You can use Patchwork to collectively organise and fund any gift, event or experience by inviting your friends and family to contribute. As long as it’s legal and doesn't breach our principles, you can patchwork away to your heart’s desire.
There are no limits to the amount you can collect with Patchwork. However, PayPal may restrict you to £1,650 if you don’t lift the limits that are automatically placed on your account. Please check these are lifted before publishing your patchwork.
Patchwork don't hold your funds. Instead contributions from friends go directly to your own PayPal account.
It’s free to create and share a patchwork. We deduct a 3% fee from cash contributions that you collect via our site. So 30p + VAT on a £10 gift. You will be charged VAT at the rate of your country of residence. For more information on money matters see our fees and how they work for you.
Then we don’t make any money. Simple.
Yes. If you want friends to contribute their time and skills you can create a patchwork full of patches asking people to Make or Do.
We don't make money from these patchworks. But they do make us smile.
Yes. In order to collect funds, you need to have a PayPal account. If you have a ‘verified’ PayPal account, you can withdraw these funds to spend whenever and wherever you like. If you have a basic PayPal account, you can only use your funds to shop online with retailers who accept PayPal. To verify your basic account or to compare different accounts and their fees, please visit PayPal.
Yes. We use a PayPal service called ‘Adaptive Payments’ which means that funds are transferred directly between friends and we don’t hold them. For this service, PayPal charge up to 3.4% commission on collected funds and a 20p fee on each transaction. For more information please see our Terms of Service.
You can work out the cross border and conversion fees on PayPal here.
Please check your local PayPal if you are a non-UK resident.
If you have a verified PayPal account, your friends don’t need a PayPal account and can ‘pay as a guest’ with any major debit or credit card.
However, if your account is not verified, your friends will need a PayPal account to pay for a gift (they can easily sign up for one during the checkout process).
Yes, there are two ways you can do this. If it’s a surprise gift you’re organising, you can register with your own details and use your own PayPal account. Then explain to your friends that you are collecting funds on someone else’s behalf.
However, if you want funds to go directly to your friend’s PayPal account, they will need to register their details first. You can then help them create their patchwork and share it with others on share behalf.
You might have an old style Personal account and you need to upgrade to a Premier account. It’s easy and free. Here’s what you need to do:
Log in to your account at www.paypal.com
On your ‘Account Overview’ page, click ‘Upgrade’ underneath your name, near the top of the page.
Click ‘Upgrade Now’. (This page will only mention Business accounts – but keep going).
Choose ‘Premier account’.
Once you select ‘Premier account’, click ‘Continue’ to upgrade your account immediately.
If this still doesn’t do the job, check your payment receiving options are set to accept ‘guest checkout’.
If this doesn’t help, please contact PayPal to see if you have other account restrictions in place.
Hooray. Yes, you can. Just set your currency when you create your patchwork and PayPal will make any necessary currency conversions for you. (Please check PayPal for their exchange rates and fees).
You can have 2 live patchworks collecting funds at any one time and a total of 4 fundraising patchworks per year.
We have to limit it to that number by law to avoid any money laundering or other dodgy dealings.
There is no limit to the amount of Make and Do patchworks you can create.
You can create as many draft patchworks as you like and save them in ‘My Account’ until you’re ready to publish them. Just remember, you can only have 4 patchworks collecting funds per year.
Patchworks collecting funds have a limit of 6 months from when the first contribution is made.
Any patchworks that do not collect funds can be open for 12 months. After that, they will automatically close.
Yes absolutely. You can edit your patchwork, including all images, text and quantities anytime.
If you want to create your own patchwork from scratch, you can use your own images, those in our gallery or any copyright free images you can find online.
You patchwork has a unique URL that you can send to friends and family. Just copy and paste the link to share it on social media, in an email or on printed invites.
Friends will be able to find your patchwork on our site but it won’t appear in a Google search and we won’t publicise or promote your patchwork without your permission.
There are no restrictions to the amount of people who can contribute. However, if you wish, you can limit contributions within your patchwork. For instance, if you only want one person to DJ at your wedding, you can set the limit to 1. Or if you want 5 people to make desserts, you can set the limit to 5. Equally, if you only want 4 massages on your holiday, you can set the limit to 4. But we won’t judge if you ask for a massage every day of your holiday.
The maximum a person can contribute towards a patchwork is £1,300.
Yes they can. The currency is set by you and PayPal can convert currencies in your account. We do monitor overseas transactions as part of our antimony laundering processes but genuine transactions will be allowed.
You can access, edit and manage all of your patchworks in ‘My Patchworks’. From here, it’s easy to invite people to view your patchwork, check out who has contributed what, read messages from friends and send thanks.
They can visit patchworkit.com and search for it with ‘Find a Friend’s Patchwork’.
You can call us in our London studio on 020 8617 8487 or email hello@patchworkit.com
See our existing readymade patchworks and personalise one to suit your needs
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