Sustainer Migration to New Merchant Account

Lily Young · November 2016

We have around 130 sustaining gifts which are being proccessed through Authorize.net but we switched to using PayFlow Pro a couple of months ago when we started onboarding Luminate Online. I know from this post that recurring gift migration issues can be a headache, so I'm looking for some advice. Authorize will provide us the encrypted data file with donor information for $1,000. Otherwise we have to contact all the sustaining donors to recapture their credit card information. My question is - do you think paying $1,000 is worth it? Has anyone tried contacting sustaining donors to get their credit card information again, and if so, how successful was it?

Thank you for any insight!

Lily

Kathryn Hall · November 2016

Lily Young:

We have around 130 sustaining gifts which are being proccessed through Authorize.net but we switched to using PayFlow Pro a couple of months ago when we started onboarding Luminate Online. I know from this post that recurring gift migration issues can be a headache, so I'm looking for some advice. Authorize will provide us the encrypted data file with donor information for $1,000. Otherwise we have to contact all the sustaining donors to recapture their credit card information. My question is - do you think paying $1,000 is worth it? Has anyone tried contacting sustaining donors to get their credit card information again, and if so, how successful was it?

Thank you for any insight!

Lily

A few thoughts: My experience has been that not all donors want to re-up when you reach out to them ... say you re-up 70% of them because 30% don't want to continue or think you're a scammer when you contact them. That's 39 people. If your average recurring gift size is $20, you cover the $1,000 in less than 2 months. If your average recurring gift size is $15, you cover it in 2 months. The long term value of maintaining and stewarding these 39 sustaining gifts seems greater.

Lily Young · November 2016

Thank you, Kathryn! I tend to agree. I think we will just go ahead and pay the $1,000.

Joanne Felci 2 · November 2016

I was thrilled to see this post!

We are starting to think about changing credit card processors and we have about 200 monthly sustainers.

We don't use Authorize but I'm hoping ClearCommerce (our current provider) offers the same kind of service.

It would be worth the money for us - both in terms of lost revenue and also staff time reaching out to people.

Lily Young · November 2016

Here's an update for anyone wondering about this topic - Authorize can provide an encrypted file but Luminate is unable to accept it to upload. So, I suppose we will be calling our sustainers!

Joanne Felci 2 · November 2016

now i"m sad

Glad you found that out before paying the $1K

Alicia Searfoss · November 2016

That's odd. We were able to do that when we migrated from Global to BBMS to process our credit cards - they handled everything. I guess it depends on the processor.

Chloe Heintz · November 2016

Lily Young:

We have around 130 sustaining gifts which are being proccessed through Authorize.net but we switched to using PayFlow Pro a couple of months ago when we started onboarding Luminate Online. I know from this post that recurring gift migration issues can be a headache, so I'm looking for some advice. Authorize will provide us the encrypted data file with donor information for $1,000. Otherwise we have to contact all the sustaining donors to recapture their credit card information. My question is - do you think paying $1,000 is worth it? Has anyone tried contacting sustaining donors to get their credit card information again, and if so, how successful was it?

Thank you for any insight!

Lily

Hi Lily -

We moved from Payflow Pro to BBMS for our merchant account in Luminate, RE, and in the field. We had far fewer sustainers (something like 40) so we weren't eligible for a migration. We did find that about a third of them didn't respond to our various outreach attempts to move over, but those who did were grateful to speak with us since we interact with sustainers far less frequently than donors we are trying to renew. It was a good opportunity for a touchpoint and renewed contact.

Cheers,

Chloe

Lily Young · November 2016

Thanks for the input, Chloe! I hope we can leverage these contacts with donors.

Sustainer Migration to New Merchant Account

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