Why Does Apple Make Donation Apps So Hard? [Apple]

In August, PayPal added a donation feature that allowed users to make charitable contributions from in the services’s iPhone app. In late October, Apple made them pull the plug without warning and little explanation.

Anuj Nayar, on behalf of PayPal, would only say, ” I will be able to confirm that we added the donations feature to our iPhone app in version 2.5 in mid August. We removed the feature in version 3.0 of our PayPal Mobile iPhone app. This was done at Apple’s request.”

A little background: to implement its donation feature, PayPal partnered with MissionFish, whose mandate is to aid non-profits raise funds through online donations. In PayPal’s case, users of the app could be given an way to donate to either a featured charity or one of nearly 18,000 organizations inside the MissionFish database. Choose the non-profit, choose the volume, hit submit, and you were done.

Because PayPal already has a payment method on file for the user, it was essentially a two-click operation. And within the few months that the feature was operational, it had raised more than $10,000 at a regular donation amount of $12.

Much of the feature’s success came from its being an in-app transaction. That also turned out to be its downfall. Sooner than the Oct. 26th release of PayPal 3.0, Apple decided that they wanted any donations to be completed in Safari, a sudden and unexpected move that could have lead to a major drop-off in participation. There hasn’t been any longer explication from Cupertino since then.

” Nonprofits are really stymied by the iPhone and this policy approach,” says MissionFish’s Clam Lorenz. ” They’re unsure what the policy is, because it sort of feels vague or arbitrary.”

PayPal’s not the best charity app to experience a seemingly capricious App Store regulatory process. Givabit is a free app that encompasses a different charity daily, encouraging users to make micro-donations. Getting the app approved was, consistent with co-founder Justin Kazmark, quite a tribulation:

” Apple was clear that any in-app transaction via iTunes would entitle Apple to 30% of that transaction – presumably charity donations included. Given the undeniable fact that we thought 30% was way too much to take from a $1 donation to charity, we had to come back up with a special solution than to head through iTunes.”

To avoid sending nearly a third of their donors’ contributions to Apple, Givabit settled on the less-effective method of sending payments to the browser. Although that wasn’t the top of it.

Apple’s review team first sent back direction that Givabit couldn’t specify what number of donations went to the non-profits (96.25%) and what went towards operational costs (anything). The explanation for that request, and others, was never made clear:

” We called up and asked for more information about why we couldn’t include that language. The person we spoke to was very unclear about what the policy was. We were also told that we couldn’t use the term ” Phonelanthropy,” which we made up to describe what we were doing or the tagline we had on the app: ” Microdonations. Macrobenefit.” They said we’d should remove that, too. Basically, anything that alluded to charity/philanthropy they felt uncomfortable with but wouldn’t articulate clearly what their policy was.”

Later, Apple told Givabit to remove specific dollar amount buttons in the app, insisting that those be put on the Safari page in addition.

While Apple hasn’t fully explained its rationale to either Givabit or MissionFish, it’s likely that they don’t are looking to be answerable for donation apps that develop into fraudulent. How to avoid that liability is block any and all in-app donations. If that’s the case, though, it kind of feels unusual that an exception couldn’t be made for a known partner in good standing, like PayPal. And in-app purchases were commonplace since iOS 3.0.

For its part, Lopez says PayPal will introduce in-app donations to its Android app before the top of the year, while still looking ahead to Apple to further clarify why it reversed its position. And other charitable apps are left navigating the murky waters of App Store policy , hoping for clarity in time for the season of giving.

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This post is tagged: charitable contributions, explication, missionfish, non profits, participation, policy approach, unexpected move