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March 25, 2008

Donation Jar Change Over

Up until now the Donation Jar has paid into my Paypal account and I've been tracking the donations. Given the amount of money coming via the Donation Jar (thank you everyone) Rebecca from the Alzheimer's Research Trust and I felt it would be better if it went straight into their account. As of 8pm this is now the case but there is a slight problem.

The Donation Jar was a feature provided Typepad (the blogging software that runs this site). It sent the donated money into the Paypal account linked to the email address set up in my Typepad profile. Which turns out to be the one, single email address you can associate with an account. So if I switch the email address to point to the Alzheimer's Research Trust for the Donation Jar, all messages from Typepad to myself would be sent to the Trust including anything from my other blogs.

Obviously not a viable option and a bit of an oversight by Typepad. If you let people have multiple blogs on one account, its not a great leap to assume that each blog will want to use a different email address. This is not a disaster as I've set up a Paypal donation button to do the job instead. This does go straight to the Alzheimer's Research Trust. The only drawback to this solution is that the amount of the donation is fixed at $20 where as the old Donation Jar allowed the donor to choose the amount. On the plus side, it now clearly states that the money is going to the Alzheimer's Research Trust before you complete your donation.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get some time to rework the HTML to make it look better and also make two Match It For Pratchett donation buttons. One going to the regular Trust donation page and a quick $20 Paypal donation button. Up until then please use the direct donation link or the Paypal button on the right.

Posted by Chris Tregenza at 08:21 PM |

Comments

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Lee Whiteside

You should be able to make the Paypal box let the user select the amount. I think if you take out the html code line that specifies the amount, Paypal will leave that field empty for the user to fill in.

Posted by: Lee Whiteside | March 25, 2008 at 11:07 PM

Sue

Lee's right: look for a line in your button code like "input type="hidden" name="amount" value="20.00" and remove it - that should give people the option to choose their own amount. Gimme a shout if you need a hand.

Posted by: Sue | March 26, 2008 at 10:21 AM

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Match It For Pratchett

  • What's This All About Then?
    Terry Pratchett, author of the bestselling Discworld novels, has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's. He has donated half a million pounds (approx $1 million) to Alzheimer's research and appeared in the media highlighting the low levels of research funding Alzheimer's receives.
    Match It For Pratchett is a spontaneous, grassroots, totally unofficial campaign by loyal readers from around the world to raise money on behalf of the Alzheimer's Research Trust in the UK and Alzheimer's research in general around the world.

    What is Alzheimer's?
    Alzheimer's disease (AD), also called Alzheimer disease or simply Alzheimer's, is the most common cause of dementia, afflicting 24 million people worldwide. Alzheimer's is a degenerative and terminal disease for which there is currently no cure. In its most common form, it occurs in people over 65 years old although a rarer early-onset form also exists.

    How Can I Help?
    1. Give money directly to Alzheimer's Research Trust. If you are a UK citizen, this qualifies for Gift Aid

    2. For a fast, three click donation, use the Paypal button below.

    Like option 1, this goes straight to the Alzheimer's Research Trust but doesn't qualify for Gift Aid.

    3. Tell people about Match It For Pratchett. Use your blog, Twitter or Facebook. Email your friends, tell strangers in the street, dress up as an orangutan and hang from a tree. Do whatever you can to spread the word.



    If you wish to contact MatchItForPratchett.org, please email us at this address: Hello [ at ] MatchItForPratchett [ dot ] org.

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