Entering "offline" donations

Brenda Rositano:

Hello;

Does Blackbaud administer a 4% user fee for all donations entered offline?

Thank you

Brenda

Hi Brenda,


I've never thought to do the "off line" donations that way, as when we receive a donor's credit card either from a mailed appeal or phone call, I enter the donation in Luminate only, through the donor's record.  The only hiccup with this process is that if the donor doesn't have an email address, we have to make up a dummy account.  I can't see why BBMS would charge you a different interest rate simply because the donation is off line.  You've now peeked my interest with this question and am on the hunt for the answer.


Stay tuned...


Lisa

Hi Patti,


How do you enter the donor's gift through Luminate if not through your donation pages?  Our donation pages required an email address so the donor receives a tax receipt.  When I spoke to Luminate Support, I was told they have to have an email address and there are no workarounds for this process.  Could you give me more details on your process?


Thanks,


Lisa

Hi Lisa:


I contacted Luminate support and asked them to turn off the email required for when entering offline registrations and donations.  It is still required on the frontend.


Below is how I enter our offline donations (cash, checks and credit cards):


For TeamRaiser - Go to teamraiser event and click manage and follow below:

1.  If it's a teamraiser gift - go to participant, enter the participats name they are supporting, on the right of gift history, click on Enter Offline Gift.

2.  If it's a team donation - go to team, click on manage, on left nav click record team donation.

3.  If it's a donation to the teamraiser event, click on event gift, click on Record Event Donation


For general donations outside of teamraiser:

1.  First, make sure your donation forms are set up to allow you to enter offline donations.  (see below to set up for offline)

2. Go to the Donation Campaign tab and find the campaign (I have several campaigns with several donation forms within them) and select manage

3.  A list of your donation forms will appear in that campaign.  Select one and click edit.

4.  Go to #3 Design Donor Screen and click edit on Donation form.

5.  In the right box, find the field Payment Type and click save order.  This will open that field.

6.  Make sure #1 Credit Card, #5 Cash Payment, #6 Check are all checked.

7.  Click save and finish.  Then hit publish to update your changes.

8.  You are ready for offline entering.


1.  Go to Constituent 360

2.  Search for donor and click on edit to open record  (create new record if they are not in 360)

3.  Click on Transactions

4.  Under Gift Entry it says Enter a new Gift or Pledge. To the far right of that is a drop down arrow.  Click and this will open a list of all your donation forms.

5.  Select the one you want and click go

6.  You now have the option of Payment Type Credit Card, Cash or Check.  We use them all when entereing gifts.

6.  You now have your offline donation form. 


When you are done.  They will be in your connector.  I create gift batches by type (teamraiser, tribute, annual fund etc)  Once they are commited they are in the record.  Same with registrations.  They will appear in the record as a gift and also in the event module.


Hope this helps.  Feel free to contact me if you have any other questions.


Patti Posey

Stamford Hospital Foundation

 

Brenda -- what an intriguing process! We pay credit card fees through both TeamRaiser and BBMS. But there is an additional transaction fee that we pay for credit cards processed in TeamRaiser that we don't pay in BBMS. I suspect that different customers have negotiated different transaction fees and that is the 4% "user fee" to which you refer. Now I'm curious how many credit cards we processed in TeamRaiser that we could have processed in BBMS, and how much that would have saved the agency... a project for another day.