GiveMN announces transaction fees for donations

File under "it was too good to be true:"

In a release sent out today, GiveMN Executive Director Dana Nelson announced that the donations made to Minnesota non-profits through the GiveMN website would cease being "fee-free" as of October 1, 2010.

The website, which launched last November 17 with "Give to the Max Day," received a lot of initial press for both its offer to do for free what many non-profits can't afford to do on their own (create a web page for online donations) and also for not giving Minnesota non-profits much of a heads up on how to get involved in, or bow out of, the project.

GiveMN was quickly overwhelmed by public response to calls to donate via its site, and almost immediately went through the initial start-up funds set aside for paying transaction fees. In the past months Nelson has been looking at other means to make the site free for all who participate (including a page on GiveMN where you can donate to the running of the site itself) but it appears none of the options considered were sustainable.

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