Online Express Donation Amounts Round to Whole Number - Bad!!!!!!

Tony Gooch 2

When setting up a donation page, we tried to enter an amount and the OLX auto rounded to the nearest dollar. This is a huge issue for us and possibly other orgs. We need to be able to match our online page to our direct mail and we can't with OLX. In Spark we could do this. Not sure why a decision was made to only use whole dollars but it is the wrong decision. It would have been nice to have been told this before we switched.

Tony Gooch 2

Matt, we appreciate your response but if Spark can do it then why can't OLX? It would work in mobile and any other because I am putting in a fixed amount where you choose an option. You're not entering in an amount.



I find it hard that other providers, and other BB options, make this work but Blackbaud can't. Makes me wonder if I have the wrong product.

Ted Fines 2

Here is why the auto-rounding is a big problem for us:



Our annual membership is $75. We want to roll out recurring membership/gift plans like public radio, etc. does.



Guess what? $75/12 months = $6.25. But when we put $6.25 as an option, it displays $6. Here's the thing: We can still have it charge $6.25 by setting that as the minimum. So then we can add text to the form to the tune of, "we know it shows $6, but you'll really be charged $6.25."



So we can either change our annual membership fee to a multiple of 12 ($72 or $84) because of a software limitation (editorial: This is CRAZY), or we can put clunky and confusing text on the form. By the way, when you specify 'display text' for any amount, you pretty much have to put in 'display text' for all amounts, otherwise it looks really bad.



Blackbaud, I get what you said above, but the current setup really throws a wrench in the works for recurring gifts.

Matthew Garbarino

Ted Fines:
Here is why the auto-rounding is a big problem for us:



Our annual membership is $75. We want to roll out recurring membership/gift plans like public radio, etc. does.



Guess what? $75/12 months = $6.25. But when we put $6.25 as an option, it displays $6. Here's the thing: We can still have it charge $6.25 by setting that as the minimum. So then we can add text to the form to the tune of, "we know it shows $6, but you'll really be charged $6.25."



So we can either change our annual membership fee to a multiple of 12 ($72 or $84) because of a software limitation (editorial: This is CRAZY), or we can put clunky and confusing text on the form. By the way, when you specify 'display text' for any amount, you pretty much have to put in 'display text' for all amounts, otherwise it looks really bad.



Blackbaud, I get what you said above, but the current setup really throws a wrench in the works for recurring gifts.

Hi Ted. I'm assuming you are referring to the donation form, not the membership form. If so, have you looked at the pledge gift option? You could set up the pledge amount of $75 with the minimum payment of $6.25. Like this:







That said, currency handling (particularly international) is something we would like to improve in the future, so thanks for the feedback!

Ted Fines 2

Ted Fines:
Here is why the auto-rounding is a big problem for us:



Our annual membership is $75. We want to roll out recurring membership/gift plans like public radio, etc. does.



Guess what? $75/12 months = $6.25. But when we put $6.25 as an option, it displays $6. Here's the thing: We can still have it charge $6.25 by setting that as the minimum. So then we can add text to the form to the tune of, "we know it shows $6, but you'll really be charged $6.25."



So we can either change our annual membership fee to a multiple of 12 ($72 or $84) because of a software limitation (editorial: This is CRAZY), or we can put clunky and confusing text on the form. By the way, when you specify 'display text' for any amount, you pretty much have to put in 'display text' for all amounts, otherwise it looks really bad.



Blackbaud, I get what you said above, but the current setup really throws a wrench in the works for recurring gifts.

Thanks. Good to see it works for pledges. We do not have the membership module. The reason we would like to use recurring gifts is that they do not expire without intervention from the constituent. Supposing we did have the membership module and did create a pledge form as shown above, can the pledge duration be set to 'recurring'? Or does it always expire?

Matthew Garbarino

Ted Fines:
Here is why the auto-rounding is a big problem for us:



Our annual membership is $75. We want to roll out recurring membership/gift plans like public radio, etc. does.



Guess what? $75/12 months = $6.25. But when we put $6.25 as an option, it displays $6. Here's the thing: We can still have it charge $6.25 by setting that as the minimum. So then we can add text to the form to the tune of, "we know it shows $6, but you'll really be charged $6.25."



So we can either change our annual membership fee to a multiple of 12 ($72 or $84) because of a software limitation (editorial: This is CRAZY), or we can put clunky and confusing text on the form. By the way, when you specify 'display text' for any amount, you pretty much have to put in 'display text' for all amounts, otherwise it looks really bad.



Blackbaud, I get what you said above, but the current setup really throws a wrench in the works for recurring gifts.

Hey Ted. Pledges do have a fixed duration, however you could offer multiple year plans so a donor could sign up for maybe 5 years worth at $6.25 a year. You can try it out today with the donation form, the screenshot I shared above is from donations!



The membership form offers annual memberships today. Monthly membership payments are on our backlog, but are not yet supported.

Amy Mitchell 2

We're encountering the same problem. We have a Backpack program. Our donors can support the cost of one backpack at $6.75, but the display button rounds it up to 7. This is a real problem for us.

Ted Fines 2

Ted Fines:
Here is why the auto-rounding is a big problem for us:



Our annual membership is $75. We want to roll out recurring membership/gift plans like public radio, etc. does.



Guess what? $75/12 months = $6.25. But when we put $6.25 as an option, it displays $6. Here's the thing: We can still have it charge $6.25 by setting that as the minimum. So then we can add text to the form to the tune of, "we know it shows $6, but you'll really be charged $6.25."



So we can either change our annual membership fee to a multiple of 12 ($72 or $84) because of a software limitation (editorial: This is CRAZY), or we can put clunky and confusing text on the form. By the way, when you specify 'display text' for any amount, you pretty much have to put in 'display text' for all amounts, otherwise it looks really bad.



Blackbaud, I get what you said above, but the current setup really throws a wrench in the works for recurring gifts.

Thanks. I'm playing with the Pledges section of the form now. I see what you mean, this could work. However, I do not see where we could offer multiple-year plans. In the web form, the 'Pledge Duration' goes from 1-12 months. In the OX form builder, I do not see where to add other values.

Matthew Garbarino

Ted Fines:
Here is why the auto-rounding is a big problem for us:



Our annual membership is $75. We want to roll out recurring membership/gift plans like public radio, etc. does.



Guess what? $75/12 months = $6.25. But when we put $6.25 as an option, it displays $6. Here's the thing: We can still have it charge $6.25 by setting that as the minimum. So then we can add text to the form to the tune of, "we know it shows $6, but you'll really be charged $6.25."



So we can either change our annual membership fee to a multiple of 12 ($72 or $84) because of a software limitation (editorial: This is CRAZY), or we can put clunky and confusing text on the form. By the way, when you specify 'display text' for any amount, you pretty much have to put in 'display text' for all amounts, otherwise it looks really bad.



Blackbaud, I get what you said above, but the current setup really throws a wrench in the works for recurring gifts.

You could offer multiple years by offering the corresponding gift values. For example:

Matthew Garbarino

Amy Mitchell:
We're encountering the same problem. We have a Backpack program. Our donors can support the cost of one backpack at $6.75, but the display button rounds it up to 7. This is a real problem for us.

Hi Amy. Pledges work by offering the donor a total pledge amount, then splitting the payment up in smaller recurring payments. In the case above you could offer a year's worth of backpacks, for a total of $81, then users could choose to spread the payment info out over however many months they would like.

Amy Mitchell 2

Amy Mitchell:
We're encountering the same problem. We have a Backpack program. Our donors can support the cost of one backpack at $6.75, but the display button rounds it up to 7. This is a real problem for us.

It's the same if it's a one-time amount though. It still displays as $7.

Matthew Garbarino

Amy Mitchell:
We're encountering the same problem. We have a Backpack program. Our donors can support the cost of one backpack at $6.75, but the display button rounds it up to 7. This is a real problem for us.

Correct, a single gift (non pledge or recurring) will round to the nearest dollar on the gift amount buttons. Pledge payments however will calculate based on the user's choices, so in the case above of an $81 pledge spread over 12 payments will result in monthly gifts of $6.75 - very similar to the example I shared above with Ted.

Matthew Garbarino

Hi Tony. We made the decision to round to whole numbers for a few reasons. One was to better support international gifts where commas and decimals are sometimes switched. Another was to better support mobile donations, since many popular mobile keyboards don't include the decimal when in the number only view. Finally, we analyzed tens of thousands of gifts in the system and found that only the tiniest fraction of a percent of gifts included change.



I understand you are trying to match your snail-mail campaign, however the extra bulk and cumbersomeness to display the change on the web may very well cause more harm than good in terms of conversion rates. All of this isn't to say we couldn't reconsider a better way to handle fractional amounts and solve the issues I pointed out above, but for now I would recommend rounding to easy to consume numbers on the web, and keep the snail-mail campaign working how it works best.

Joanie Rogers

Matt Garbarino:

Hi Tony. We made the decision to round to whole numbers for a few reasons. One was to better support international gifts where commas and decimals are sometimes switched. Another was to better support mobile donations, since many popular mobile keyboards don't include the decimal when in the number only view. Finally, we analyzed tens of thousands of gifts in the system and found that only the tiniest fraction of a percent of gifts included change.



I understand you are trying to match your snail-mail campaign, however the extra bulk and cumbersomeness to display the change on the web may very well cause more harm than good in terms of conversion rates. All of this isn't to say we couldn't reconsider a better way to handle fractional amounts and solve the issues I pointed out above, but for now I would recommend rounding to easy to consume numbers on the web, and keep the snail-mail campaign working how it works best.

Hello......just encountered this problem for our year-end appeal.  Question.....did you think to consult with fundraiser's on this topic?  There has been a trend with community colleges to do campaigns based on a student's graduation year, or in our current case for our upcoming college anniversary in $20.17.



I would suggest that if you can't/won't allow the cents because of your reasons, then please design the display fields so we can tweak the message better.  It just looks clunky and unprofessional.

Geoff Whaley

Matt Garbarino:

Hi Tony. We made the decision to round to whole numbers for a few reasons. One was to better support international gifts where commas and decimals are sometimes switched. Another was to better support mobile donations, since many popular mobile keyboards don't include the decimal when in the number only view. Finally, we analyzed tens of thousands of gifts in the system and found that only the tiniest fraction of a percent of gifts included change.



I understand you are trying to match your snail-mail campaign, however the extra bulk and cumbersomeness to display the change on the web may very well cause more harm than good in terms of conversion rates. All of this isn't to say we couldn't reconsider a better way to handle fractional amounts and solve the issues I pointed out above, but for now I would recommend rounding to easy to consume numbers on the web, and keep the snail-mail campaign working how it works best.

I have this same issue and consider this a huge oversight on Blackbaud's "data". It shouldn't matter what your number say. It is common practice to encourage alumni to give at their "class year" designation ($19.95, $20.16, etc.) If we are unable to do customize this, it looses a lot of the appeal for our organization and any attempt to drive gifts online will be negligible as a result of this lack of customization.



I also think Blackbaud is ignoring the idea of multi-channel marketing which, again, is used by a large portion of the fundraising industry. Seems like more oversight at the convenience of the coders and Blackbaud. The entire point of multi channel marketing is to feed people to a similar if not identical looking/set up giving form, so they see the same thing over and over again. Instead of Blackbaud adapting to help fundraisers, they're forcing fundraisers to change industry standards and practices to fit within their narrow paramaters.



[Edit:] I want to add from a design perspective, I could understand this for the "buttons" but with the customizability of adding text to the buttons and the autosizing of the buttons it shouldn't be an issue.



I also fail to see why the non zeroed change amount wouldn't show up in the "text only" list option, it's a straight up pull from what you enter. You're either ignoring anything after a decimal or you've written more code to round up than it would take to just translate the dollar amount to the button or the list format.

Carrie Sauer

I work at a university and our Student Philanthropy Committee has developed a "Give $20.16 for 2016!" theme for this year's Senior Class Gift campaign. These will be one-time gifts, not pledges or recurring. From what I'm reading here, this is not going to be possible through Online Express, is that right? Considering how common this type of campaign theme is, I can't believe that the software won't allow us to suggest an amount with a decimal!

Beth Campbell 3

We are a high school with our Reunions fast approaching this spring.  We are encouraging all of our alumni to make the donation of their graduation year toward their class gift.  Is this at all in the works of being changed since we are about to send out our Invitations and class gift information and most of our alumni will register online.  If this is not an option maybe we should go back to NetCommunity since this platform was not written to round up.  I can't believe that more people have not had an isssue with this since this is how most high schools, colleges and universities are sending out their campaigns.  Please let us know if this will be addressed shortly?  Things like this make if very hard for us to justify spending so much on software and programs that cannot work in the way we need them too.


 

Chris Martin

It's actually possible to use fractional amounts for your suggested gift buttons in OLX. But it takes a tiny bit of CSS to make it work (see below). As part of the work we're doing for OLX in RE NXT late this year, we'll be revisiting this. But until then, this should work well:


1. On Step 2 of the OLX donation form editor, add suggested gift amounts to your form in any fractional amount you like....something like $25.16.


2. In the Display Name field, enter the amount you chose for the button (make sure to include the currency symbol):




When you save your form, this will produce buttons that look like this (as noted by others, OLX truncates the fractional amount that's displayed as the button label). Top row is your Display name and the bottom row is the OLX auto-inserted amount label.




3. Now all we need to do is just hide the OLX auto-inserted amount label. To do that, just paste this small bit of CSS either directly above or below your OLX donation form embed code, directly on your page:

<style>
.BBFormRadioAmount {display: none;}
</style>


All it does is hides the amount label that OLX insert onto the button. It will leave the "description" that you typed (which is also the amount, but with the fractional amount included). Your buttons will then look like this:




and when donors click this button and make a gift, OLX will indeed process the fractional amount:




Feel free to post any questions you have here. Thanks!

Joanie Rogers

Thanks Chris! It's nice to receive an actual solution to the problem rather than the 3/3/15 response of "it can't be done".

Chris Martin:

It's actually possible to use fractional amounts for your suggested gift buttons in OLX. But it takes a tiny bit of CSS to make it work (see below). As part of the work we're doing for OLX in RE NXT late this year, we'll be revisiting this. But until then, this should work well:


1. On Step 2 of the OLX donation form editor, add suggested gift amounts to your form in any fractional amount you like....something like $25.16.


2. In the Display Name field, enter the amount you chose for the button (make sure to include the currency symbol):




When you save your form, this will produce buttons that look like this (as noted by others, OLX truncates the fractional amount that's displayed as the button label). Top row is your Display name and the bottom row is the OLX auto-inserted amount label.




3. Now all we need to do is just hide the OLX auto-inserted amount label. To do that, just paste this small bit of CSS either directly above or below your OLX donation form embed code, directly on your page:

<style>
.BBFormRadioAmount {display: none;}
</style>


All it does is hides the amount label that OLX insert onto the button. It will leave the "description" that you typed (which is also the amount, but with the fractional amount included). Your buttons will then look like this:




and when donors click this button and make a gift, OLX will indeed process the fractional amount:




Feel free to post any questions you have here. Thanks!

 

Tony Gooch

Seems like A checkbox that would allow the option of pennies to be used or not would work for those who need it and those who don't.

Chris Martin

Hey Tony...Matt gave a little detail earlier in this thread. Fractional giving amounts aren't quite as easy as just giving everyone a checkbox to turn it on or off. Internationally, there isn't global consistency around what to use/show as the separator between whole dollars/pounds/euro/etc and their fractional amounts. Much of the world uses a "period", but many cultures use commas as well. And it's unfortunately even within a given currency like Euro, different countries handle this differently.


The last thing we want is ambiguity of the amount a donor is about to be charged. We don't want donors who would normally write a €100 gift as €100,00 to be confused about how much their card will be charged if we show them €100.00.


We're going to be working on a more sophisticated, global solution later in the year. For now though, hopefully the very small CSS snippet works well enough in the interim.


Thanks!


 

Geoff Whaley

I agree with what Joanie said, even if it's a poor substitute and oversite on RE from a design and fundraising perspective.


The problem I am now having is that the "Other" option creates a button that is no longer aesthetically compatible with the listed donation amounts (viewable here). This is true on Windows and iOS in multiple browsers. Is there something that has changed or is this just what we're stuck with? On all of our other forms (like this one) it lines up perfectly fine.


[Edited for spelling]

Chris Martin

Hi Geoff. Can you try adding just a few more lines of CSS to handle the Other button height discrepancy? So here would be the full <style> section that you'd paste (replacing what was posted earlier in this thread):

<style>
.BBFormRadioAmount {display: none;}

#bbox-root .BBFormRadioDescriptionOtherSubtitle { height: 0; padding: 0; }

.BBFormRadioDescriptionOther { font-size: 0.7em; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-top: 2px; }

#bbox-root .BBFormRadioLabelGivingLevelOther span { top: 0; }
</style>


That should get you awfully close to matching buttons.

Geoff Whaley

That's gotten it very close. Thanks for the quick response!

Joe Patke

Carrie Sauer:

I work at a university and our Student Philanthropy Committee has developed a "Give $20.16 for 2016!" theme for this year's Senior Class Gift campaign. These will be one-time gifts, not pledges or recurring. From what I'm reading here, this is not going to be possible through Online Express, is that right? Considering how common this type of campaign theme is, I can't believe that the software won't allow us to suggest an amount with a decimal!

A hot topic at a lot of educational fund raising conferences is the issue with young alumnni (alums in their 20s and 30s).  They are not giving.  Participation rates are way down compared to prior generations.  As a result, we are trying lots of different approaches to address this.  One that we're trying is is to ask these guys to "give their class year" as their first gift.  For example we ask the guys (we are an all-boys school) from the class of 1998 to give $19.98.  But we cannot support this with OLX.  Frustrating.

Jeanne Welsh

I have tried using this code 1000 times now and it never works for me. We NEED to be able to give specific dollar amounts, and this is a big hurdle for us. Poor planning on BB's part.

Chris Martin

Jeanne, would you mind posting a link to your page where you've added this CSS? I'm confident there is a simple explanation (and fix) for whatever you're running into.

Jeanne Welsh

It's restrictive of what donation button you use. Meaning, I cant choose the button that allows me to say $11.29 - feed one family. I can only have it say $11.29, which tells our donors nothing.

Chris Martin

Sorry Jeanne...I'm not quite following where things are breaking down. If I enter the description as shown below:





then with the CSS I shared, the buttons on my site looks like this:




You can view my live demo site with this currently in-place (as of 2016-03-17) here.

 

Elise Amacker

Chris Martin:

It's actually possible to use fractional amounts for your suggested gift buttons in OLX. But it takes a tiny bit of CSS to make it work (see below). As part of the work we're doing for OLX in RE NXT late this year, we'll be revisiting this. But until then, this should work well:


1. On Step 2 of the OLX donation form editor, add suggested gift amounts to your form in any fractional amount you like....something like $25.16.


2. In the Display Name field, enter the amount you chose for the button (make sure to include the currency symbol):




When you save your form, this will produce buttons that look like this (as noted by others, OLX truncates the fractional amount that's displayed as the button label). Top row is your Display name and the bottom row is the OLX auto-inserted amount label.




3. Now all we need to do is just hide the OLX auto-inserted amount label. To do that, just paste this small bit of CSS either directly above or below your OLX donation form embed code, directly on your page:

<style>
.BBFormRadioAmount {display: none;}
</style>


All it does is hides the amount label that OLX insert onto the button. It will leave the "description" that you typed (which is also the amount, but with the fractional amount included). Your buttons will then look like this:




and when donors click this button and make a gift, OLX will indeed process the fractional amount:




Feel free to post any questions you have here. Thanks!

Hi, 


We're trying to use this work-around and have tried pasting the code above and below the form embed code, and neither is having any effect removing the amount label. Is there some other trick to it?


Thanks.

Carrie Sauer

From today's email update. Thanks, Blackbaud!

What’s New in this release?

 
Display fractional amounts for suggested gifts

 
When you enter fractional amounts for suggested gifts on donation forms, such as $25.50, the amount buttons on the donation form now display the fractional amounts. Previously, fractional amounts were rounded to the nearest whole number when they were displayed.