The Charles River Conservancy now allows you make donations to the Charles River Skatepark project using PayPal, a payment processing company used by thousands of merchants worldwide. For those of you who aren't familiar with PayPal, here are some answers to questions you might have.

PayPal is a payment-processing company which allows you to donate and-- of course-- shop online using your bank account, credit card, or debit card. PayPal is probably best known for being the preferred payment method on the online auction site eBay, which acquired PayPal in 2002.

No. If you prefer to use your credit or debit card when making donations to the skatepark, you can continue to do so, and it will work nearly identically to how it worked before. If you do choose to set up a PayPal account, it will be linked to a bank account, credit card, or debit card.

No. PayPal is free for buyers/donors, with no membership fees or transaction fees, whether you have a PayPal acount or not (In fact, when you use PayPal, it saves us money, too-- see "Why did the CRC start using PayPal?" below).

If you choose to pay using a PayPal account, all you do is enter in the user ID and password that you chose when you set up the account, and you're done-- no punching in of long credit card numbers, no looking for security codes. This saves time for you, and is more secure as well, whether you use PayPal to contribute to the Conservancy's mission, or use it elsewhere at one of the thousands of online merchants that accept PayPal: All transactions are handled by PayPal, so that Web sites where you use PayPal never see your credit card or bank account numbers.

One benefit is that it saves us the time and effort of opening mail, entering in numbers by hand, and the other small but time-consuming tasks involved in processing donations. This and the lower transaction fees offered by PayPal allow us to use more of your donation for keeping the Charles River parklands active, attractive and accessible.