If your answer is YES, I am serious about your recurring giving program, then you MUST:
1. Evaluate your current processes.
2. Project what you can expect, in terms of number of new recurring donors, existing, types of gifts and projected revenue.
3. Decide if you’ll be able to manage the processing in-house or if you should decide to outsource.
This is the third in a series of blog posts addressing each and every one of these areas.
In the previous post (Part 1) we talked about evaluating your current processes. You’ll be amazed what you learn by just taking an hour to review what you’ve done and where you’re going.
In Part 2, we discussed the importance of projecting what you can expect based upon your number of donors, email names and communication plan. That will help you in establishing the resources needed to grow.
Depending upon what came out of these first two parts, you may find that you need to reconsider some of your processing options. You may find that in-house processing is just getting too cumbersome or that you’re really interested in offering Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT, also called ACH or direct debit). (I highly recommend you seriously consider adding this option, it will definitely become more popular!)
My first recommendation is:
Find out what your donor base company can do. Several database systems offer special modules or have outside processing partners that tie in with their monthly giving processes to take care of this. You may just not have asked them or they were not quite ready (and now they are!)
If your current donor base does not have any great options and they don’t have an outsourcing option set up, or you think that you’d rather outsource the processes, the good news is that there are several great outside Payment Processing Partners.
I highly recommend contacting several of them and talking through your processes with them, find out the cost and see if there’s a fit. You’ll be in this for the long-term.
Ask them the following questions:
- Are they familiar with your type of organization?
- Do you like their responsiveness and customer service?
- Are they familiar with your donor base and can the process be seamless?
- Can they provide you with references of current clients and even past clients
- How do they handle the process of sending you credit card or bank rejects.
- How soon after the charge date will you receive them and how do they expect you to handle them.
- Will they contact the donors for you or do they expect you will?
- How often do they charge a monthly donor when rejected
- Can they add account updater/account recycling or if they’re planning to add it soon.
- (see here for an earlier post on this process)
- Ask them what happens if you want to bring the process in-house.
- Do they have a check list for transition and how long do anticipate the implementation time will be
- Who will you be working with and where are they based
- What are their support hours
- Based upon your current process and potential, ask them for their fees and how transparent it is.
- How is the information being kept and how easy is it to access someone’s recurring giving pledge.
- Do they integrate with your online and social media giving options
Here are a few companies I’ve come across over the years that handle payment processing. They’ve been doing this for numerous nonprofits for many years, but they’re all a bit different.
Find out if they’re a good fit for your organization and make sure you can work with them for a long time because your recurring giving program depends on it.
EFT Corporation, Payment support
Caring Habits, Payment support
Payment Solutions, Inc., Payment support, send Beverly Kempf an email at Beverly@paymentsolutionsinc.net
Yapstone (now includes Parish Pay), Payment support,
But, as I mentioned, make sure you check with your donor base system first to see what’s possible.
In future posts I’ll plan to go more in depth with case studies.
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Or check out the new Monthly Giving Help Line where we can address any specific questions you may have.
