When donors cover online credit card fees, what fund do you put that to?

James Belich
James Belich
Kudos 1 First Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1
edited December 2025 in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

When donors give online and opt to cover the additional credit card fees, what fund do you put that to? For example, if a donor gives $100 to a restricted funds and pays the $4 in fees, do you put the entire $104 to the restricted fund, or do you put $100 to the restricted fund and $4 to an operating/unrestricted fund? We have been putting the full amount to the restricted fund, but the question recently came up at my organization if this is really the best practice, as none of the amounts in our restricted funds are being used to offset expenses like credit card fees. I lean towards putting the entire amount to the restricted fund so that we don't have to manually edit these gifts to separate out the fees, but I'm curious how other organizations are handling this. (We're using Blackbaud's Online Giving Forms with payments processed by Blackbaud Merchant Services.)

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Answers

  • Carlene Johnson
    Carlene Johnson Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Data Health #3 First Reply

    I’ve always recorded the full amount — including the donor‑covered fee — to the donor’s designated fund and let Finance handle the fee offsets on their end. That keeps donor intent intact and avoids extra manual steps in gift entry.

    Blackbaud’s forms can split the gift and the fee‑coverage amount into separate designations, but in practice I’ve found that adds unnecessary complexity, so I typically keep the full amount together in the restricted fund.

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 January 2026 Monthly Challenge 2025 bbcon Attendee Badge

    We added a new fund this year "Credit Card Transaction Fee." Finance led the movement to add this as a better way for them to account for fees.

    Each gift is entered on donor record with a split:
    designated fund, appeal
    credit card fee fund, same appeal

    The majority of our gifts come in from non-BB platform. While I use an import plug in to bring in most gifts, on the manual gift entry it has definitely slowed down the data entry.

  • Keith Wilson
    Keith Wilson Community All-Star
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 5 February 2026 Monthly Challenge Name Dropper

    Currently we utilize Complete Cover which means we don't know who is covering credit card fees, and those funds are not coming to our org for us to have to do anything with them. However, when we were using Donor Cover, we have an endowed fund that covers all of our operating expenses, so 100% of a donor's gift goes to the program services. The gift would be recorded and receipted for the full amount they gave to the fund they gave it to. Then we would do a back office journal to move the donor covered fees to the operations endowed fund.

    I believe there isn't one correct answer to this question though. It will come down to your organization's policies to implement a procedure that works best for your mission.

  • Dylan Medina
    Dylan Medina
    PowerUp Challenge: Standard Reports+ Participant Kudos 1 Name Dropper

    I have our forms set for donor cover and then splits the fees to an Online Fees fund that's part of our general funds. We still recognize the full donation amount in ever regard but the donor is covering fees to offset the fees we pay so it make sense that for accounting they need to know what that money is meant to be used for.

  • Suzie VanValkenburg
    Suzie VanValkenburg
    Second Anniversary Facilitator 1

    We set up a new fund called Processing Support Fund as that matches what our form shows when donor is making the online gift. This also makes it easier for Finance to manage the offset to the fees we pay.

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