SmartTHING - SmartDONORCOVER - Tell me about your experience

Christyn Schnell · April 2020

I noticed in the recent Blog post called "Creative Ways to Use Blackbaud Online Express Donation Forms" they reference a product called SmartDONORCOVER that is a widget that sits on top of your donation form, giving your donors the option for the donor to cover the transaction fees of their online donation made through OnlineExpress.

This is a very attractive application and it's free to boot. After some research, I haven't found any testimonials on organizations that already use this product. (The only mention I see concerning SmartTHING within the Blackbaud Community is in reference to their free product called SmartPASTE that allows more than 500 items to be copy and pasted into a "One of" pick list value within Queries - which sounds pretty great too).

Has anyone had any experience with SmartTHING as a company and, more so, has anyone used the SmartDONORCOVER or any other products from SmartTHING outside of the SmartPASTE - specifically the more donor-facing products they offer.

I would love to hear about your experience, what your constituents may have reported back to you about their experience, etc. Is this all too good to be true?

Thanks, all!

Austen Brown · April 2020

Hi Christyn Schnell‍ - We are in the process of implementing the SmartDONORCOVER on our OLX forms today/tomorrow. I will add this to my to-do list to post another comment once we have it up and running.

Austen Brown · April 2020

Hi Christyn Schnell‍ - I've got an update for you! We have implemented this on all of our active OLX forms, and it is working great! It was really easy to navigate through SmartTHING's site, customize the CSS code and add the code to our webpages. So far we are happy with the addition and best of all it's FREE!

Here are few examples of how things look on the donation form, within the transaction details (for both the confirmation screen and email confirmation), and within BBMS.

Donation Form - https://victoryjunction.org/the-gift-of-camp
Confirmation Screen

6382f1364a62ea325b54a43186ee8ca4-huge-ol

Email Confirmation

3b53376af86b6a0f8a772bb48a9ac89b-huge-ol

BBMS Transaction Summary

57056ba4e72a6c5ef6d8b287a2bd2393-huge-bb

If I come across any other important details that you should know about, I'll add them to this thread. I hope this helps!

Christyn Schnell · April 2020

This is awesome insight, Austen! I really appreciate you following up and for providing those screen shots. This will really help with our discussion on our end.

Thanks, again!

Ashley Rumble · May 2020

Does anyone know if DONORCOVER is compatible with RE NXT donation forms?

Austen Brown · November 2020

Ashley Rumble‍ - Last I heard, no.

Elaine Tucker · November 2020

WE NEED THIS! integration with NXT donation forms

Austen Brown · May 2021

#GNinja

Danielle Lifshitz · September 2021

Does anyone here know how things look on the backend in RE and BBMS, once a donor covers the credit card fee? We are just starting to enable this and I want to make sure it will be clear to me and to the finance department, which donors are covering the fees. Thanks.

Carlene Johnson · September 2021

Hi @Danielle Lifshitz ! So when the gifts come in it will show up as an outright gift of (for example) $21.83 instead of $20.00. BBMS will still take out their regular fees. Basically the donor is increasing the total amount of their gift to offset whatever fees you might be incurring on the backend - but it does not directly affect or impact the fees that BBMS is taking out of each gift.

SmartThing states the following option in their documentation:

New Feature: Add a Gift attribute to your Online Express donation form to have the transaction fee come into Raiser's Edge with the gift. The gift attribute must be of type 'Text', one per record, active and called 'Transaction Fee' (case sensitive) or 'Above Amount includes Processing Fee of' (case sensitive). It will be hidden from the donor when they view your donation form but is shown in the Transaction Details merge field on the email and onscreen confirmations and comes into RE with the gift.

While I don't use that feature, it sounds like this would allow you to pull a report for finance of the fee only portion of the gift if then then wished to be able to account for those fees.

Hope that is somewhat helpful!

Chris Fedor · October 2021

@Austen Brown Thanks so much for sharing this! Since it looks like you've been using this for a while now, how do you feel about it? Do many of your donors choose to pay the fees as well? And the big question. In the example you gave, do you give credit to the donor for the $25 gift or do you give them credit for $25.93?

Austen Brown · October 2021

@Chris Fedor - We are very happy with SmartTHING’s Donor Cover. A surprising number of our donors cover fees - it is heartwarming to see. In terms of donor credit - the donor gets credit for the gross amount of their gift, $25.93.

Glenn Preston · December 2021

I assume this is not an option if you are hosted by balckbaud?

Danielle Lifshitz · December 2021

I believe that it is an option for hosted users. You just fill out the form on the smart thing website and they email you instructions with the code that needs to be put on your forms. If I remember correctly you can use it with OLX forms, not sure about NXT forms.

Austen Brown · December 2021

Danielle is correct, you can use this when hosted. It only works for OLX forms though, not NXT forms.

Crystal Trimble · February 2022

I just wanted to chime in that we just installed the SmartDONORCOVER on our OLX donation form and it was so simple and easy. I had no idea it existed until I ran across this thread yesterday….so glad I did. It works perfectly and looks great. Thanks to Austen and others who have recommended it! ?

Lauren Fardella · June 2022

Another question - you would be crediting the donor the GROSS Amount ($25.93 instead of $25.00). But the $.93 fee still shows up in our disbursement report. How does the Net appear then? If a donor DOES Not choose to cover the fee, we see the Gross amount of $25.00 and net of $25.93) Is someone willing to share a disbursment report (hiding the donor names of course) that has a mix of fees covered and not covered?

Austen Brown · June 2022

The donor gets full credit for the gross amount of their gift, regardless if they elect to give a little extra to cover fees or not. Using the example of $25.93 here is how it will appear in BBMS:

If the donor covers fees: Gross Amount: $25.93 / Net Amount: $25.00
If the donor does not cover fees: Gross Amount: $25.00 / Net Amount: $24.07

In either scenario, the donor gets credit for the full amount of their donation.

Karen Roop · March 2024

@Austen Brown Hi Austen. We recently implemented SmartThing's Donor Cover, but when BBMS charges the cards, it's charging us on the new total including the cover amount, which means it never comes out covering the entire fees. Am I doing something wrong?

Austen Brown · March 2024

@Karen Roop - Take a look at the calculation you have set within SmartTHING, this might need to be adjusted based on your specific fees with BBMS.

Danielle Lifshitz · March 2024

@Karen Roop Also, it might depend on the type of card, and the percentage to chose to be charged. American Express fees are higher than the other cards.

Carlene Johnson · April 2024

@Karen Roop, you are not doing anything wrong. Since the fees are not waived but rather covered, the total amount of the gift is increased and BBMS is charging you a percentage of the total transaction.

So for simple math's sake, a $100 gift with a 10% fee would net you $90. If the donor covers that fee, their transaction is $110. BBMS will charge you $11 on that transaction which means you net $99.

There is no way to truly get to having 100% of the fee covered on a transaction. Either way, the the donor should receive credit for their total transaction of $110. Hope that helps!

SmartTHING - SmartDONORCOVER - Tell me about your experience

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