How to Accept Donations for Your Wellness Business
It’s a tough time to be a wellness practitioner. Many of you have been forced to close your brick-and-mortar studios for an indefinite amount of time, and figure out new ways to keep your businesses afloat.
Hey Marvelous can help you create the virtual studio of your dreams, but as the business owner you’ve got to choose how to charge. And since many Hey Marvelous teachers are both new to online classes and deeply empathetic humans, we’ve gotten a ton of questions about the ethics of pricing during a pandemic. Including how to accept donations to your wellness practice.
We don’t have definitive answers for you, but wanted to offer some guidelines to mull and a few resources for payment as you puzzle out the specifics.
Should you waive fees during a crisis?
It may feel awkward to continue charging the same fees for your content and classes when students can no longer interact with you in person. It may feel uncomfortable to think about asking people to pay that same monthly fee when you know they’re facing financial strain. But before you eliminate your fees altogether and let people connect with you on Hey Marvelous for free, consider this:
Your loyal customers WANT to support you: If a student has been laid off and needs to home-school 3 kids, they may just need to cancel their membership. If a student is scrambling to adjust to working from home, they may need to bail. But many of your current students will be more than happy to keep paying their monthly dues to support you during this crisis. Most of the world is coping with money woes right now, and people are sympathetic to the plight of the small business. Don’t assume your entire client base will want to jump ship.
Online classes take time and effort to create: Virtual classes may not have the same level of personalization as studio classes, but they still require a boatload of effort to design, schedule, and run! You’ll be investing plenty of your valuable time and skill into your virtual studio, and deserve to be compensated for your work.
The services you offer online can be vital during tough times: Stress, despair, and uncertainty are everywhere right now. Yoga, meditation, exercise, stretching, and deep breathing ALL help people cope. What you do is needed right now. Wellness practices may seem like a luxury on the surface, but during stressful times they become a necessity for many. What you offer can feel like a lifeline to sanity and balance in the midst of frightening world events.
All of that said, if you can’t stomach charging at the same level now that you’re teaching in a new format, reduce your fees temporarily. Your client base will certainly appreciate your generosity and understanding.
Finally, if you’d like to offer your students a “pay what you can” option, you can set up a donation button for your Hey Marvelous studio. Read on to find out how.
How to accept donations via PayPal
PayPal is notorious for subtracting fees from transactions, and that includes 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction (unless you are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit). However it is also one of the most recognized, trusted, and widely used applications for facilitating online transactions, so your students are sure to feel comfortable using it. PayPal also makes setting up a “donations” button and funnel extremely easy.
Log in to PayPal, or create a new account if you don’t have one: https://www.paypal.com/signin
Once you’re logged in and have all of your business information updated, navigate to https://www.paypal.com/donate/buttons to start building your donation button.
Select your country and language, then customize your button. You can either use PayPal’s branded and pre-made buttons, or add your own button image. Make sure “Show accepted card logos” is checked. Press continue when you’re done.
You’ll arrive at a page titled “Let users know about your organization.” The information you enter here is what users will see when they click on your button. The first option, “use account ID,” will ensure that the name on your PayPal account shows up when the user donates. When you’re done, press continue.
When you get to the page titled “Set donation amounts,” you can either enter a predefined amount or let the user choose how much they would like to donate. Press “Finish and Get Code.”
Press the “Copy to clipboard” button or select and copy the HTML code.
To accept donations via Hey Marvelous, you will simply past the code for this button into your Hey Marvelous product description. This strategy works best for “free products” on Hey Marvelous.
How to accept donations via Patreon
Patreon is a community support platform that allows people to donate to your organization just one time, or on a recurring basis. It takes some doing to get your account set up, but also allows you to offer benefits like exclusive content, community, or insight into your creative process in exchange for a monthly subscription. Patreon takes 5% of your donations if you use the Lite service, and 8% if you upgrade to Patreon Pro which gives you access to tiered rewards.
This tutorial walks you through the basics of getting your Patreon Creator Page up and running. That page will be the home base for all of your Patreon activity, so consider giving it a snappy custom URL.
Once your page has been launched, you’ll get an email from Patreon letting you know that you are live and able to send your URL to students, fans, neighbors and anyone else you think would be interested in supporting your business.
Of course, you can also add a Patreon donation button to any of your Hey Marvelous product descriptions. You can download a “Become a Patron” button right here and point it toward your Patreon Creator Page URL.
How to accept donations via GoFundMe
Like Patreon, GoFundMe is a crowdfunding platform that supports both charities and businesses. The company takes 2.9% plus $.30 cents per donation, so similar to PayPal, but also offers you more features, including seamless integration with Facebook and Twitter accounts. This is a great bet if you have active communities on social media already.
You can use this guide to setting up and building your GoFundMe account, including setting up withdrawals.
You can also look here to find instructions for how to link your GoFundMe campaign url with one of your Hey Marvelous products.
You have options
There are dozens of other ways to raise funds to support your wellness business, including Facebook Fundraiser, Fundly, and allowing students to send you money via Venmo.
Whether you continue to charge your regular fees, switch up your pricing, or opt for a donation model during this crisis, we at Hey Marvelous hope that you’ll find a way to continue accepting payment for your services.
The work you do is more important now than ever before, and you’re helping your students stay healthy and strong during an unspeakably stressful time. They appreciate you, and so do we.
