Possibility of donations in an educational site
You can have a way for people to pay, i.e. some kind of payment gateway. Run as Business: Best create a company and get the funds there. This would be treated as income of the website and would be taxed accordingly. One can deduct expenses for running the website, etc. Run as Charity: Register as one, however the cause should be considered as charitable one by the tax authorities. Only then the donations would be tax free.
It's a good question. We can't know for sure, but here are some things to think about. Paypal advertises a discounted transaction rate for non-profit organizations.  In the U.S. at least, the rate they advertise is 2.2% + 0.30 USD.  There are lots of things that can come into play here, such as international rates or any special deal that Wikimedia has struck with Paypal, but it seems reasonable to guess that of your 2€ donation, Wikipedia sees perhaps 1.65€.  Note that most of the fee is a flat rate; of the next 2€ in your donation, Wikipedia gets 1.96€. Direct debit probably has lower fees.  Paypal has to account for some credit card transaction fees in their fee structure, and direct debit does not.  Therefore, I would guess that to maximize your gift, direct debit might result a little better than Paypal.   Charities, in general, don't want to tell you the best way to donate, because they want it to be as easy for you as possible, and don't want to discourage any type of donation at all.  They are very happy to get any donation, even if one method over another results in slightly higher fees.  Wikimedia, in particular, offers many different options for donating. "&gt; The best teachers make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, in private educational institutions.  1. I am sure some teachers do, and that these teachers are far better than average. But teacher pay correlates with a lot of other things, like seniority.   2. ""Education"" is not just one thing, and it is sometimes closer to a private good and sometimes closer to a [public good](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good). Education-as-status is a private good (which is why private schools can afford to pay prestige-bringing teachers a lot of money). Education-as-human-capital is in some cases also a private good (e.g., most of the benefits for graduate business education accrues to the student, so externalities are negligible); but in other cases it is probably not (e.g., it's better for everyone if everyone else is literate and numerate, so there are externalities involved in basic education). And civic education is an almost public good (the benefits of voting thoughtfully only exist if many people do it, and they are spread largely evenly throughout society).  Right now the government has a hand in funding all of these. This may or may not be a good idea (whether from the standpoint of pure efficiency or from the taxation-is-theft).  But in your opinion, which of the above educations could plausibly be funded adequately without taxation?  Edit: fixed link" One possibility to consider would be making an arrangement with a registered UK charity where you would donate the necessary amount for the specific purpose of covering medical costs of that particular person. Charitable donations are expressly deductible from business profits.     Some charities may be genuinely interested in helping people from developing countries get quality medical help that's not available in those countries. There may be some organizations in the proposed beneficiary's country that have contacts among the UK charities. PS. I am not a lawyer or an accountant, nor do I claim to be either. The above is not a legal or accounting advice. Consider seeking professional assistance. Why limit yourself to $28K per year?  If you pay the tuition directly to the institution, it does not count against your annual or lifetime gift-giving totals.  You could pay the entire tuition each year with no tax consequences. The only thing you can't do if you want to go this route is give the money to your children; that's what causes the gift tax to kick in.  The money must be paid directly to the school. Economic efficiency is overrated. I would rather give money to a charity that spent 15% on human resources and 10% on marketing to get $10 million in incoming donations than to a charity with an 8% expense rate that receives $1 million in incoming donations. I worked at a for-profit school, one associated with Full Sail University.  I can say this from experience:  -Most of the people receiving stipends (loan money from federal or private sources) are black and from low-income neighborhoods.  -In SOME instances the people enrolled in the school were obviously mentally ill and very likely homeless.  -Most of the people receiving stipends either drop out themselves or are dropped for poor academic progress and attendance.  This is after a hefty debt is built up.  -The school goes to extraordinary lengths to enroll military vets.  I can't say anything about admission tactics other than they check to see if you have a high school degree.  Personally I would never go to these type of schools. Without knowing the specifics it is hard to give you a specific answer, but most likely the answer is no. If they limit the participation in the site to accredited investors, this is probably not something they are doing willingly, but rather imposed by regulators. Acredited investors have access to instruments that don't have the same level of regulatory protection & scrutiny as those offered to the general public, and are defined under Regulation D.  Examples of such securities are 144A Shares, or hedgefunds. There is no doubt that a good, quality early education is one of the base for becoming successful person in future. And Jumbobookmarks.net will provide all the articles related to education and college. If you are a writer then you can bookmark your latest findings for free and use it later. You are thinking of something similar to [Patreon](www.patreon.com) then but more automated? I don't quite think automation works for this because you might not want to give every site you visit money, even if you visit it often in a short period of time (e.g. while doing research into cults you might not want to give the WBC money). For larger items such as cars this is certainly possible; I've donated a car before (in Canada) and got a tax receipt that was probably worth more than I would have got from a dealer for the car. However with donations of this kind there are two obstacles: Two other options for you to consider. Most medium towns have used book shops which you can sell them to. If the used book shops don't want them then your books really aren't worth enough to be worrying about, in which case see option two: give the books to a charity or thrift shop and don't worry about the receipt. Sometimes a nice feeling is the best return you will get. In the. US, i'd suggest hitting the Charity Navigator website for evaluation of how efficiently various charities will use your money. At this point I won't donate money to anything that gets less than three stars unless I know the organization very well indeed -- and I've been progressively swapping out 3-star groups for 4-star organizations in the same category. Many of the groups reviewed by CN are international,  so you might find it useful even if you're donating from/to elsewhere. If you have a software company, that can produce a box of software for $5, but the box sells for $100. (You have to make a profit and cover development costs) But then you give these boxes to charity, that is a cost of $5 each and a tax rebate of $100 x 40% = $40. A profit of $35 per donation of $5.  Note: You can only do this if you have taxable profit to offset it against. Not sure how authoritative it is, but according to this site, yes: Can a corporation, partnership or other non-living entity make the contribution to an ESA? Yes. The tax law does not restrict the ability to make contributions to living individuals. Corporations and other entities may make contributions without regard for the usual donor income limit.  However, the same site indicates that you can just give the child the $2K and have them contribute to their own ESA, so yes, the income limit is pretty easy to get around. If I were donating money to a charity, i.e. an organization set up to help others, I would simply send them the money and ask that my name not be used in publicity. That would mean that the person(s) actually benefiting from my donation didn't know who I was. The charity would know, but they don't themselves benefit. Yes, it's considered the students asset, regardless of the custodian aspect.  I don't know how you'd propose to put it in a retirement account, even with the earned income to facilitate this, the limit is $5500/yr.  The larger issue is parental income. That and parental assets. Tough to game that part of the system to get aid. In the end, one should look to scholarships, both merit and non merit based to maximize college support.