Hi Everyone-
Are there Development departments out there that are offering online donors the option of covering credit card fees themselves, and if so, how does it work? Our ED is interested in exploring this, so I am doing research on how it might work in Tessitura. My initial concern is that it would be difficult to separate the covered free from the donation itself, and make reporting a bit of a nightmare. Our org uses Vantiv as credit card processor, we are on TNEW 7, and Tess 14.1 (upgrading to v 15 this summer).
Thanks in advance!
Lindsay Chard
Lindsay Chard Did you ever come up with a plan for this? I'm currently in the same situation you were in over a year ago, with my Devel Dir asking if we can do this. Thanks!
Keri L. Noerrlinger (Past Member) and Lindsay Chard
Our development department is looking for a solution to cover cc fees on donations. Any hints are appreciated.
Thanks,
Sabina
Sabina Spilkin We started using the Donate2 integration this year (mostly for the qr code option) but it has an option for the donor to "cover costs" of their credit card transaction. When they opt in to do so, their $5 donation ends up being a $5.47 donation (just an example). We record the entire amount of $5.47 as the donation, figuring the extra income helps offset the general operations cost of the credit card fees, rather than actually recording a donation of $5 and then recording .47 as something somewhere else. That way the donor gets to account for the full $5.47 as a charitable contribution. Not sure if there's a better way to do this, but it's been working for us. Notably, I'd say almost 50% of donors have opted to help cover the credit card costs!
I'm just noticing these replies now! We have not added an option for customers to cover fees at this point, but I am glad to hear you came up with a solution that works for your organization, and thank you for sharing it! Makes total sense to me.
Keri L. Noerrlinger (Past Member) Thank you so much for a prompt reply. 50% is a very impressive number. Are you using mail2? We do not - can we implement Donate2 if we are not on Mail2?
We use Wordfly for our email service. The cool thing with Donate2 is I can just include their specific donation link in any email (just from my outlook acct) and direct people to that specific form for donations. Also, the QR code can link to the same form again, so we printed it on flyers at an outdoor event last Fall for folks to scan and give. The bonus is that those gifts get automatically recorded in Tess and the Ack Letters sent out via email, so it takes a good amount of gift entry off my plate. Which is great since we had to downsize our team due to the pandemic :(.
Erica Leung Lawless great! Thank you! We use Wordfly as well. What is the cost involved with this implementation? Can I do it myself or should I contact Tessitura Support?
THANK YOU!