FEEDBACK! Blackbaud Complete Cover

Chris Ager

Hi everyone!

Blackbaud is introducing Complete Cover and I wanted to enlist your feedback from a receipting point of view. Complete Cover means that Blackbaud will pay all payment processing fees for one-time payments on that form.

To help offset that cost, Blackbaud requests that donors make an additional payment to support the free processing feature during the payment checkout for the form. It's completely optional, and Blackbaud will pay the processing fees regardless of whether an additional payment is made with the gift.

Since the optional, additional amount is made to Blackbaud, Raiser's Edge NXT will not include this element. Hence, any receipt generated by your organisations would exclude this as well.

I will be speaking to the CRA also but wanted to also hear from the group. Please reply to this message or email me with your thoughts.

Angela McCall

Hi Chris, we currently use Smart Donor Cover for OLX, the donor has the option to cover the fees and then this is included in the donation total. The tax receipt is then issued for the full amount because those fees come back to us at The Food Bank. If I understand your post correctly, with this program the donor would cover the fee and the fee goes to Blackbaud directly without it being included in their donation total; therefore, they do not get a tax receipt for the full amount including the fee………

Chris Ager

Hi Angela,

This is similar to Smart Donor Cover but also slightly different. In OLX, you should have fees applied to all transactions and the Smart Donor Cover is an uplift to the donation to help cover those costs so that you (as a charity) receive the intended amount overall. You are correct in Complete Cover that the donor would not get a tax receipt inclusive of the uplift, only the donation amount which is what will be available to RENXT.

From your perspective, these transactions are fee-free. So a $100 donation, regardless of whether the donor contributes to costs, would mean you receive $100 (no fee deductions). Blackbaud makes a loss if the donor choses not to contribute as we still pay the fees to card companies.

I spoke with CRA yesterday and they confirmed that the charitable receipt should not include the uplift in this case as it made to Blackbaud and the receipt from the charity should only be for the charitable amount paid by the donor. In the above example, that would be $100.

I really like the Complete Cover model - it has worked really well for JustGiving where we have been live with it for over a year now in the UK. I am keen to hear if anyone has other thoughts?

Ana Popescu

Chris Ager:

Hi everyone!

Blackbaud is introducing Complete Cover and I wanted to enlist your feedback from a receipting point of view. Complete Cover means that Blackbaud will pay all payment processing fees for one-time payments on that form.

To help offset that cost, Blackbaud requests that donors make an additional payment to support the free processing feature during the payment checkout for the form. It's completely optional, and Blackbaud will pay the processing fees regardless of whether an additional payment is made with the gift.

Since the optional, additional amount is made to Blackbaud, Raiser's Edge NXT will not include this element. Hence, any receipt generated by your organisations would exclude this as well.

I will be speaking to the CRA also but wanted to also hear from the group. Please reply to this message or email me with your thoughts.

Hi Chris, while the feature sounds good in theory, the problem I have is explaining this to the donor, as the majority of similar features is more of an increase in donation but the donor gets a tax receipt for the full amount. I've read some stories when clients using the complete cover fee, they didn't know that the suggested % Blackbaud asked the donor (optional) was around 10% and that seems very high as usually, we ask around 3-4% to cover fees (and we have the option to decide on that amount). While, we understand that the option for the donor to add this additional amount is optional, the donor (at least older generation donors) don't understand the process and they expect a receipt for the full amount. I personally didn't use it and can't talk from the donor's view of how this looks but I can see lots of questions about the high % even if optional plus not having the tax receipt for the full amount (including the extra payment) will create lots of questions from the Canadians donors.