Online Giving Donor Covered Fees

Blair Pack

We recently switched to the Raiser's Edge NXT Online Giving form, and are giving donors the option to cover the credit card fees. For one $500 donation, the donor chose to cover the fees and paid $518.45, but the fees were only $15.80. We ended up netting $502.65 instead of the $500 we should have netted. Has anyone had this happen where a donor is actually overcharged for the fees?

Carrie Powell

@Blair Pack, the donors pay more than the actual processing fees if you use Complete Cover, which is the reason we have not opted for that route. I checked back through our recent transactions where donors opted to use Donor Cover, which we do make available, and the most we received above the actual processing fee was 11 cents (most were in the 1 or 2 cent range).

Lisa Madden

@Blair Pack We use donor cover. Yes, the amount will regularly be a little over the fee so if you use this option, you may want to have that additional amount go to whatever fund you select. Depending on how you reconcile with your finance dept., you may want to keep this in mind because it will show up as a split gift in NXT. But back to your original question Here is a sample:

The formula used is as follows: (Original donation amount + .30) / (1 - 0.035)

This ensure that the fees will be covered by the donor regardless of which card type is used at checkout.

So for example: If a donor makes a donation of $500.00 using a Visa. The amount that shows for the donor when donor cover is used: $518.45

(500 + .30) / (1-.035) > 500.30/0.965 = 518.45

$518.45 would then be the gross amount that appears in your BBMS transaction. Since this is a Visa card type, this is how the Net amount and fee is calculated in BBMS

$518.45 x .0279 + .30 = 14.76

Therefore this will appear as such:

Gross amount: $518.45 Processing Fees $14.76 (Based on Visa fate of 2.79% + $0.30)

Net Amount: $503.69

I hope this helps!!

Blair Pack

@Lisa MaddenThank you for this helpful reply!