Foreign Currency Pledges & Direct Debits

John Molloy · December 2016

Hi all,

does anyone accept Pledges or Direct Debits in foreign currencies? And if so, how do you process that?

We were hoping to offer our international donors the option to give regular donations in their native currency but Blackbaud have told us that there is no defined way on The Raiser's Edge to do this. Which obviously acts as a real barrier to international fundraising. The only workaround we can come up with is on pledges where we amend the pledge itself for every installment. But this obviously isn't a particularly effective way of managing pledges.

It seems DDs are out of the question though really.

Thanks,

John.

Phillip Bicknell · January 2017

For DD, in Europe(!) there's SEPA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit#Europe

Probably only works B2B though. And with the variations in exchange rates, your local bank account will be receiving varying amounts each time.

Similarly with foreign currency, what matters to your organisation is the amount that is credited to your local bank account.

If donors were willing to let you have their credit/debit card details, you could do a local currency transaction that would approximate their foreign currency pledge/DD. After all, we get card donations by phone and although we only use them once, there's nothing to stop us keying it again a month down the line, until such time as the card expires.

John Molloy · January 2017

Hi Phillip,

unfortunately our issue was more the process of entering the data on RE and raising the file. We need to raise the file in the foreign currency (e.g. Sterling). We then need to commit that data to RE without having the issue of part payment or over payment (depending on exchange rate). As DD files need to be raised at least a week in advance there's no way of accurately predicting what the rate will be at the time. So it looks like it's not something that can be done.

For pledges we have just decided to use the Irregular schedule option, which allows us to update the pledge instalment amounts on the fly. This means we can just update the pledge to fit with the exchange rate as we go.

Thanks,

John.

Foreign Currency Pledges & Direct Debits

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