Minimum Amount in Optimized Form

Ravneet Kaur · June 9

Hello,

Does anyone know if it’s possible to set a minimum amount for the “Other” field in the Optimized Giving Form? We have set the one-time gift range to $25–$100, but donors can still enter as little as $1 in the “Other” field. We’d like to set a minimum of at least $10.

Is this doable in the optimized forms?

Carrie Powell · June 10

@Ravneet Kaur, I think that is possible on the 2. Edit tab in the Donation form designer.

Here is a screenshot of the window that opens when I clicked to edit the amounts.

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This form is for an event, so the minimum donation is $60/person. If the donor clicks that box, I believe they would not have been able to enter an amount less than $60.

Ravneet Kaur · June 11

@Carrie Powell
Thank you for your message.

I believe the screenshot you shared refers to the Standard Form option. I’m specifically looking for the options available within Optimized Forms in RENXT Online Giving. As Blackbaud offers both Standard and Optimized forms, and we’re hoping to explore the latter—but still have a few outstanding questions.

I really appreciate your response and support—thank you again!

Carrie Powell · June 11

@Ravneet Kaur, that could be why we haven't switched, either! We mostly still use the forms via Online Express, but the one from the screenshot was from Online Giving. I didn't remember which option we chose when we created that one.

Ravneet Kaur · June 11

Thanks @Carrie Powell

Austen Brown · June 11

@Ravneet Kaur - It doesn't look to be an option at this time. Recommend visiting the RE NXT Idea Bank and voting for/adding this idea.

Samantha McGuin · June 12

@Ravneet Kaur Can I ask why you need to set a minimum?

The Optimized Form is designed to get out of the donor's way as much as possible, which is why we haven't added a minimum setting yet. I'm interested to hear more about the reasoning for this for future new feature assessment - I know you don't get as much ‘bang for the buck’ in terms of your staff's time for processing for low donations, but would love to hear more of the rationale behind an ask to set a minimum.

Thanks,
Samantha McGuin
Sr. Principal Product Manager
Blackbaud

Loreen Standel · June 16

@Samantha McGuin I plan to start using Optimized Forms this summer and agree with the need to be able to set a minimum donation amount. With credit card fees and staff time for processing, a $1 gift is a net loss.

Aldera Chisholm · June 19

@Samantha McGuin I'd be surprised by orgs not wanting to set a minimum, to be honest. It's certainly plausible that a valid donor would go through the trouble to go online and make a $1.25 donation, but in my experience whenever we had that - it was eventually determined to be credit card fraud.

Ravneet Kaur · June 19

@Samantha McGuin
From an applications perspective, I am aiming to align our systems with those commonly used by other non-profit organizations across Canada. In reviewing standard practices, I’ve observed that many peer organizations have optimized their giving forms to include key features that are currently missing in Blackbaud RENXT (optimized forms). These include:

The ability to set a bare minimum donation amount
An option to donate on behalf of an organization – very important to have this feature!
An option to donate anonymously

These features are typically available in standard giving forms and, ideally, should also be accessible within optimized forms. This would allow internal users to enable them as needed in accordance with our organizational policies.

Dariel Dixon · June 19

@Samantha McGuin With smaller organizations and nonprofits being preferred methods for criminals and other bad actors to commit credit card fraud, best practices by many organizations is to have a minimum amount for credit card gifts, regardless of giving form type.

Samantha McGuin · June 23

Thanks for the great conversation on this thread, everyone!

Optimized form was built using a brand new payment capture system (replacing Blackbaud Checkout, which was used on Standard Form.) This new payment capture has a focus on fraud prevention and fraud checks, which has greatly minimized the amount of fraud we've seen run through the Optimized Form. Because of this, we have not yet implemented a required minimum for fraud purposes. However, we will continue to evaluate it for some of the other reasons posted here.

@Ravneet Kaur Features for giving on behalf of an organization and for a donor to mark themselves as anonymous are on the roadmap for Optimized Form, but have not yet been prioritized due to low customer demand. I encourage you to vote for this idea here:
Allow organizations to donate through Optimized Forms and Anonymous gift on Optimized Form

Ravneet Kaur · June 23

@Samantha McGuin Thanks for the update!

It was noticed that in the optimized forms, there appears to be a limit of 10 designations that can be selected. In the standard form, however, we were able to add up to 14 designations, which is a requirement for us.

Do you happen to know if this limitation is an intentional feature of the optimized forms, or if there’s any possibility to increase the limit?

Looking forward to your insights on this.

Thank you

Samantha McGuin · June 23

@Ravneet Kaur
By design, though we may extend slightly - to 15, later this year. Remember, the Optimized Form is intended to streamline the donor experience and thus streamline the decisions the donor is asked to make. Having a fund list with 50 or or 1000 fund isn't a great donor experience.

Our recommendation when you do have a fund decision for a donor to make is to build a custom experience where they select the fund first, then take them into the Optimized form to finish their donation. This can be accomplished using our hyperlink parameters where you can design your own fund selection experience and then pass the fund ID and name into the Optimized Form, or via our Designation Search website component.

I hope this helps!

Samantha McGuin
Sr. Principal Product Manager
Blackbaud

Ravneet Kaur · June 24

Hi @Samantha McGuin ,

Our senior management has asked us to pause the implementation of the Optimized Form due to the absence of a critical functionality—specifically, the ability to set a minimum gift amount.

This feature is considered essential for the following reasons:

Gift Acceptance Policy: Our in-house policy requires a minimum donation of $10. This has been in place for over 25 years, and there is no willingness to revise it to accommodate the current software limitation.

Official Receipts: We only issue official gift receipts for donations of $10 or more. These are generated automatically upon batch approval, and we want to avoid placing additional manual workload on our back-end team to issue receipts for qualifying online gifts.

Is there any possibility that the Blackbaud team could prioritize this functionality? I truly appreciate the benefits of the Optimized Forms and would prefer to move forward with them. However, without this feature, our back-end team may be asked to revert to using Standard Forms instead.

Dan Snyder · June 25

@Samantha McGuin Thanks for being part of this conversation and sharing the idea bank links.

Just to add to the minimum gift amount conversation. My initial thought about this was it seems to me that the cost to process a $1 online gift (merchant fees and staff entry time) would actually be a net loss to the organization. However, I thought about the number of online gifts we receive for under $5 and decided to take a look and since we started tracking the gift source in 2020 only 1.5% of gifts we received online were under $5. I suspect some of the larger donations offset the “loss” for those smaller gifts.

And to continue my stream of consciousness response here, it really makes you think about how much you lose on fees if a donor gives say $10K online or even $5K. Do I hear a between range for these forms? hahaha! Interesting conversation for sure.

JoAnn Strommen · June 25

@Ravneet Kaur IMO, ability to set a minimum should be an available option.

We started setting a minimum after a poorly planned crowdfunding event which had incentives/rewards for levels of participation of some kind. (don't know all details as happened my first month here) We had people making multiple gifts on their card in the name of other people in their class/dept.
Our minimum is $25.

Samantha McGuin · June 25

This isn't currently planned but I am always re-evaluating based on feedback like this. I suggest those on this thread vote for this idea: Add minimum donation amount option to Optimized Forms so I can better track interest and need and you can see any future progress/plans for this change.

Minimum Amount in Optimized Form

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