in Drop Down list..
All i can see is..
-Shopping Cart
-Buy Now
-Gift vouchers
-Subscriptions…
i have a business account in paypal…and i’m trying to Add Donate Button for our church website…
I’ll be really glad if you can help me out…
Thanks 🙂
Hi Christopher, I double checked to see if PayPal had changed the setup process and the steps I have here still work. I’ll send you a screenshot of what I have via email to see if it is different from what you are seeing.
Hey please give the new steps of creating paypal donation button
i found out this blog post very useful . it finally helped me make the donate button . i would recommend that those how want to make a donate button must read this post.
Great, thanks for reading!
Hello Brian!
I have checked the buttons page and the dropdown list contains only 4 options – Shopping Cart, Buy now, Gift Voucher and Subscriptions. The Donations option is not available!!
Looking forward for your reply.
Hi Srihari, countries outside of the United States have different rules around the ability for PayPal to offer the ‘donation’ option. I called my PayPal tech support person and they said Latin American countries generally don’t have it available. If you don’t see the option then it is likely your country has rules against allowing that feature.
I am from India. I think I have to call PayPal representative and ask if they have rules effective in India regaring Donations. I will update once I receive info from them.
Great! Let me know.
PayPal donations are not available for Indian users. This restriction is put by Reserve Bank of India.
Good research Srihari! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks!
You’re welcome! Did you create a donation button for your site?
Hey,
just doing it now actually. (:
@Srihari “PayPal donations are not available for Indian users.”
and the reason I was creating a Paypal account was only and only fundraising. my bad.
Stinks I know!
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