Benevity Fees - Really more of an Accounting question

Annelise Holverstott

I've got a question specifically about how folks are dealing with Benevity and their fee reporting, which I find to be utter garbage. (If you can do subtraction, it provides almost zero new information). Actually, this is more of an accounting question than a Raiser's Edge question, but I know you are a smart group of people who deal with a lot of weird problems, so maybe you can help us out with this one.



For those of you who aren't familiar, a typical fee report from Benevity breaks out donations by "project" (ie, fund), but NOT by donor/donation. They do report the gross total designated by employees at a given company, but not the net donation amount from each company after fees are deducted. Moreover, any designated donations that don't have a project set up in the Benevity system (or any donations where the employee didn't select the project, even if it was set up) get lumped with General donations. 



Here's our quandary:

We have literally hundreds of designated funds for donors to choose from. I have no idea how much was deducted from each donation, so I have no idea how much to ask Accounting to apply to each fund. To make matters worse, we have a bike-riding event and a mountain climbing event where individual participants are doing their own grassroots fundraising on our behalf and need to reach certain fundraising minimums. I have no idea how much each of these participants actually netted. (Let's leave aside the tacky possibility of failing to give them full credit for the amount they solicited merely because their brother-in-law's employer is too cheap to pay its own matching gift fees). 



In short, where are you putting the fees from Benevity donations? 



Background on how our org enters workplace and 3rd party gifts - workplace gets HC and employee gets "other" gift type, all other 3rd parties get HC and donor gets SC. Pretty much exactly as Nicole described in this thread: 

https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/157/15263?post_id=48080#p48080



Thanks very much for your thoughts!

Marissa Flynn

We have a similar issue with Benevity: we get one lump gift and it is designated for 3 different funds. We processes them similarly as you described as well.



In order to distiguish the correct amounts, I created an Excel Template that does the calculations. I download each month's reports, and paste it into the Excel Template. It is a bit of manual work, however it calculates the correct amount that should be deposited into each fund -- both gross and net. Employees/Matching Gift Co get "Other" gifts for the full amount listed on the Benevity Report, and the Net Amount calculated by the Excel sheet is on Benevity's account split into each fund and post it there for Accounting to reconcile with. I have been doing it this way for about a year and it incredibly speeded up the process for entering these gifts, even though it still is a bit of a pain in the behind.



I have attached our Excel sheet to see if it could possibly help others. It is super simple, but has worked well for us.

Christine Cooke 2

I would suggest sending Benevity a complaint about their reporting also.  The more we all complain about their awful systems, the more pressure there is to fix it.  I find them very frustrating in that you can only contact them by email.  Every time I find a new frustration I send at least 3 emails about the same topic and then there begins to be movement.  Just sayin'

Susan Connors

I have filed so many complaints with Benevity over the last 2 years, and they do nothing but send snarky emails: "That's the way we do it here" kind of thing.  I even got an apology from their Exec after a particularly long email exchange about their misguided pratice of allowing Google employees to mark their MATCHING GIFT request as anonymous, so that you can't match the matching gift with the pledge.  Even though I explained that the original gift was NOT anonymous, so it made no sense to have the MG be anonymous, they insisted it was consistent with their take on 'best practices.'  Though, I have noticed that there are fewer in the anonymous pool in the last few months.  Every month, I have to take extra time to process funds from this horrible company.  Latest news, Microsoft has moved over to them now.  They must have fabulous sales people, so a lot of the big employers are moving over to them - there must be some tax break, outsourcing this work to Canada - but they ignore the non-profit's suggestions and complaints, we, who must struggle with their lame reporting.  We've nicknamed them 'Malevity' here and we groan aloud every time the email comes in about the direct deposit.  And if you don't do the direct deposit, the fees are outrageous if they have to send you a check.  They outsource that to yet another company who takes even more fees and don't attribute them - just a lump sum fee.  Fasten your seatbelts, as this company takes over more and more of this work.

Christine Cooke 2

Susan Connors:

I have filed so many complaints with Benevity over the last 2 years, and they do nothing but send snarky emails: "That's the way we do it here" kind of thing.  I even got an apology from their Exec after a particularly long email exchange about their misguided pratice of allowing Google employees to mark their MATCHING GIFT request as anonymous, so that you can't match the matching gift with the pledge.  Even though I explained that the original gift was NOT anonymous, so it made no sense to have the MG be anonymous, they insisted it was consistent with their take on 'best practices.'  Though, I have noticed that there are fewer in the anonymous pool in the last few months.  Every month, I have to take extra time to process funds from this horrible company.  Latest news, Microsoft has moved over to them now.  They must have fabulous sales people, so a lot of the big employers are moving over to them - there must be some tax break, outsourcing this work to Canada - but they ignore the non-profit's suggestions and complaints, we, who must struggle with their lame reporting.  We've nicknamed them 'Malevity' here and we groan aloud every time the email comes in about the direct deposit.  And if you don't do the direct deposit, the fees are outrageous if they have to send you a check.  They outsource that to yet another company who takes even more fees and don't attribute them - just a lump sum fee.  Fasten your seatbelts, as this company takes over more and more of this work.

Malevity -- fabulous.  They are on my list of taking over the world and taking all the fees and crappy reporting award just like United Way.



 

Annelise Holverstott

Ha, Malevity! 



To be honest, I can live with them taking fees, as tacky as it is--but I really hate that they won't disclose how much. At least United Way does that. And yes, their customer service is so horrible that I can't imagine any complaining on my part will really help. Though come to think of it, I am very good at complaining, so maybe it's worth another try.



Marissa, thanks for the template! Do you know if each company has the same fee rate? My reports usually contain donations from multiple companies who don't pay fees. When I've contacted Bene...er, Malevity before about it, they've indicated that they negotiate different rates for each company. But this might still help me nonetheless, so thank you.



We're in Seattle, so Microsoft is far and away our biggest single source of workplace and matching donations. I anticipate the switch to be particularly painful for us and other Washington-based orgs, but what can you do? Hope Microsoft elects to pay all the fees, I guess. Thanks all for your thoughts!

Marcia Cainion

How do you all record the fees that are taken out of the matching gift?  The donor completed the matching gift form through Coca-Cola, but Benevity sent the check to us minus their fee.  So, the actual matching gift pledge is $39 less than what was posted and the mg pledge is under Coca-Cola.  We thought about just writing off the $39, but wanted to check the forums to see how others handled it.   We have never received a matching gift with fees deducted before, so any help with this situation would be appreciated.  Right now, so we could enter the check, we booked the mg payment from Benevity against the Coca-Cola mg pledge and sc the donor.  Thanks for your help. 

Marissa Flynn

Annelise Holverstott:

Ha, Malevity! 



To be honest, I can live with them taking fees, as tacky as it is--but I really hate that they won't disclose how much. At least United Way does that. And yes, their customer service is so horrible that I can't imagine any complaining on my part will really help. Though come to think of it, I am very good at complaining, so maybe it's worth another try.



Marissa, thanks for the template! Do you know if each company has the same fee rate? My reports usually contain donations from multiple companies who don't pay fees. When I've contacted Bene...er, Malevity before about it, they've indicated that they negotiate different rates for each company. But this might still help me nonetheless, so thank you.



We're in Seattle, so Microsoft is far and away our biggest single source of workplace and matching donations. I anticipate the switch to be particularly painful for us and other Washington-based orgs, but what can you do? Hope Microsoft elects to pay all the fees, I guess. Thanks all for your thoughts!

Typically the fee we see is 5% but as you mentioned that is not always the case. Thankfully, most of our donations are about 5% so I can get this template to work. If you look at the formula I created in the gray box that caculates net, you will see it is near 5% but not exactly 5% (ie: 0.9571). For whatever reason, each month I have to tweak the formula but .001 to get the pennies to line up, but overall the Excel Template gives me a number that is very close and I feel I can logically back up. Since their reporting is so terrible, I had to accept that being off by a few cents (better than not knowning at all). 

Occationally our company contact (the company donating, not BenMalevity) can tell us what their contacted fee is, or if they chose to pay the fee for us. It isn't perfect, but it is my work around considering the situation. 

Patti Hommes, bCRE-PRO

So glad this was posted and with so much feedback. I hadn't had any experience with Benevity until my current position which isn't a year old yet. I started researching Benevity last week or the week before, and the next day there were posts on RE Community!  Thanks everyone!

John Heizer

Marcia Cainion:

How do you all record the fees that are taken out of the matching gift?  The donor completed the matching gift form through Coca-Cola, but Benevity sent the check to us minus their fee.  So, the actual matching gift pledge is $39 less than what was posted and the mg pledge is under Coca-Cola.  We thought about just writing off the $39, but wanted to check the forums to see how others handled it.   We have never received a matching gift with fees deducted before, so any help with this situation would be appreciated.  Right now, so we could enter the check, we booked the mg payment from Benevity against the Coca-Cola mg pledge and sc the donor.  Thanks for your help. 

We have a special constituent record set up for such fees.  We apply the $ received to the pledge which leaves a balance.  We then add a gift of Pay-Other on that special fees constituent that pays off the balance of the pledge.  We then book those fees as a "cost of doing business" just like credit card fees, etc.

Aldera Chisholm

We use "Benevity" as a swear word in my office. Their reporting is cumbersome, and their customer service useless. We do have two companies that give regularly through them, so we ended up doing a special pay-type for them where we enter the gift at the "full" amount, and finance adjusts on their end as a cost of doing business just as they do with credit card fees. Not a perfect system, but works for us. We were using soft credits for awhile, but they got too messy.

Aldera Chisholm

Aldera Chisholm:

We use "Benevity" as a swear word in my office. Their reporting is cumbersome, and their customer service useless. We do have two companies that give regularly through them, so we ended up doing a special pay-type for them where we enter the gift at the "full" amount, and finance adjusts on their end as a cost of doing business just as they do with credit card fees. Not a perfect system, but works for us. We were using soft credits for awhile, but they got too messy.

And the irony is that it's a company local to my town that started Benevity - I work a couple of blocks from their head office. If I can't get customer service, everyone else is doomed.

Christina Swiszcz

We received our first Benevity gift recently. And we were not signed up for direct deposit, so they sent a check less the associated fees ($21.50 for a $250 gift/$250 match). We recorded the actual gift as is, then added the $21.50 as gift type = Other so the donor would get full gift credit in the annual report, but the Other type wouldn't affect financial reporting. The Other type is also how we record United Way gifts (of which we have many). 

It was interesting and informative to read this thread and see how others feel about Bene...Malevity We will sign up for the direct deposit because this donor is planning to give again through this method, but I will be wary of this company after reading this. Thanks everyone for the info!

Aldera Chisholm

Fun update! (Insert sarcastic voice here.) Bevevity has changed their reporting to be even less friendly, which I didn't think was possible. I'm sending in a feedback email, I would encourage all of you to do the same. Unless of course, the new format works for you better than it does for me!

 

John Heizer

On a similar note (which is maybe different enough to warrant its own thread, but it would be more of a "rant" than a question), I've been struggling with a small, regional United Way.  For several years in a row we've had to write off part of almost every pledge from them.  It was totally baffling and made me seriously question their record keeping.  We recently got an answer about why this was happening.



When UW gets a payment from the participating company it is just a lump sum of all donations via payroll deduction with no detail about how much from which donors.  When UW reports on our designated funds they split that aggregate payment out per organization per donor based on percentages pledged per organization per donor.  If an employee has left and is no longer contributing those "missing funds" get spread proportionally across all orgs and donors pledges.



Consiter this scenario; John Doe and Jane Smith work for Megacorp.  John makes a $4,000 pledge to AnotherCharity, Jane makes a $1,000 pledge to OurCharity.  John leaves Megacorp before any funds are withheld and therefore will never pay anything on his $4,000 pledge.  Each quarter UW will receive $250 from Megacorp (the amount that has been withheld from Jane’s paycheck for 1/4th of the year).  UW takes that $250 and splits it proportionally between AnotherCharity and OurCharity based on the amounts of the original pledges (80% to 20%) which gives OurCharity $50 minus the fees.  AnotherCharity still gets their 80%; $200 (minus fees).  So even factoring in fees as a cost of doing business, Jane will be left with an $800 balance on her pledge after all payments have been received, despite having had a full $1,000 withdrawn from her paycheck and given to UW.



It's crazy.  We have no way of knowing how much from Megacorp has been pledged to other organizations which could dramatically affect our risk.  What is to keep someone like John Doe from making a large pledge they never intend to pay just to ensure that their favored organization gets to skim money intended for other groups??

Marissa Flynn

Just to keep us on our toes, it seems Benevity has changed their reporting AGAIN! Everything is combined into one report instead of two which is nice. However people give to various funds, so I still have to maniplute the data to breakdown the amount given to each fund AND it only give gross amounts, not net. So tiny improvement, but overall there are still major issues.