My organization tickets hosts a number of rental events. Often rental clients ask if we can remove the donation prompt from our TNEW payment page. Looking through TNEW (v7) documentation, it appears that the donation prompt can not be turned off for individual events. On the one hand, I understand why a rental client who pays to use our facilities and ticketing system would not want a donation prompt on their checkout page. On the other hand, it seems unreasonable to turn off this prompt for all events. Has anyone had experience with tailoring your TNEW site for rental events? What did you try? What has been most successful?
Joanna,
The short answer to your questions is "no experience", and "we have tried nothing".
But, we are a consortium environment with six resident companies that also has a fair number of rentals every season, and tickets to all rental and resident companies go through our one TNEW site. As such, this question has definitely come up multiple times in the past and likely will continue to do so in the future for us. In a pre-TNEW version of our website, this process was SOOOO confusing (far more confusing than this path in TNEW) that what used to happen is that when donations were made in conjunction with an order to one of our resident company events, we would contact the resident company and work on moving that money to them whether internally or through refund/recharging, as the assumption was made that the money was intended for that organization.
When we were moving to TNEW + a custom Marketing site, we decided we did NOT want to do that. We chatted internally and with our resident companies to discuss possible solutions to the issue in general. What we decided upon was a few things. Firstly, we would make sure to be VERY clear that the donation ask in the checkout area was for the Center for the Performing Arts (we went so far as to update that header that says "Add a Donation" to "Add a Donation to the Center for the Performing Arts"). AKA the "if you did not read this, this one is on YOU" approach to messaging, even though some still do not read it.
Secondly, we made sure that our marketing site, which has the direct path to the donation form (for those who just want to make a donation on their own but not necessarily a ticket purchase) included information about how to get to our resident company sites in case they really wanted to donate to one of them instead. Basically, we wanted to make it clear that "This website donates to us; want to donate somewhere else? Go there instead.". And, since we have done all that work, we basically then have assumed that "any donation that comes in is meant for us" unless the customer reaches back out to us saying "oops, my bad" in which case, we will of course accommodate.
Regarding responding to rental events, we basically give them the following. We naturally provide them with ticket buyer, attendee, etc... lists and contact information as part of their contract with us so that they can market to and/or solicit for donations these organizations on their own. We are happy to include specific dynamic messaging in e-mail confirmations if needed/desired for links to their own websites, donor forms, etc... So, if they ask about the donation ask during the ticket purchase path, well, they ARE using our ticket purchase path AND our facilities, and all donations help to further our mission which includes being a rental space that they are utilizing, and the messaging on the page is quite clear about where the donation is going.
Again, this does not any of the questions you asked, so sorry about that. But I thought I would provide at least another context of how to approach something like this where you cannot or want to not change something for the effect it might have on your own organization. Hope this helps in some fashion.
John A. Moskal II
Hi John, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. "No experience and we have tried nothing" made me laugh. Your response is very helpful. It's always good to hear perspectives on best practices for rental clients. We host a lot of rental events, and we certainly want to keep our clients happy! At the same time, we have to balance that with our primary function; being a contemporary arts center with it's own rich programming.
We are currently considering removing the prompt altogether, or making adjustments to the language on the prompt so it is even more clear which organization the money goes to. I like the idea of adding dynamic messaging to the confirmation email with a path to donate to the rental client.
I wonder if V16 has a setting that would remove the donation prompt from the cart if a ticket for a specific event is added. I'm looking forward to checking out what V16 has to offer.