3rd Party Merchant Services and BBMS forms, NXT Campaigns and Appeals

Mike Bowles · January 2023

There is a consideration in my organization to move from BBMS to a third party for credit card processing to reduce fees. If that decision is made, my concern is that we may miss all the things that processing through BBMS brings when using NXT for Development and Donor Experience. Does anyone know what features of NXT are dependent on using BBMS as the credit card processor? Will Campaigns and Appeals still work in reporting? Thanks for any insight you can provide!

Austen Brown · January 2023

@Mike Bowles - The main hurtle you'll run into is whether the donation forms your org is currently utilizing within RE NXT have the ability to run information through a processor other than BBMS, and if you need to change the donation forms your org is using. Dependent on that you could potentially have an additional hurtle of how to bring data into RE NXT if the donation form is not the NXT donation forms or OLX; there are third-party import tools that can help you with this.

As long as the gifts exist within RE NXT, no matter where they were processed, they will appear within the native reporting and within custom insights (if you have Insight Designer).

Miki Martin · January 2023

@Mike Bowles have you all started taking advantage of the Complete Cover option with NXT forms? This has greatly reduced our credit card fees we pay, as anything donated through our online forms is free of fees since the donor has the option to help cover those costs. We, of course, pay the yearly fee to Blackbaud for the ability to use BBMS and the handful of fees for individual gifts processed through our end. Just a thought!

Mike Bowles · January 2023

@Miki Martin Could you tell me more about how your donors have responded to this? My Executive Director did not like the language used (thought it did not sound like us and may be off putting) and that it started with 10% ask that was given to BB so we have not used it. If you have any additional insight or data you could share with me, that could be helpful! Thanks!!

Carrie Aranda · January 2023

@Mike Bowles We were part of the EAP for Donor Cover and had a push back from a few donors about the language and the preselected 10%. However, since the donor pay option has been released, we have moved away from Donor Cover and have had no push back from donors with the donor pay option. It uses language that they are used to seeing and the percentage is actually what we pay in fees.

We also like this option because we can see who selects to cover fees and what is in our system and on receipts matches what the donor sees on their credit card statement. About 75% of our donors are currently opting to cover fees and, on larger gifts, the percentage goes up. You may want to see if that option works better for you instead of Donor Cover.

Austen Brown · January 2023

@Carrie Aranda - Double checking that you meant to say you've moved away from Complete Cover and are now using Donor Cover; the latter being more traditional of the two options, where the donor only covers the exact fee.

Miki Martin · May 2023

@Mike Bowles I apologize for not responding sooner to your question. Somehow I missed it.

I know in-house they are not happy with the verbiage of the pop-ups, nor that it defaults to 10%. I had reached out previously to Blackbaud to see if we would be able to adjust this and was told they are looking at things to see how donors are responding. There is no way for us to modify what is stated in the fee windows. I have heard from only two donors that were upset or questioning the fees and refunded the fee to one. Apparently more have voiced displeasure but it has been after the fact to where I have not been able to handle it.

I think the Complete Cover is a great option in theory. Unfortunately, I do not like the inability to adjust the percentage amounts, especially given that they are so much higher than the standard card rates. I will be investigating the possibility of switching to Donor Cover in order to better appease all involved and get better reporting options, as with Complete Cover I am unable to see who opted for or against it. All I can see is how much we saved in fees from a particular form.

Lauren Marcus Eisenberg · May 2023

@Mike Bowles Following!

3rd Party Merchant Services and BBMS forms, NXT Campaigns and Appeals

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