Sustaining Gifts and Merchant Accounts Questions?

toddt · October 2007

I have over 1,000 sustaining givers and wanted to know things about them.

How many have expired cards? How many cards are about to go out of date? Did a card decline this month and I do not know it? So we learned how to write queries to the system to get this information and are setting up emails to go out and ask people to update their credit card information, but I have no idea what to do if the reponse rate is low. Does Convio have any auto-responders set up to fire when auto donations have issues?

Convio's standard substaining reports are NOT very good and I am not sure if this "feature" should have been turned on with out processes/reports in place to answer some issues above.

But now my Finicial Department wants to change Merchant Accounts. Well I just found out that ALL my substaining givers are flagged with the old account and if I change accounts, I cant move them over to the new account. They would have to be cancelled and asked to regive through a new donation form. (This will never happen)

I thought about just keeping two accounts for a while but as long as a giver updated his/her account in the Admin Screen, he/she will NEVER have reason for getting off the old merchant account.

Has anyone run into this issue just yet?

egabrieloff · October 2007

We didn't realize expired cards were not being updated until a donor asked why we had canceled his sustaining gift. If there is a solution, we need it as well, because I can't even find a way to search for sustaining gifts with expired cards. And it seems nobody is notified when a sustaining gift does not go through.

Phoebe Lee · October 2007

We are new Convio clients and are encountering the same problem. We have thousands of recurring donors that we need to move into the Convio eCRM. Our project manager says that Convio is testing out a new tool to migrate this information. The ideal solution is to have your merchant account provider (e.g. Verisign) send an encrypted file to be entered into Convio. I am 99.99% sure they don't do this. We are exploring an option to use the reference numbers in our Pay Flow Pro account in Paypal to at least grab their billing information and enter it into the Convio database.

toddt · January 2008

Well we changed Merchant Accounts... Now new problem....

Found out that our 1,000 sustaining givers can't update their credit card in their profiles anymore. Our admin gets errors too.

We are stuck. Can't email them and ask them to update their cards, can't do it ourself, and Convio has no solutions as of yet.

My recommendation. Never change Merchant Accounts if you have Sustaining Givers... not until Convio fixes this issue.

Joanna Houlim · February 2008

toddt :
Well we changed Merchant Accounts... Now new problem....

Found out that our 1,000 sustaining givers can't update their credit card in their profiles anymore. Our admin gets errors too.

We are stuck. Can't email them and ask them to update their cards, can't do it ourself, and Convio has no solutions as of yet.

My recommendation. Never change Merchant Accounts if you have Sustaining Givers... not until Convio fixes this issue.

Hi Toddt,

Depending on whether you are using Donation Classic or Donations 2, your constituents should be able to change the credit card.

If you are using Donation Classic forms (Fundraising > Online Giving > Donation Classic Tab)

Through the Admin side, click on Constituent 360 > Service Center and go to Step 7. Donation Classic Configuration.

In step 2. Gift Payment Modification Options: select any of the following items:

Yes, allow donors to modify their billing information

Yes, allow donors to discontinue payments for this gift

Yes, allow donors to skip their next gift payment

Yes, allow donors to modify the gift amount

If you are using Donations 2 forms (Fundraising > Online Giving > Online Giving Tab)

Through the Admin side, edit the Donation Form and go to Step 3. Design Donor Screens. On the bottom of the Navigator, you will see Related Actions. Click on the "Configure Service Center". In step 2. Gift Payment Modification Options: select any of the following items:

Yes, allow donors to modify their billing information

Yes, allow donors to discontinue payments for this gift

Yes, allow donors to skip their next gift payment

Yes, allow donors to modify the gift amount

When your constituents log into Edit their Profile, they will have the option to change the following in the Service Center:

Change billing to a new card

Modify Gift Amount

Discontinue Gift Payments

Skip Next Payments

As an Admin, in the Sustaining Gifts tab under Fundraising, you will have the option to change those items as well.

I hope this helps.

Joanna

Sustaining Gifts and Merchant Accounts Questions?

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