Online Giving Forms and Paypal Gifts

Tioga Anderson

Hello,

Has anyone else noticed an issue with paypal donation made though online giving forms not showing in constituent data review or webview batches? We had 2 donors that told us they made a gift via our online form when we reached out about making their gift before the close of the fiscal year. Come to find out they are in paypal but never showed up in batch and we never got the alert that the gifts were made either. Most other paypal gifts have come through as normal. My CFO said she had to 'accept' the gifts in paypal which has never happened before. BB support hasn't been any help yet. Curious if this has happened to anyone else.

Thanks

Carlene Johnson

Yes! One of my clients has run into this issue and I haven't had much time to research or resolve. I've been unable to identify what is unique or consistent about the gifts that we have to go in to "accept".

It is hugely problematic!

@Anthony Gallo - do you know who we could talk to about troubleshooting this?

Tioga Anderson

Thanks Carlene, good to know its not just us. I don't have access to our paypal - but I believe our CFO said they were both debit cards. They were also the same amount ($1,500) but I can't imagine that has anything to do with it.

Carlene Johnson

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/315162#Comment_315162

I think ours were debit cards as well.

Anthony Gallo

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/315161#Comment_315161

Support would definitely be the place to start but I can tag @Samantha McGuin for visibility.

Samantha McGuin

Thanks for the tag, Anthony. This isn't something we've seen come through yet - if you email me your support case number, and any transaction ID's of affected transactions (if they are not already in the Support case) to my email at samantha.mcguin@blackbaud.com I can take a closer look!

Tioga Anderson

@Samantha McGuin Sent you an email, thanks!

Carlene Johnson

Thanks so much, @Samantha McGuin ! @Tioga Anderson - if you can pass along the support ticket info and other details that Samantha requested that would be great. I won't be able to get information on my end for a couple of days but since you already have a support ticket for this that is super helpful!

Samantha McGuin

Thanks for flagging this, Tioga. After investigating with our payments team, here's what we found:

This is a known behavior documented in our KB: Payers aren't returned to an online form after paying with PayPal or Venmo.

When a donor pays via PayPal or Venmo, their OS may redirect them to the native app or a different browser. If they don't return to the original browser tab, our form never receives confirmation that the donation was completed — so the gift becomes a direct Paypal gift rather than a donation form gift, and in this case will not appear in your database at all. Donation form is aware that Paypal was requested but we never get a response that it was completed from Paypal.

This seems to affect Android users with PayPal and Apple users with Venmo most frequently, and from our investigation is most common when the donor isn't using their device's default browser.

Unfortunately this is outside our control — the redirection happens at the OS/app level. We're working to get this referenced more prominently in our Help docs. There's no workaround to offer at this time, but wanted to share so others encountering this know what's happening.

Tioga Anderson

Ah that makes sense. Well at least we know to look out for these now. Odd that it never happened before and then twice in 1 week. Thank you for looking into it!

Carlene Johnson

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/315185#Comment_315185

Thanks so much for this info, Samantha. Very helpful! In addition to referencing more clearly in the Help documents, making sure that support knows as well would be really helpful. I'll pass this information along as well if/when it comes up in the FB group, too!

Tiffany Moore

This happened to us in Luminate. The donor reached out to us to see if his donation went through. I didn't see anything in Luminate, but he sent us a screenshot from his Venmo account saying he made a donation. When I logged into PayPal, I was able to see it and accept it. I then checked to see if it showed up in Luminate after I accepted it and it never did. I called BB support and they were able to see the transaction but said only they are able to. They advised me to enter the gift manually and that when this happens the information doesn't get returned to Luminate (which is why it didn't show up). Luckily our donor contacted us, so it made it easier. We will have to monitor PayPal in the future to check for pending transactions. Unfortunately, we would have to reach out to the donor to find out what they were trying give to (what form they were using) so we know how to code the donation properly.