We have a small sustaining program set up by entering the gift as a pledge and using Pledge Billing overnight to charge the credit card. However, with the amount of declined authorizations, it is becoming difficult to manage and more concerning. We are wanting to refresh this program in ways to be more secure and less likely to have outstanding payments.
Currently, we only have a handful of patrons that are giving through direct deposit and we are starting to think this should be the standard. It is more secure, but we are then faced with entering every payment in Tessitura once the electronic fund transfer (EFT) is received. If we get more donors choosing the sustaining program with the direct deposit option, I can foresee it taking a large amount of time entering every payment. Does anyone with a sustaining program using direct deposit have a way to solve this issue? Is it possible payment can be applied simultaneously to all patrons with a billing type of direct deposit? If not, what do you use that you find helpful?
Angela Hermes-Howe
Development Data Coordinator
Guthrie Theater
Hi Angela,
We only accept CC/debit cards for our sustainer program, so I am curious to hear who's doing EFT and if it's worth adding.
Regarding declined CCs, this summer many major credit card companies moved to chip-embedded cards which resulted in new expiration dates and substantial increase in declines. The last 30-60 days have been much calmer than what we saw in the summer.
MeganSeattle Symphony
We do both credit card and EFT/direct withdrawal charges. I don't think there's a way to automatically bill or make pledge payments for EFT. We only bill monthly donors on the 15th and it takes me about 30 minutes to enter our 80ish EFT donors. We have cheat sheet of customer ids with name so you don't have to search for them each time.
We have also started sending letters when someone's card is going to expire next month and it's helped cut down on declined payments.
Ann
Did you ever get a response on this issue?
Laura Chaney
Director of Development
Believe Everything You Hear
Bay Chamber Concerts and Music School
From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Angela Hermes-Howe Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 7:20 PM To: Laura Chaney Subject: [Tessitura Development Forum] Sustaining pledges with direct deposit
This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!