Frequently asked questions

Whatever feels right and fits your budget. Many supporters start with about 1% of a paycheck or a flat $10 to $25 per payday and split it between two or three teachers. The minimum is $5.00 per paycheck and the maximum is $5,000.00; contact us for anything larger.

On your paydays, according to the schedule you set (weekly, every two weeks, twice a month or monthly) starting from the next payday you give us. We email a receipt after every charge. You can see the upcoming date on your dashboard.

Two things: payment processing (Stripe's charge, about 2.9% + $0.30 for cards or about 0.8% capped at $5.00 for bank accounts) and the flat 1% PayMyTeacher fee. By default you cover processing so the full gift reaches your teachers. You always see the breakdown before you are charged.

See both worked out side by side

Yes, any time, from your dashboard. Changes to the amount or the split apply from the next payday. Pausing stops charges until you resume; cancelling stops them for good. Gifts already delivered stay with your teachers.

More than 106,000, taken from the federal school directories: US public schools, from elementary through high school, and colleges and universities. Private schools below college level are not in yet, because the federal file for them does not publish school names.

Your teacher does not have to be there for you to thank them. If their school is missing, type it in when you add them.

Add them yourself. Enter their name and school, plus an email address if you have one, and we will create the profile and invite them to claim it.

You cannot send money to someone who has not joined, because there would be nobody to send it to. What you can do is promise a gift: nothing is charged, nothing is held, and no card is saved. When they join and can be paid, we email you and you send it yourself.

This works for any teacher, including one whose school is not in our directory and one who retired years ago.

Then nothing happens, and that is the point. We never charged you, so there is nothing of yours sitting with us, nothing to chase and nothing to refund.

A promise waits quietly for up to a year. If they join, we email you and you decide then whether to send it. If they never do, the promise simply lapses, and you were never charged a cent.

Every successful charge produces an emailed receipt with the gift, the fees and the split between teachers. Your complete history is on your dashboard.

No. Gifts through PayMyTeacher are personal gifts to individual teachers, not charitable donations, so they are not tax-deductible. We are not a charity and do not issue donation receipts.

A gift waiting for a teacher who has not joined yet. We save what you entered — the amount, your note, your fee choice, whether you want to stay anonymous — and that is all. Nothing is charged, no card is saved for it, and nothing is held: we never collect money for somebody who has no way to receive it.

When they join and can be paid, we email you. Making the gift is then up to you: you come back and pay through the ordinary checkout with everything already filled in. We never charge a card without you there to approve it.

The reminder stands for 30 days after they join, then the promise lapses. You can always give from their profile whenever you like, and you can cancel a promise at any time.

No, and that is deliberate. A split gift is one payment, and we will not charge you for a share that nobody can receive. Give to the teachers who are ready, and promise a separate gift to the others — it takes a moment longer and means no money of yours ever sits with us.

Search the directory for your name, open your profile and click This is me. If nobody has added you yet, create a profile from the For teachers page. Either way you will be asked to verify that you are the teacher on the profile.

The quickest way is a code sent to your school email address. If you no longer have one, upload a document that shows you taught at the school, such as a school ID, a contract or a pay stub. Verification confirms who you are and that you teach or taught at the school on the profile.

Unless your school email is on the short list of addresses we can confirm automatically, a person reviews your claim before it is approved. No money can reach you until that is done.

Once you are verified and your bank account is connected, gifts reach you as they are given. If a former student promised you a gift before you claimed your profile, no money was ever taken from them and none is sitting anywhere waiting: they are emailed that you have joined, and they complete the gift themselves. Gifts paid by bank transfer can take a few business days longer to settle.

Stripe is the payment company that moves the money. Stripe Express is the account it creates for you to receive payouts: it collects your identity and bank details securely, and gives you a dashboard to see payouts and update your account. We never see your bank details.

Absolutely. Many of the teachers being thanked here taught years ago. Verify with a document instead of a school email, and mark your profile as retired so former students can find you.

Gifts through PayMyTeacher are personal gifts from individuals, usually people you taught years ago. The IRS does not treat a genuine gift as income to the person who receives it, and says that money received as a gift should not appear on a Form 1099-K at all.

That is our position on what these payments are. It is not a ruling on your particular situation, and we cannot give tax advice. If you receive a meaningful amount, or anything about your circumstances is unusual, ask a tax preparer.

Your dashboard keeps a full record of every gift you receive, with dates, amounts and who sent it, and you can download it at any time. Keep it. It is the evidence behind whatever you or your preparer decide.

Not from us, and not from Stripe. Stripe issues 1099-K forms only for accounts where the account itself pays the processing fees. On PayMyTeacher the platform pays them, so Stripe does not file for you. We do not file one either, because we treat these payments as personal gifts rather than as payment for goods or services.

For context, the federal 1099-K threshold returned to more than $20,000 and more than 200 transactions in a year, after Congress reversed the lower thresholds that had been scheduled. A handful of states set their own far lower thresholds, including $600 in Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia, and $1,000 in Illinois and New Jersey. Those state rules apply regardless of the federal number.

Two things worth knowing. A 1099-K is a reporting form, not a decision that money is taxable: the IRS is explicit that receiving one does not by itself make an amount income, and not receiving one does not make income disappear. And if you ever do receive a form you think is wrong, the IRS publishes instructions for correcting it. This is an area where the rules have changed three times in four years, so check the current position rather than relying on what was true last year.

Your public profile shows your name, school, subjects, grade levels, years, bio and photo if you add one. Your email, address, documents and bank details are never shown to anyone. Supporters see only what is on the public profile.

Every teacher account is verified before it is approved. A teacher confirms a school email address or uploads a document showing they taught at the school, which tells us who they are and that they taught there. Unless the email is on the short list of school addresses we can confirm automatically, a person reviews the claim.

Only a verified teacher with a connected bank account can be paid, and we do not collect money for anybody else. An unverified profile cannot receive anything, and there is no pot of money attached to it for an impersonator to go after.

Report it to hello@paymyteacher.com with the profile link. We will freeze the profile, stop anything in flight, and investigate. Impersonation is against our terms and we remove accounts that attempt it.

Two things make this hard to profit from. Nothing is collected for a profile before it is verified, so there is no pot of money to take over. And when anyone claims a profile, everybody with a gift or a promise riding on it is emailed and asked whether that sounds right — so an impersonation attempt has to get past the people who actually knew the teacher.

No. Teachers choose. A profile created by a former student is not published at all: it stays out of the directory, out of search on this site, and out of the leaderboard, and we ask search engines not to index it. Only someone given the link, or who already knows the teacher's name and email address, can reach it.

When a teacher claims their profile they decide whether to be listed, and they can change their mind at any time. Being unlisted does not stop former students sending gifts or notes — it only stops strangers browsing to them.

That depends on your district, and we cannot answer it for you. Most teachers are public employees, and many districts and states limit or prohibit accepting gifts connected to the job.

Gifts here come from former students, usually well after they have left your classroom, which is normally outside what those rules are aimed at. But the rules vary, and the consequences land on you rather than on us, so please check your employee handbook or ask your district's ethics or HR office before you accept anything. Nothing here is legal advice. If your district says no, tell us and we will close your profile.

Every email we send has an unsubscribe link at the bottom, including invitations sent to teachers who never signed up for anything. One click stops them.

Unsubscribing does not silence receipts, failed-payment warnings or account security notices. Nobody should have their card charged and not be told, and "they unsubscribed" is not a good enough reason.

If you were charged by mistake, contact hello@paymyteacher.com within 30 days and we will refund any part of the gift that has not yet been paid out to a teacher. Gifts already paid out are the teacher's; we cannot claw them back.

Card and bank details are entered on Stripe's secure pages and stored by Stripe, never by us. We keep only a reference to the payment method and the last four digits so you can recognise it on your dashboard.