All iDonate Causes, including schools, will need to register with Stripe in order to receive payments going forward. There are a number of reasons for this, largely to align with regulations and for better financial governance.
We recognise this could cause some confusion, as the language used by Stripe may not align with your school or organisation. As such, we have put together this guide on how to register with Stripe as a school.
How to Register a School with Stripe
The registration process itself is detailed in
this guide here, in the case of a school the account type to choose would be a
Non-Profit.
As mentioned, the wording in this signup process may not quite line up with your school. It will refer to your organisation as a company or business, and ask for details on directors.
Please disregard the wording, all of these details can be provided in a way that applies to your school. First of all, please ensure the person completing this process is someone who can act as administrator or the account.
This could be the school principal, a secretary or teacher who is managing your fundraising. Ideally this would be a member of staff, someone who has the authority to sign on behalf of the school.
Once the person who will go through the signup has been designated, here are the steps:
1. Select Non-Profit as the Account Type
As mentioned, schools fall under the 'Non-Profit' umbrella with regards to signing up with Stripe.
2. Enter the school's email address
This will be the primary contact for the account. If the school has already registered with Stripe, enter the email on that account to link it with iDonate.
If your school has not used Stripe before, you will be prompted to add further to details to setup a new account.
We would recommend using the same email for Stripe as your have used to setup your iDonate account, to keep everything in one place.
A phone number will also be required, this will be used to send two-factor authentication codes for signing in. A code will be sent at this stage to confirm.
3. Fill in your school's details
You will next be asked to provide the details for your school. Here is what you need to enter:
- Legal Business Name - This is your school's name.
- Ensure the name entered matches your official registered school name as documented on Department of Education (An Roinn Oideachais) School Inspection Report.
- Company number - Enter your school's roll number here, or enter 000000 if your roll number is not accepted.
- Industry - Select 'Elementary or Secondary Schools'.
4. Enter administrator and director details
The next section will require some personal details of an individual, this should be the administrator as advised above.
You will then be asked to add Directors to the account. This would be members of your school's governing body, and ID will be required.
Only add those who you will be able to provide identification for, or who are present. In the next step, you can choose 'Electronic Attestation' to verify your directors instantly.
5. Add bank details
The final step of this process is to add the bank details of the school.
You will need the IBAN for the account, enter it at this stage and then confirm the details to complete your registration.
Further details and support
Once you have completed the steps above, your registration will be complete and your iDonate account will be ready to go.
Hopefully it all goes smoothly, but we recognise there can be some sticking points and we will do anything we can to assist.
First of all, here are some links to Stripe's help resources:
- Documents for identity and home address verification
- Uploading photo of government-issued ID FAQ
If you have further queries, please do get in touch with us. You can reach our help desk by email at
helpdesk@idonate.ie.
We can either provide direct support, or refer to Stripe to resolve issues that are beyond our control.
We appreciate you taking the time to complete this process, to learn more about how this will work going forward, please visit our
general Stripe registration guide and refer to the 'What Happens Next' section.