jamescagney and I were just emailing about this. We're thinking maybe Paypal isn't the way to go. Paypal charges 30 cents plus 3% to 4% for each donation made. Also, Paypal charges you $10 if someone contacts their bank or credit card to dispute the donation as an unauthorized charge to their account, not that anyone would do that, but... I dunno. It's bothersome for whoever is in charge of it.
An alternative could be to instead pick a charity and tell people to donate directly to the charity. I think that's what families more typically do in such cases. We have a few choices here. Some charities make this easy by setting up a non-profit Paypal account or a way to donate via cell phone text message. I'm not sure PETA does that. But they do have the web page below that lets one set up a memorial to the person and then people go to the memorial to make donations.
Maybe the easiest route would be we could have people text “PETS” to 90999 to donate $5 to Best Friends Animal Society. I don't know any of them but charitywatch.org / American Institute of Philanthropy says they're a good charity.
http://www.charitywatch.org/toprated.html#animal
Having said all that, feel free to go with the Paypal idea. We're just brainstorming.
Info on PETA memorials and to set one up:
http://www2.peta.org/site/TR/Events/PETAsOnlineCommunity?pg=tgreeting&fr_id=1030
Sample PETA memorial:
http://www2.peta.org/site/TR/Events/PETAsOnlineCommunity?pxfid=5610&fr_id=1051&pg=fund
PETA's donation web page:
https://secure.peta.org/site/Donation2?df_id=1940&1940.donation=form1
Alternative animal organizations (the first one is also approved by charitywatch.org)
http://www.americanhumane.org/donate/
http://www.americanhumane.org/donate/tribute-gifts/
http://www.americanhumane.org/donate/tribute-gifts/in-memory-of-a-person.html
http://www.aspca.org/donate/
https://shop.theanimalrescuesite.com/store/categoryjson.do?categoryId=399&adId=48454
https://www.bestfriends.org/donate/nmhp.cfm
ASPCA will let you set up a tribute web page, where you can put up pictures and messages, and the URL can be emailed around to donate via that method. And ASPCA also accepts (or used to accept, I'll test to confirm later when I get home - I'm on my way out the door now) $5 donations via text message from cell phones. Mel's family might be interested to know that too as it might save them some trouble.
Set up an ASPCA memorial web page:
http://www.aspca.org/ambassadors/memorial.html
Info on donating via text message:
http://blog.mgive.com/2009/03/04/aspca-boosts-donations-via-sms/
"The ASPCA offers free cat and dog tips to mobile users by sending a text message with keywords CAT or DOG to 27722. At the bottom of the ASPCA's text messages, it asks subscribers to reply with the keyword GIVE to make a $5 donation."
If ASPCA stopped accepting donations by text message, there's always Best Friends Animal Society:
https://www.bestfriends.org/donate/nmhp.cfm
Sorry for the info overload.