"Blackbaud Pays" or Complete Cover - Defaulting to 10% and overcharging donors!

Giselle Cosentino

Blackbaud quietly rolled out “Blackbaud Pays” in September, 2022 and we enjoyed several months of paying no credit card fees for donations coming in through our DIY donation form. There was no explicit information about how this works except this verbiage on the DIY forms: “With Complete Cover™, Blackbaud waives the fees for transactions up to $3k and asks supporters to give towards Blackbaud's service.”

Fast forward to December when a board member was making their annual donation online and they were asked if they would like to cover the processing fees. The form defaulted to a 10% processing fee and this person paid it, thinking that they were supporting the nonprofit. Then this fee came up at a Finance Committee meeting… why are we paying 10% in fees when the standard is around 3%?

Well folks, it turns out that Blackbaud was keeping the extra 7%! Yes, we were receiving the donation fee-free and then Blackbaud, a for profit company, was pocketing the surplus, supposedly to cover our fees, and the fees of other nonprofits.

Sure, a donor can choose not to pay the fees, but it defaults to 10% and most donors think they are supporting the nonprofit of their choosing, certainly not Blackbaud! I think this was a very deceptive practice and wanted to make sure other orgs knew this was happening.

We switched to “Donor Pays” and are having issues with this option too! ?

Any thoughts on Complete Cover, Donor Pays vs My Organization Pays?

Stacie Birchett

@Giselle Cosentino I am following this as I am concerned about misperceptions as well. Thank you for bringing it up.

Karen Tuecke

@Giselle Cosentino, our organization had this exact conversation with BB. We DO NOT use complete cover as our benefactors truly thought the fee was going to us to cover our expenses. We identified this soon enough that we discontinued it.

Giselle Cosentino

@Karen Tuecke, I was surprised to see that there was not a whole uproar about this situation in the eTap community. I'm glad you caught it early on! Are you using Donor Pays? We have now discovered that Donor Pays is defaulting to 3% fees on all credit cards, not just for Am Ex. This means that for anyone donating with Visa or MC, we are receiving an additional “donation." Again, our donors are intending to cover the fee for their donation, but are being charged an extra amount due to Blackbaud inefficiencies. Very frustrating.

Karen Tuecke

@Giselle Cosentino we are using Blackbaud Merchant Services (BBMS). They charge us the fee, but not the donor. We do not use Donor Pays and will not move that direction. Now with BBMS, there comes a monthly fee that was imposed without notice about 2 years ago. It was unfair and unjust to just throw this at their customers without much notice. We pay it because we do not want to have the issues of bridging a credit card processor.

Giselle Cosentino

@Karen Tuecke, Ah, yes… the infamous “Payment Enablement Fee” of $50/month which they sprung on us right before the new fiscal year. We were upset about this too! This was another unwelcome surprise.

Janette Layton

@Giselle Cosentino
So I'm somewhat confused. We started seeing the notices in the Journal that BB was covering the fees up to $3000. Didn't see anything else, but then I did an online donation to see what our donors see. This is what I saw…"Transaction fees are an industry-wide standard for processing online payments. Will you give a little extra to ensure we get free processing with Blackbaud?" It bothered me because it sounded like we as an organization were asking our constituents to give. But I had no idea that BB set the amount they gave.

The other thing that it said somewhere in the process (I can't remember where) was “Blackbaud is the world's leading cloud software provider powering social good. Thanks to their partnership, we are not charged processing fees.” Again, sounded like it was our message.

I need to check with someone else in our org. to see if we have been paying the monthly fee of $50.

Giselle Cosentino

@Janette Layton Yes! This is exactly our frustration! The Blackbaud provided verbiage makes it sound like we, the nonprofits, are asking for the fees to be covered but in actuality, Blackbaud receives, and keeps the fees, often at a much higher rate than the actual fees. Like I said, the default for our donors was at 10%! If you used the pull down menu, you could select other, lower percentages, but only if you knew to look for the pull down. All of our donors paid the 10% while we were using “Blackbaud Pays." This is why we switched to “Donor Pays.”

And, you are definitely paying the $50/month Payment Enablement Fee. It's not optional.

Janette Layton

@Giselle Cosentino
I did some playing around with it today after we had a donor mention it in an email (they decided to send a check instead). The EFT fees were basically the same as the c/c fees and in one test I did the c/c fee populated at 9% and when I switched it to EFT it populated at 10%. What is the donor pays fee thing you mentioned and how did you change to that?

Janette Layton

@Giselle Cosentino Also, I see that you mentioned My Organization Pays, too. I haven't seen all these options. Is that in the BBMS account? I don't do much with that. Someone else in our org. has handled that.

Giselle Cosentino

@Janette Layton It sounds like you are definitely in the “Blackbaud Pays” realm. EFT charges should be at 1% but Complete Pay will charge you 10% by default. You, or your team, can change this setting in the DIY Form, under Settings, and then the Page Editor tab. There is a “Fees” section and each option has a description. The description for Blackbaud Pays/Complete Cover is: With Complete Cover™, Blackbaud waives the fees for transactions up to $3k and asks supporters to give towards Blackbaud's service.

Notice there is no mention of the 7%+ they are keeping for themselves.

Giselle Cosentino

@Janette Layton It's in the Settings for the DIY Forms. See my previous response for more specifics. Per my previous post, Blackbaud has still not worked out the kinks of “Donor Pays” either. In this case, the form defaults to 3.5% fees to cover the American Express fee, which is perfect if someone is donating with Amex. However, if a donor is using a Visa or MC (2.5%), you will see a donation for 1% higher than intended by the donor.

Janette Layton

@Giselle Cosentino Thanks for the help Giselle! I talked to BBMS today and she gave me some links…one of which told me what you shared about how to change the DIY form. One of the links was the specification regarding the fees which was the % you said plus 30 cents per transaction. EFT is supposed to be 1% plus the 30 cents. Because I don't handle payments I was not aware of the $50/month fee. This has got us looking at a lot of issues and looking for ways to fix it. I love etapestry. Started as a user in 2007, but THIS is not what I expect of them.

Giselle Cosentino

@Janette Layton You are very welcome. I'm glad you're looking into this. I don't think Blackbaud should be benefitting from the generosity of our donors. And, they especially shouldn't be so sneaky about it!