Online donation form with Raiser's Edge

Melody Penner 2

Hello All,

Raiser's Edge folks, Can you tell me what you are using for an online donation form and what your experience has been with it?

thanks,

Melody

Robert McConnaughey

Melody,


Good Morning, we have been using Online Express (OLX) through RE for accepting online donation for about three years now. We had looked at others means for accepting online donations and for our needs as an organization Online Express was a great fit.  It is an easy application to design you can have multiple donation forms (we have two) and it deploys quickly.  Another great benefit of OLX is the integration into RE as you are able to download a batch of gifts from OLX into RE which is a huge time saver for our gift procesing staff.   As Finance Director, the only issue I have is with BBMS (Blackbaud Merchant Services) and their disbursement cycle. Donations are batched in a 7 day cycle and deposited to our account 7 days after the cylce ends.  So an exmaple an online donation receicved on 05/08/18 I will not see the funds hit our bank account until 05/22/18. 


Robert

 

 

Megan Couturier

We recently made the switch from Greater Giving to OLX. I am pretty much the only person entering any gifts, so I needed the time saver. Also, we are selling event tickets using OLX for our smaller events, and we'll use Maestro for our large annual auction.


We had been using GG for 2 years, and I find OLX MUCH easier to set up and reconcile.

Heather MacKenzie

Melody Penner:

Hello All,

Raiser's Edge folks, Can you tell me what you are using for an online donation form and what your experience has been with it?

thanks,

Melody

NetCommunity donation forms for the last 3 years, but just about to switch to Online Express as part of a greater group of changes to our online presence.  I like that the online donations integrate directly with RE, but agree about the disbursement schedule.  However, I've heard that there are plans to make the money transfer to us happen more often fairly soon.  Both NetCommunity forms and Online Express forms, once you get the hang of them and know where all the stuff you have to check on or click is, I find them fairly easy to navigate and set up.

Sarah Bodem

Megan Couturier:

We recently made the switch from Greater Giving to OLX. I am pretty much the only person entering any gifts, so I needed the time saver. Also, we are selling event tickets using OLX for our smaller events, and we'll use Maestro for our large annual auction.


We had been using GG for 2 years, and I find OLX MUCH easier to set up and reconcile.

Hi Megan,


Our org is looking into moving from Greater Giving to Online Express as well.  Did you find the transition fairly smooth? How long was the process of moving from one to another? Any info you have to share would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

Claudia Sauers

We are using online express for our donation forms and for tracking purposes it's been great. 

Tom Klimchak

We're using TouchNet and mostly create our giving forms in house at the moment.  It's an entirely manual process to record the gifts in Raiser's Edge.


We've looked at switching to Blackbaud Merchant Services to give us more options, but that seven day disbursement cycle is unacceptable to us.  I believe they're looking into shortening that to daily... but it's still a little while away.

Catherine Hegarty

Claudia Sauers:

We are using online express for our donation forms and for tracking purposes it's been great. 

To use Online express do you also need to have BBMS and the events module? 

Sarah Bodem

Catherine Hegarty:

Claudia Sauers:

We are using online express for our donation forms and for tracking purposes it's been great. 

To use Online express do you also need to have BBMS and the events module? 

 

I believe you have to have BBMS, but the Events module is optional

Megan Couturier

Yes, you will need BBMS, but you only need the events module to sell tickets to events online, I believe.

Megan Couturier

Sarah Bodem:

Megan Couturier:

We recently made the switch from Greater Giving to OLX. I am pretty much the only person entering any gifts, so I needed the time saver. Also, we are selling event tickets using OLX for our smaller events, and we'll use Maestro for our large annual auction.


We had been using GG for 2 years, and I find OLX MUCH easier to set up and reconcile.

Hi Megan,


Our org is looking into moving from Greater Giving to Online Express as well.  Did you find the transition fairly smooth? How long was the process of moving from one to another? Any info you have to share would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

 

The transition was easy enough. Just be warned that taking memorial donations is different, and it feels a lot different when dealing with the transactions. If we hadn't been switching back to Maestro for the auction portion, I probably would have kept GG and just dealt with the double entry.

Donna Mainord

Melody Penner:

Hello All,

Raiser's Edge folks, Can you tell me what you are using for an online donation form and what your experience has been with it?

thanks,

Melody

We are using Laserfiche forms for donations that are linked to Authorize.net.  Neither integrate with RE so it does mean manual gift entry and the extra step of letting our Business Office know what fund the donor wants their gift to go to.  


Does it always work well together ..... short answer .... no. 


We have had troubles here and there with Laserfiche.  Once in awhile I don't get notification of a donation.  It is a work in progress.  On the other hand, we like Authorize.net.  It integrate smoothly with our Business Office.  

Tracey Sirles

Melody Penner:

Hello All,

Raiser's Edge folks, Can you tell me what you are using for an online donation form and what your experience has been with it?

thanks,

Melody

Like many others that have responded, we have switched to OLX in the last year. As far as OLX is concerned, the giving forms are the best feature of the service. It was much cleaner than our prior giving form which was setup as a form through Whipple Hill (prior to its acquistion by BlackBaud). Connectivity to the database has been really helpful for our gift processing purposes.

Kathleen Eastman

Sarah Bodem:

Catherine Hegarty:

Claudia Sauers:

We are using online express for our donation forms and for tracking purposes it's been great. 

To use Online express do you also need to have BBMS and the events module? 

 

I believe you have to have BBMS, but the Events module is optional

 

Just an fyi, something I just found out last week, if you currently use Grouped Events, OLX does not have the functionality for event form sign ups for grouped events. I don't know when or if that functionality will be made available. I had it when I used NetCommunity at my last position. Was sorry to see it isn't in OLX.

Dariel Dixon 2

Melody Penner:

Hello All,

Raiser's Edge folks, Can you tell me what you are using for an online donation form and what your experience has been with it?

thanks,

Melody

We use a built in form with Authorize.net as a payment processor, so we have manual data entry of all credit cards.  We considered Online Express, but we don't want to be tied into BBMS.  The 7 day disbursement window isn't even the big issue, as much as the percentage based processing fees.  With Authorize.net, we have a flat fee with a small fee per charge.  Our finance department likes that, because it is very easy to see what we are paying for.  In addition, the fees on large donations can really decrease the amount of the gift.  It is difficult to determine how much you have spent/paid BBMS as opposed to paying a flat fee.


I believe some processors calculate and provide the possibility to cover the processing fees, but I'm not sure if that works for Online Express.  

David Ritchie

Hi Melody,

We have been using iDonate for a few years now, and we have been incredibly happy with it. It embeds right into your pages, so it feels as if it is a part of your site, with your URL. With the plug in, gifts pull right into Batch. You can use UTM codes as part of the URL string for tracking appeals, etc. 


We use it for Online Giving, Text to Give and Peer to Peer.


Cheers,

David

Amy Mitchell

Megan Couturier:

Yes, you will need BBMS, but you only need the events module to sell tickets to events online, I believe.

We have sold tickets using Online Express without the events module. We created a dedicated donation form and linked it to the associated Appeal ID. When it came over in batch, we added a Package ID for tickets and updated the gift benefits. 

Brittany Ivey

Like many others that have responded, we have switched to OLX in the last year. As far as OLX is concerned, the giving forms are the best feature of the service. It was much cleaner than our prior giving form which was setup as a form through Whipple Hill (prior to its acquistion by BlackBaud). Connectivity to the database has been really helpful for our gift processing purposes.

 

Hi Tracey! We are in a similar situation, and I have been trying to research this. May I send you a direct message, so we can maybe connect offline? 

Tracey Sirles

Yes, of course, feel free to message me! Sorry for the delay, end of year craziness! 

Matt Payne

Dariel Dixon:

Melody Penner:

Hello All,

Raiser's Edge folks, Can you tell me what you are using for an online donation form and what your experience has been with it?

thanks,

Melody

We use a built in form with Authorize.net as a payment processor, so we have manual data entry of all credit cards.  We considered Online Express, but we don't want to be tied into BBMS.  The 7 day disbursement window isn't even the big issue, as much as the percentage based processing fees.  With Authorize.net, we have a flat fee with a small fee per charge.  Our finance department likes that, because it is very easy to see what we are paying for.  In addition, the fees on large donations can really decrease the amount of the gift.  It is difficult to determine how much you have spent/paid BBMS as opposed to paying a flat fee.


I believe some processors calculate and provide the possibility to cover the processing fees, but I'm not sure if that works for Online Express.  

 

Dariel - BBMS has a flat fee structure. There are no monthly Gateway fees either. In my experience it was cheaper from a % and per transaction charge! BBMS is 2.598% + $0.26 per transaction. This is for all 4 major CC: Amex,Visa, Mastercard and Discover. Hope this helps! 

Dariel Dixon 2

Matt Payne:

Dariel Dixon:

Melody Penner:

Hello All,

Raiser's Edge folks, Can you tell me what you are using for an online donation form and what your experience has been with it?

thanks,

Melody

We use a built in form with Authorize.net as a payment processor, so we have manual data entry of all credit cards.  We considered Online Express, but we don't want to be tied into BBMS.  The 7 day disbursement window isn't even the big issue, as much as the percentage based processing fees.  With Authorize.net, we have a flat fee with a small fee per charge.  Our finance department likes that, because it is very easy to see what we are paying for.  In addition, the fees on large donations can really decrease the amount of the gift.  It is difficult to determine how much you have spent/paid BBMS as opposed to paying a flat fee.


I believe some processors calculate and provide the possibility to cover the processing fees, but I'm not sure if that works for Online Express.  

 

Dariel - BBMS has a flat fee structure. There are no monthly Gateway fees either. In my experience it was cheaper from a % and per transaction charge! BBMS is 2.598% + $0.26 per transaction. This is for all 4 major CC: Amex,Visa, Mastercard and Discover. Hope this helps! 

 

It all comes down to your online gifts.  Because we are currently not charged a percentage of the donation, just a monthly gateway charge and a small per transaction fee, it actually comes out much better for our organization.  We generally see a few very large gifts online, that after the percentage, more than covers what we pay in fees currently.