Hello

It is technically a foundation, a nonprofit organization website, which will allow people to make donations for the cause. Is purchasing an SSL certificate for this site a good idea?

If i have to purchase then which one is better for such a site?

I would recommend having a SSL certificate for such a site to encrypt the traffic between the user's browser and the web server (IIS or Apache). Don't forget about the rest of the pathway from the web server to the database server.

Steven

You may alternately want to consider using PayPal for payments, as that would save you the cost and hassle of setting up a merchant account, payment gateway, SSL certificate, etc.

Their fees are a little higher than going the merchant account/gateway route, and their UI will look different than your site, but they are a generally trusted service at this point and commonly used for smaller implementations.

- John