Square For Nonprofits: Everything You Need To Know About Seamlessly Accepting Donations, Running Events, & Selling Merch With Square’s Platform

If you are looking to expand fundraising possibilities for your charity and are considering Square to process payments for your nonprofit, you may have a lot of questions. Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place; this post covers all the information you’ll need to make an educated decision. We’ll look at the costs, fees, and all of the features that wait for you behind the curtain of Square’s processing. Square constantly updates what they offer, so there’s a good chance that within the next year, Square will offer even more features for nonprofits. That’s not to say that Square isn’t already a viable option for charities to take payments—you’ll find that from setting up a free online shop to engaging your donors throughout the year, Square provides all the tools you need to get going, with options to integrate or add features as you need them. Let’s get started!

How Do Nonprofits Benefit From Using Square?

One of the biggest reasons I have a sweet spot for Square is that they have competitively-priced processing rates, and your nonprofit organization won’t face any surprise fees or markups on the backend. In addition to a straightforward fee structure, Square offers a considerable amount of free software.

Not only that, Square is so easy to set up that you can get your account up and running to start taking donations, sell merchandise, and even set up your website all on the same day.

While Square for nonprofits offers a plethora of benefits, it’s not without some potential hiccups, however. In the world of payment processing, one merchant’s dream is another’s frustration, so let’s take a look at what Square has to offer and discover if this solution is right for you.

The Limitations Of Using Square for Nonprofits

It’s important to understand that Square isn’t a traditional merchant account provider. As a third-party processor, Square offers greater accessibility to a wider amount of businesses, but there’s inherently a bit more risk involved as far as account stability with this model. When a business or charity raises a red flag, sometimes it’s hard to make things right again.

One of the most important ways to avoid issues is to accurately disclose your type of business and ensure that you don’t sell anything on Square’s prohibited goods and services list that would throw you into the high-risk merchant category.

While representing a very small fraction of all Square’s accounts, the largest complaints against Square involve account freezes and terminations. No matter what processor you go with, you’re going to have this risk, however. That’s why we encourage all of our readers to learn how to reduce their risk of termination or funding freezes. 

Beyond this, Square offers a lot of useful tools for a very low price, but it’s certainly not all-inclusive. When it comes to SaaS (Software as a Service) for a charity, you can find other options that cover the basics for next to nothing — and there are also more complex solutions that go as high as $15K for mid-sized charitable organizations and above. It really depends on what your organization needs in ancillary tools.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what to expect with Square, and then look at how your charity can make the most of this low-cost option.

What Are Square’s Fees For Nonprofits?

As I mentioned before, what you see is what you get as far as payment processing costs. You won’t have any other additional monthly fees: no authorization fees, statement fees, refund fees or PCI compliance fees. You’ll also pay the same fee no matter what type of card your customer uses.

Be aware that accepting in-person payments versus web or invoice payments varies slightly, however.

Here are the Square fees for nonprofits:

• 2.6% + $0.10 for any tapped, dipped or swiped cards you take in person
•  3.5% + $0.15 when you enter in a credit card number manually from the SquarePOS app, take payment in your Square Virtual Terminal, and process card-on-file transactions, including recurring invoices.
• 2.9% + $0.30 for Square Invoices and eCommerce donations as these are both web-based transactions

You can also learn a bit more about Square’s Pricing in our article, How Much Does Square Charge?

Note that Square’s fees for nonprofit organizations are exactly the same fees that small businesses pay, and they’re designed for organizations that process less than $250,000 per year. Does your charity have higher projected donations coming in? Square may design a custom pricing package for charities and small businesses that process more than $250,000 per year in sales, but they consider that on a case-by-case basis rather than offering any sort of standard pricing for nonprofits.

Now that we’ve got the fees out of the way, let’s see what free goodies and other options await with Square for charities.

8 Ways Your Nonprofit Organization Can Make The Most Out Of Square

Square offers more than just payment processing for the nonprofit organization. Let’s take a look at the free tools Square offers that could support your charity in several ways.

1. Accept Donations Online

You have quite a few options to accept donations online with Square. The easiest option is to create a free Square site with ready-made templates that make it easy to build a simple web storefront. You can create a space that explains your mission and lets your donors contribute to the cause, or make a fully functional eCommerce store that allows you to sell things like t-shirts and other merchandise to support your organization and mission.

To start accepting donations, simply click Donations from your online dashboard and add the details. You can also allow custom donation amounts to let your donors give the amount of their choice, up to $1,000.

If you have multiple focuses for your nonprofit, you can create more than one campaign on your site. Just repeat the process in your dashboard from the donations area. That way if you want a focused fundraiser, you can do so while still maintaining the ability to accept general donations.

Below is an example of a storefront using Square’s free site template. You have a range of colors, but customization is limited. Also, take note that you do not have a custom domain with Square’s free site.

You can also upgrade the free site to a premium option through Weebly — it’s all easy to navigate and choose through your Square dashboard. This way you’ll get a custom domain and other bells and whistles that help you create a site you want for your cause.

If you already have a site, you can choose from one of the plugin integrations for Square at your Dashboard for a pretty easy setup.

If you’ve got some expertise when it comes to code (or have a developer on staff) you can build a branded checkout flow with Square Transactions API that allows you to accept digital wallets, too. Check out How To Accept Online Payments With Square for a full, in-depth explanation of each of these possibilities, and a few more (like in-app purchases).

2. Accept Donations In Person

Hoping people have cash on hand or the even more archaic option — a check — can really limit you. When you set up your Square account, you’ll get the free magstripe reader, but we strongly suggest that you opt for the Square Reader for contactless and chip. Square’s chip reader is the best way to protect yourself from chargebacks and give people more options (and convenience) to donate. That’s because chip readers better meet current security standards. The chip reader is competitively priced under $50.00. This little reader is an important tool to keep your costs down in the long run.

You have even more options in hardware, however. Whether you need something mobile or you need something a little sturdier for a kiosk or desk setup or both, you can find what you need to accept payments in person.

Want even more information on Square’s hardware options? Check out The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Choosing Square POS Credit Card Readers And Cash Register Bundles.

3. Take Donations And Orders Over The Phone

Like most point-of-sale software, Square comes with a virtual terminal right on your dashboard that allows you to take a payment over the phone or manually key in credit card data. What’s important to understand here is that a virtual terminal is really the only way to safely process credit card data. That’s because when you receive credit card information, security has to be considered during transmission and storage.

Jotting credit card information down a piece of paper or worse — keeping this information on a spreadsheet — is a big no-no. You’d be surprised to find out how many organizations store credit card data this way, but in the event of a breach, your business will face expensive fines (not to mention a huge PR issue).

Taking donations for your charity over the phone is really easy with Square. You simply enter in the credit card data on the form. Since the full credit card number isn’t visible once you key it in, you never have to worry about this information being vulnerable.

4. Recurring Donations

As a charity, there is probably nothing that feels better than an ongoing commitment from your supporters. These folks help you keep up your daily operations and allow you to plan for future growth.

Square makes setting up recurring donations super easy for your charity. Whether you’re on your mobile device or at your full Square dashboard on your PC, you can create what you need.

I’ve included the screenshot below so that you can how easy it is to set up and schedule your invoice for delivery on whatever recurring plan you want.

If you desire more consistent branding for your charity, you have some options. Check out the full post How To Use Square For Recurring Payments and Invoices for information on integrations or a pre-built workflow.

If you’re wondering about any additional cost regarding invoice scheduling for charitable donations, I have some good news: Setting up recurring donations for your charity doesn’t cost anything extra beyond the processing charge (3.5% + $0.15).

5. Sell Merchandise

Ready to sell merch at your event or want to offer online sales? As mentioned earlier, you have some options when it comes to setting up an online store via Square’s free store or upgrading for more space or design freedom.

Selling in person couldn’t be easier, either. Square’s free Point of Sale app works as a cash register or mobile app, so you can run a gift shop or merch table at a fundraiser. You can even accept payments for charity auction items right then and there (or send an invoice for payment after the event).

Whether you sell merch at an event, through your online store, or you take a phone order through your virtual terminal, Square syncs the sale at your dashboard so everything stays up to date. All your inventory is tracked across all your sales channels. When it’s time for a sale, you simply select the item from your inventory and you’re all set to make a sale. You’re also free to just enter in any amount and charge a card that way as well. After entering their email, your customer receives a digital receipt, and you now have their info.

You can also set up alerts at your dashboard to stay on top of dwindling t-shirts or other fundraising merchandise you offer. That way you can re-order supplies before stock drops to zero!

6. Manage Events And Registration

Planning an event for your charity can help you connect with both your supporters and those who become one. That’s why I’m glad to see that through Square, you can also find what you need to sell tickets for any event you have in the works. You’ll do this through your online store. You can set up your tickets for electronic delivery or you can print for shipping or in-person pickup options. Square gives step-by-step information on how to sell event tickets through their help center.

Square also has a partnership with Eventbrite so it’s that much easier to organize, manage your event, and sell your tickets.

The great thing about selling with Square is that your sales for tickets, merch, and donations all seamlessly sync to improve your record keeping. Whether you take a ticket at the door with your POS or sell a ticket online, everything stays up to date.

And that brings me to my next point: Square’s donation and sales tracking can improve your bookkeeping.

7. Track Your Income And Improve Your Bookkeeping

Square offers simple income tracking. You can download sales history, view deposits, and view everything that’s happening over a set period of time.

View income by categories like merchandise sales, donations, or ticket sales. You can also compare new givers with long-time supporters, as well as average donation size. While you’re not going to see more advanced reporting features with Square Analytics, we feel it delivers more than expected considering these features are completely free.

Need something more? One thing to note is that Square integrates with Quickbooks so you can sync sales data here and get the sales or expense reports you need all in one place. QuickBooks has some specialized accounting features for nonprofits, which can make it a must-have piece of software.

8. Collect Donor Information And Engage

You can export a list of your donations or the details about your donors from your online store at any time. All of this is accessed under Order Management right from your online dashboard.

As you collect donations, you can also manually enter any notes about your supporters. Because electronic receipts are delivered when your customer shares their email, you can also build a robust email list for future marketing.

Square has a few customer engagement features that are completely free. The emails that you collect during transactions are yours to add to a separate email campaign service, of course. You can also create, import, and manage all of your customer profiles within your Customer Directory, which you can then use to get more insights into your donors and plan future giving campaigns based on that information.

You don’t need to find a solution outside of Square for email marketing tools, however. Square Marketing gives you some pre-designed email templates with campaign suggestions and scheduling tools that help you create and manage your email list and marketing campaign. Square Marketing Starts at $15 / month. In the screenshot below, this particular campaign provides those on your list with a special offer. To the right, you can see that you have a selection of templates and themes to create something in line with your branding. Though it’s not fully customizable, you can add your logo, business name, and other images where desired.

Email remains one of the most cost-effective marketing tactics, so it’s nice to see that Square makes it easy to collect emails or opt for this relatively low-cost email marketing tool.

Is Square Right For Your Nonprofit?

Square remains a strong option for most nonprofits. You can start taking donations — and even have access to a few ways to grow — without having to spend any extra money right off the bat. However, for advanced reporting features, marketing, and other integrations you may need, you’re going to pay more each month. And in my mind, that’s okay. Square provides basic reporting features so you can gain insight into patterns of giving as well as set up multiple ways to give on your site and more ways to connect, and that’s all free.

While Square does not offer any special discounts for charities, the processing fees are competitive. And with all of the freebies, it’s a bit remarkable for a processor overall. Be aware that account stability issues exist, however, but they aren’t unique to other processors by any means. Be sure to review each section or check out our full Square Review so that you understand how to make the most of this option.

Not sure if Square is right for you (or already sure it isn’t)? Read Become A Hero & Save Your Charity Money With Discounted Credit Card Processing For Nonprofits or check out the Top 7 Square Alternatives.

Want to get started with Square and open an account? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to set up an account, navigate your dashboard, start accepting donations or selling merchandise. Have any questions? We’d love to hear from you.