Your work in hunger relief fundraising is necessary. It is even more important in times like these. In fact, if anything, you are underfunded. You may have been underfunded for a very long time. The fact that this is a true statement means that you need to make every single penny count as much as possible. It also means that transaction fees and hidden fees count. Moreover, the more you know about what they, the donation platforms, will charge you the better off you are going to be when it comes time to figure out what your budget is going to be for the year.
Your Intentions and the Intentions of Payment Gateways
You, likely, started out with great intentions and for good reason. Making sure that people do not go hungry is a great thing to do. You, probably, thought that you will figure out how to deal with the associated paperwork or anything that got in the way. However, what you might not have seen is the business machine behind giving. The truth is that there are a lot of payment gateways out there but most of them are not made to support charities. Obviously, a business that is a non-profit has a different financial outlook than a for-profit organization.
Subsequently, a lot of payment gateways try to push you into these systems because you are “close enough.” It is profitable for them to treat you just like any other patron of their system. Why? It takes time, effort, and knowledge to redesign a system to fit your needs specifically. However, it also does not take into account that the work may not be as profitable as working with a for profit organization. Therefore, they may not want to put in the time and effort to fit your needs.
What You Want and What To Look Out For In the Future
What you want, ideally, is a solution that was made for you from the very beginning. We are talking from the first idea in that organization’s leader’s head to the next decision it will make. It should be about nonprofits and donations all the time? Why? It is because it is not trying to modify an existing system to fit your needs which means that it is not worried about comparing the money it will make working with you instead of for-profit businesses. A business like the latter is always going to be looking over its shoulder. They will be looking for another way to make more off of your organization. They want to make money closer in line with what they make on for-profit businesses.
Feeding Hungry People vs Unintentionally Making Someone Richer
If you are feeding hungry people with your donations then you want that money to be used on people who are hungry. You do not, intentionally, at least, want to line the pocketbook of some corporate executive. A corporate executive who spends his time not thinking about the poor and needy. He or she is probably thinking about the next luxury vehicle they are going to buy instead. It is on you to protect your money. It is also on you to make sure that you are collecting as much from your donations as possible.
You do this by being able to predict how much you are actually going to be able to collect. You do this by working with a company that was built, from the ground up, for non-profits. Moreover, you want all the fees to be upfront. You want them upfront so you can figure out what you will actually make from every donation.
Chatgive charges a flat 2.3% per transaction on CC, ACH, and Amex. Find out more about us on our homepage and what we can do for your hunger relief fundraising campaign.
