Transitioning a monthly donor program

Sara Robich 2

We've had an established monthly donor program for several years, and it's now grown to the point where we need to look into transitioning it to a more external and streamlined process. I know that some credit card processors have an extra feature that you can purchase that will allow for updates to credit cards to be integrated into the information, without having to bother our monthly donors or run the risk of missing payments due to delays in getting that information, which is also something we'd like to incorporate.

Currently, we have three streams of Sustainer gifts: in-house credit cards (processed as recurring gifts through RE (using RE's EFT feature)), online credit cards (recurring gifts set up and processed through an online form and then the monthly transaction activity is imported into RE), and ACH payments (managed and processed monthly by staff through the backend of SunTrust, with the transaction activity applied to RE records by using recurring gift batches that are updated to reflect any changes made to the ACH group each month). Managing this program takes up a good chunk of staff time each month.

We're looking to make our monthly donor program more efficient and free up more staff time, but aren't sure where to start looking. What are others doing for processing their monthly donor program? What are the pros and cons of the process you're using?

Rob Crenshaw

Hi, Sara. My org has a pretty robust monthly sustainer program as well (around 2,500 active donors), and we are currently doing what it sounds like you are: charging credit cards via EFT in RE gift batch and sending ACH transmission files to our bank through a dedicated portal website. This has worked pretty well for us, but is defintiely time-consuming when it comes to maintaining the recurring gift records. One of the ways we try to make it more efficient is that we have one designated staff person (me!) who has the primary responsibility for maintaining recurring gifts and processing them every month - this has cut down on the number of potential errors and mischarges due to "too many cooks in the kitchen." We also have a donor relations coordinator who is the one that makes any outreach calls or emails to monthly donors when their payments are rejected, etc. We've also had a lower rate of credit card rejections since using Blackbaud's new credit card updater service (under Data Health Center). 



If you are thinking about using a third party to maintain and charge monthly donations, I'd recommend looking into the cost-benefit of doing so. We have a few donors who still donate monthly via third party processors such as America's Charities and PayPal Giving Fund, but the reports we receive from those companies makes it challenging to get accurate and timely donor info. They also usually charge pretty steep transaction and processing fees. Overall, my impression of third party donation processors is pretty dim - like I said, their data is usually not the best and importing donor data can be pretty time-consuming as well. It probably depends largely on your organization's staffing preferences and whether you want to make maintaining monthly donors an in-house priority or not. I've found that the benefits of doing it in-house (accuracy, timeliness, control) outweigh the costs in staff time and processing fees.

Sara Robich 2

Rob Crenshaw:

Hi, Sara. My org has a pretty robust monthly sustainer program as well (around 2,500 active donors), and we are currently doing what it sounds like you are: charging credit cards via EFT in RE gift batch and sending ACH transmission files to our bank through a dedicated portal website. This has worked pretty well for us, but is defintiely time-consuming when it comes to maintaining the recurring gift records. One of the ways we try to make it more efficient is that we have one designated staff person (me!) who has the primary responsibility for maintaining recurring gifts and processing them every month - this has cut down on the number of potential errors and mischarges due to "too many cooks in the kitchen." We also have a donor relations coordinator who is the one that makes any outreach calls or emails to monthly donors when their payments are rejected, etc. We've also had a lower rate of credit card rejections since using Blackbaud's new credit card updater service (under Data Health Center). 



If you are thinking about using a third party to maintain and charge monthly donations, I'd recommend looking into the cost-benefit of doing so. We have a few donors who still donate monthly via third party processors such as America's Charities and PayPal Giving Fund, but the reports we receive from those companies makes it challenging to get accurate and timely donor info. They also usually charge pretty steep transaction and processing fees. Overall, my impression of third party donation processors is pretty dim - like I said, their data is usually not the best and importing donor data can be pretty time-consuming as well. It probably depends largely on your organization's staffing preferences and whether you want to make maintaining monthly donors an in-house priority or not. I've found that the benefits of doing it in-house (accuracy, timeliness, control) outweigh the costs in staff time and processing fees.

Hi Rob - thanks for the reply on this subject. Could you clarify what Blackbaud credit card feature you use to cut down credit card rejections? I'm not seeing anything like that in our the Data Health Center options.



A little bit more about our program:  It consists of approximately 1,200 active monthly donors, and has been growing by about 100 donors each year for the past couple of years. We have one person who is managing our Sustainer program, which as you say, helps cut down on potential errors, but it is one of several other competing duties they have. And I agree with you about companies like America's Charities and NetworkForGood - I have a dim opinion of them as well.



This topic of trying to find a better, more efficient way to steward and process our monthly donor program is still pending for us (staff changes and other projects being pushed to the front of the line affecting us over the past several months). 

Cathie Pelchat

Rob Crenshaw:

Hi, Sara. My org has a pretty robust monthly sustainer program as well (around 2,500 active donors), and we are currently doing what it sounds like you are: charging credit cards via EFT in RE gift batch and sending ACH transmission files to our bank through a dedicated portal website. This has worked pretty well for us, but is defintiely time-consuming when it comes to maintaining the recurring gift records. One of the ways we try to make it more efficient is that we have one designated staff person (me!) who has the primary responsibility for maintaining recurring gifts and processing them every month - this has cut down on the number of potential errors and mischarges due to "too many cooks in the kitchen." We also have a donor relations coordinator who is the one that makes any outreach calls or emails to monthly donors when their payments are rejected, etc. We've also had a lower rate of credit card rejections since using Blackbaud's new credit card updater service (under Data Health Center). 


If you are thinking about using a third party to maintain and charge monthly donations, I'd recommend looking into the cost-benefit of doing so. We have a few donors who still donate monthly via third party processors such as America's Charities and PayPal Giving Fund, but the reports we receive from those companies makes it challenging to get accurate and timely donor info. They also usually charge pretty steep transaction and processing fees. Overall, my impression of third party donation processors is pretty dim - like I said, their data is usually not the best and importing donor data can be pretty time-consuming as well. It probably depends largely on your organization's staffing preferences and whether you want to make maintaining monthly donors an in-house priority or not. I've found that the benefits of doing it in-house (accuracy, timeliness, control) outweigh the costs in staff time and processing fees.

Hi Rob - We have a growing sustaining monthly donor program (about 1000 donors per month right now), and declined/outdated credit card info is becoming a concern. Might you expand on your experience with the Credit Card Updater? Does it work well? Are there any major downfalls? Do donors ever call to complain that they've continued being charged despite expiration dates or new card info? 


 

Faith Murray

We have not yet used BlackBaud's Updater service, but it looks like a wise choice to me, something we may implement in the future. You must use BBMS (BlackBaud Merchant Services) to process your credit card transactions in order for this to work for you. We use BBMS because we use Online Express, but I think you can use BBMS even independently of OE - you just have to log into a separate website portal. It may not be showing up for you under Data Health Center if you do not use OE, though that is just a guess.


When I inquired, BB told me the price for their credit card Updater service was "$0.30 per update, or $30 monthly minimum, whichever is greater." In essence, if your org has even one monthly donor at $30 that it loses because of outdated credit card data, the service would have already paid for itself. I've attached the fle they sent me, which tells all about it.


With BBMS, the process for handling recurring credit cards is almost identical to processing EFTs, and in fact implements the same EFT module. Only, it's faster because you don't have to then export and upload the file onto a separate banking website. You just click a button and RE processes the batch automatically.