when collecting payments for your organization
there are various processes that occur there is the authorization of the payment from
the donor the communication between a donor's payment method and the organization collecting
the payment and then there's the transfer of funds from that donor's credit card or bank account to
the organization's account not to mention other processes including paying card association fees
of 1.5 to 2.5 percent to American Express Visa or Mastercard handling an
y void or refriend requests
managing recurring donations or using tokens to securely vault payment information so the donor
doesn't have to re-enter it every time they give and that's just the start truth be told the
payment processing industry is very complicated and unfortunately it leads companies to use
creative marketing techniques in order to make the pricing look as low as possible even though it may
not be when you total everything up i know those are a lot of details to think about
then again
there's a lot that goes into payment processing and it can have a dramatic influence on your
financial decisions and budget so in this video we're going to take a deep dive into all of it
and at times get a little technical so that your organization can be set up for success ready to
jump in I'm Joseph with Anedot and let's get to it when evaluating giving platforms here are a
few things to consider there are many donation platforms available to nonprofits universities
and chur
ches but far fewer payment processors the difference between a donation
platform and a payment processor is in their purpose a donation
platform is typically used to build beautiful donation pages without knowing any code
and to manage your data collected from these pages it may also include other marketing features
like cart abandonment emails and pages that also collect leads now a payment processor is often
much more complex and handles the process as mentioned before like moving money f
rom a donor's
payment method to an organization's account most donation platforms are not payment processors
in fact many of them use the same ones for example Stripe is the largest payment processor in the
world and is used by many fundraising platforms while large payment processors are excellent
at fraud prevention there are more layers to consider you see because there are so few payment
processors out there they carry a tremendous amount of weight and power which can lead to
unfair tr
eatment some payment processors may be platform organizations if they have differing
views they also may share your data with other companies without you even knowing it because
the agreement is buried deep in a terms of use document and what's really crazy is that even if
your donation platform likes working with you they could be forced to cancel the relationship if the
payment processor does not also agree due to risk risk can come in many forms including reputational
and financial while
this may not be a top concern for every organization it's definitely something
to consider when choosing a giving platform now let's talk about platform fees and processing
fees because what many companies don't want you to know is that they are completely different from
one another here's the truth for many platforms when a donation is made you have to pay a
processing fee on top of what they call a platform fee this can get very confusing but think about
it this way you need to pay to us
e the platform to receive donations and also pay to have those
donations processed included in that fee is what the credit card companies banks and other entities
get paid for in their effort in moving money this can confuse or mislead organizations when a
company is only charging 1 to 1.5% as a platform fee that platform fee does not include the payment
processing fee so the organization may think that they are paying less but if they're paying a 1.5%
platform fee on top of the payment pro
cessor's 2.9% processing fee then they're really paying
4.4% and that's a really big difference when you're looking at your total cost to raise
money you should be sure to ask if the donation platform fee includes your payment processing if
it doesn't be sure to gain a better understanding of every fee you're paying so that you can compare
platforms apples to apples and know exactly what you're getting into before you make a commitment
to a donation platform for us we only charge a single f
ee per transaction some other platforms
charge a platform fee while Stripe charges the payment processing fee anadote does not charge any
additional fees to use our platform we want to be upfront with you about pricing now unfortunately
these are not the only fees to be aware of aside from platform and payment processing fees
are you ready for it many donation platforms will charge setup monthly and integration fees wow i
know right and along with the fees you may also be required to sign a
n annual contract and pay
that annual contract in advance let's talk about it setup fees are often included in a contract
to assist with implementation or training monthly fees that roll into annual contracts can take the
place of platform fees or be in addition to them there is a hidden pain with these monthly fees and
annual contracts let's say you're unhappy with the service and want to leave well because you signed
a contract you can't you could be waiting months to change platforms als
o if your donation platform
is using a third-party payment processor you may struggle to securely transition your monthly
recurring donors to a new platform some platforms refuse to transfer these recurring donors to
a customer's new donation platform similarly many organizations don't want to export all their
data out of their donation platform and import it into another one every day or week and this is
where integrations come into play you may want to push your donation data into one or
more systems
automatically to save your team significant time at Anedot we understand how frustrating this
can be which is why we want to be fair with our customers we have a standard practice of migrating
customers with more than 100 active commitments into or away from our platform we want you to make
the best decisions for a company so as already mentioned many donation platforms also hide the
fees and pains associated with their platform and we've seen this time and time again through
the years which is one of the major reasons why we do what we do at Anedot so if you're looking for
a free fundraising platform with zero hidden fees and a very competitive processing rate consider
signing up for a free account with us here at Anedot we are both a donation platform and a
payment processor because we believe the risk can be too great to use a third-party processor
we also don't want our customer service team to be relying on another platform to assist our donors
with voids r
efunds and chargebacks some donation platforms also require their customers to set
up a separate merchant account with the payment processor and this can be a headache that we don't
want our customers to face so if you want to learn more about us check us out at anedot.com i hope
this helps as you consider your giving platform options leave a comment down below if you have
any questions about the things that I've talked about in this video as we always say here Anedot
we're here to help tha
nks for watching before you head out be sure to like subscribe and hit the
notification button for more videos like these also be sure to check us out on social media I'm
Joseph with Anedot and we'll see you next time
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