Hi David and Jack!
I wanted to do some checking before giving you guys the "correct answer".... Sorry for the delay!
Anyway - there are two primary ways to take on-line payments - PayPal and a Merchant Account. A "Merchant Account" is an account that a business entity can use to process virtually any credit card of the business entity's choosing - VISA, MASTERCARD, AMEX, DISCOVER, etc.. Most banking institutions offer those services - and they are web based, straight forward and extremely easy to facilitate... (I'll address more of those in a second, OK?)...
PayPal. Paypal is great - BUT - there are some conditions to use - including exclusion of sales for "Raffle Tickets" (falls into "gambling" statutes for some states/countries) and using PayPal for non-eBay auctions (for obvious reasons). Anyway - that excludes PayPal for the Raffle and Silent Auction. Membership payments have been - and will continue to be fine, however...
OK - back to those "Merchant Services" for a moment... It requires someone on the BOD (a Director) to set up that account and have signatory privileges on that account (typically, the financial guy/gal). When my wife and set up one for our business years ago - it took only a few minutes. However - I am not on the PGCA BOD (and will not be), I am not a "Director" (and won't be), don't have signatory on the Bank Account (and don't want it
).... So - I know the BOD is looking at that - and as of recently - is looking at Merchant Services with increasing importance....
Hope this helps,
John D.