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Disclaimer: the UK is not the US, but I would be surprised if there are major differences in principle.

I'm concerned you have set up a charity but appear to have no knowledge of basic charity operation nor accounting - you HAVE arranged for accounting, I hope? In UK, you trustees who manage the charity have to prepare and file statutory accounts (in a very specific format, a UK charity's accounts differ substantially from those of a business' even down to some basic principles) as well as having other statutory obligations imposed upon you. I would be surprised if there aren't free booklets kicking around giving sound advice - many countries have a good quasi-independent charity regulator likely to produce such things, but I see the US's equivalent is the IRS, so I'm less hopeful, but surely somebody produces one?

Moving on to the topic at hand:

If you go to the American Red Cross donation page they give options for 4 specific purposes and one "Where The Need Is Greatest". If this was in the UK, and I assume the same applies in the US and most countries, the latter would result in a donation to the unrestricted fund i.e. they can spend it on whatever they consider appropriate within the purposes set out the the articles/trust deed. These donations would not normally be returned, if the charity ceased the trustees would probably donate to the most similar other charity.

Donations for the "Horn of Africa Drought" however would be recorded separately in the accounts as a donation to that restricted fund and it must be spent on that project. Should the project cease then in theory the Red Cross should communicate with the donor for permission to transfer the money to another project or return it to you. (Admittedly, for an organisation the scale of the Red Cross communicating with small donors would be impractical, so they very likely have a disclaimer that allows them to transfer funds on specific triggers like the cessation of a project.)

Therefore all you need to do is assure your donor that their money goes on exactly your project or else it will be returned. For you, it's just a matter of recording who from & what for in the books properly. Give donors a form with two check boxes - one which requires the money to be returned in the event the project is frustrated and one that gives permission for you to donate to an "a suitable alternative purpose for the advancement of scientific education" or whatever.

As far as websites go, here in UK I have clients having good experience with http://www.justgiving.com/ , they appear to have an American site http://www.firstgiving.com/ . They do take 5% of the donation so you might prefer direct giving, but there's minimal admin for you and its convenient for some donors (who might also feel more secure donating via the officialdom-ish of the big website).

You could of course to take pledges, so people only pay when you get enough pledges to finance the project. However pledges have the obvious habit of the pledger changing his mind by the time it actually comes to pay up. Even if you used some automatic system, you don't really want your donors having forgotten about it then going overdrawn or whatever. It's a problem and headache. I'd suggest you want to be in the position of having cash that you might have to return rather than having to chase people for cash later.

Just Giving

Thanks for this (and to gnomeza, below - "..two people on the Internet with the same name - shock!") for clearing this up, appreciated. They are not that evil yet, are they? SONY (& the rest of you) - get your hand in your pockets - http://www.justgiving.com/ratm4xmas/ - one fact that is neither arguable nor knee-deep in conspiracy theories is that Shelter are a worthwhile cause indeed, lets leave this one as a win-win, just for once eh?!

Judging by the amount of money raised for the atheistbus the Humanist Society should by .god to stop the godsquad getting it.

As my Another Chance To See blog has been keeping an eye on the Baiji Dolphin and all the other animals from Last Chance To See, it would be remiss of me not to mention that the Northern White Rhino is also on the final brink of extinction with between 2 and 4 animals left in the wild - 2 left?

And if you have a spare few quid, please send them to our Save The Rhino fundraiser. Even if we can't save the Northern White Rhino, there's plenty of other subspecies that need our help.

I agree heartily, it's informative (expensive though, outside the UK :c(), intelligent yet entertaining in a humorist way (just like we all want to be, don't we?). MacAddict is another story though: middle of the 90's GOOD, YUMMY, nowadays BAD, PTEW! Time Magazine: good too. And cheap. Bit biassed though. Anyway I would not subscribe to a computer magazine unless I really wánted it. If I doubted, I wouldn't, and save the money to send it to http://www.justgiving.com/phrichardhammond to thank them for saving the worlds most favourite hamster. [/shamelessplug]

As to private donors: http://www.justgiving.com/pfp/swahili . So far, no dot.angel has emerged, though quite a few people have been extremely generous in helping keep the project going with relatively small donations.

Funding basically involves staffing, for programming and for editorial work. The more funding available, the more technically ambitious the project can be, and the more content we can provide. We would ideally like to expand the model to other languages, but, because the quality of the project demands scholarly oversight, we would need to actually hire people to work on additional languages and additional tasks. It's a case of getting what you pay for - the project aims to produce quality educational resources, which means that professional scholars need to give their time, and if they are giving the sort of time necessary to get the resources online this century, they need to be paid so they can buy food and pay the rent. Hosting costs are minimal - Yale is quite generous with server space. Publishing costs will be borne by the publishing house, when we eventually get to the point of producing print dictionaries, although we've got some problematic issues ahead because publishing houses are wary of printing something that is also available for free online. The project has a proven record of spending its money wisely and producing results, but it does need some sort of cash flow to keep doing the things it does!

Or, even better than getting paypal to do it, why not let http://www.justgiving.com/ do it as they handle this sort of thing in a safer and more accountable way (you cannot get your grubby little hands on the money, only the charity can) and actually add money to what is donated (by stiffing the inland revenue or uncle sam) rather than charging you.