PayPal Compliance Issues

Hidden dangers of using PayPal for political contributions

 We've noticed a number of Republican congressional challenger campaign websites popping up recently who are using PayPal to process their donations.This is all well and good as long as the candidates are:

• posting the correct FEC disclaimers, and
• collecting employer and occupation information.

Unfortunately the majority of the people using PayPal are not.While PayPal is great for shopping online, your campaign donation page needs to provide standardized disclaimers and for you to collect employer and occupation information from your donors. It should also be connected directly to your finance and compliance database.For a good example of how you can accept online contributions with less worry and risk of audit, take a look at how Sen. Ted Cruz raises money online. Senator Cruz uses WidgetMakr to process his transactions so

• the donations go directly into his bank account (without anyone sitting on the money and doing distributions later),
• he is paying the merchant banking fees directly to the merchant bank (so no-one is padding the fees), and
• donor data goes directly into Crimson, his campaign data platform.

The best part about using a fully integrated system is that you can track your donors every move and the FEC finance regs are built right into the platform.Let us know if you need help setting up a quick and easy online fundraising system. As the provider of the Republican industry standard fundraising and compliance tools, it would be an honor and pleasure to help you hit the ground running.