Update: The fund raising has ended!

PayPal and I had a brief moment there, when we just weren’t BBFs. Before I could get good and rolling, my attempt to raise funds to send children to Camp Sanguinity Cancer Camp hit a snag. I tell you what, I was so discombobulated by PayPal, so terribly stressed out, that I even tried yoga to calm down! You KNOW it had to be bad!

PayPal put my account into “Limited Access,” wanting more information from me. It’s worked out now, but trying to make it so was distressing. I don’t like to “change my tone,” but I had to get assertive to get their attention.

Before I even set up the account, I contacted PayPal’s Compliance Department. I told them that I intended to try to raise money and why. I told them I had set up a special charitable account at the bank and had called the IRS for a taxpayer identification number (TIN). I also made sure to tell them that I wouldn’t have paperwork on it for two weeks. When I set up that account at the bank, I didn’t even get checks, because ALL of the proceeds will go to Camp Sanguinity. The bank will issue a cashier’s check straight to them.

The compliance department wrote me and said go ahead and good luck.

I set up the account for Tucker’s Camp Sanguinity Fund 2008 on my regular PayPal account, made a button, and then got my husband to test it with a donation. It went to my personal account, and we cannot have that, good people. It seems that PayPal doesn’t have an option to choose which account you use. I deleted the camp fund account and went back to square one.

With a different e-mail name, I set up the fund in a new PayPal account. I made the button, it worked and donations came. Then, PayPal locked the account. They wanted me to send bank records (from an account that was a week old?) and the IRS form that I told them I didn’t yet have.

I went into a frenzy of activity. I called PayPal five different times. I wrote them letters of appeal. I faxed a letter, a copy of the e-mail from the compliance department that told me I had approval, and I promised them my first-born son! Still locked.

I was furious, and I wrote this letter:

I will not receive the IRS determination letter for another week or two. This account was just started, as I told you in the letter. I contacted the compliance department before even starting this account, and faxed you a letter from “josh” telling me to go ahead and put buttons on the blog. If he had not told me that, I would not have started the account and would have just accepted checks from the donors who want to send children to cancer camp until the IRS letter came. I’m disappointed that josh’s response has made this so difficult.

As soon as I get the compliance letter, I will send it to you so we can get the money that people donated in good faith. If you don’t wish us to have an account for this project, I’ll tell my readers that we can’t use paypal and will try the Revolution Money Exchange instead. Just let me know.

I’ve tried repeatedly to call paypal, but can’t get through to the compliance department, and everyone who talks to me says, “it will be ok…just write them.” Obviously, it’s not OK.

Whaddaya know. The next day the account was unlocked. Do y’all think that mentioning PayPal’s competitor had anything to do with that? It was NOT an idle threat. I realize that part of the problem was because I set up the fund in a different account from the one where I first asked about it. If PayPal allowed you to use more than one account per e-mail that wouldn’t have been a problem, but I wish the PayPal folks would communicate with each other better.

Thank you, PayPal for letting this proceed. We are pals again, and you are my BBF.

So, now I’m excited again, and I’m going into my community next week to try to get funds from local folks. We’ve had enough donations to send one child to camp, but there are 149 to go!!

If you would like to help,

• you can add a button like this one to your blog and link it to my first post about Tucker’s Camp Sanguinity Fund.
  
• you can click the button on my sidebar and send a donation in any amount through your PayPal account
• you can mail a personal check, if you would rather, made out to Tucker’s Camp Sanguinity Fund c/o Shelly Tucker; P.O. Box 2241, Denton, TX 76202
• you can tell people about it in a blog post
• you can write an e-mail to 150 of your closest friends
• you can mention it on a social networks to which you belong(like church, work, the coffeehouse, OR any on-line social networks)
• you can give me some suggestions for fund raising
• you can come right over here and hold my hand!

Did I bite off more than I can chew?