Donors Covering Processing Fees
When a donor gives a donation through a DonorDock Giving Page, standard credit card processing charges apply.
Processing fees are charged when the payment processor (such as Stripe) deducts a fee from the donation amount and then transfers the net transaction amount to your account. These fees are independent of DonorDock and are an inherent aspect of handling any form of online financial transaction.
🙋🏽♂️ Can Donors cover the processing fees on a donation?
Absolutely! When donors make donations through DonorDock's Online Giving Pages, they can choose whether they want to cover the processing fee for their transaction, with an amount displayed at the bottom. The amount they're asked to contribute for this fee will be suggested based on the settings you've selected in your Online Giving Global Configuration, or if your organization's is on the Donor-Funded Platform Fees option, the amount displayed will be a flat 5% and $0.30. Learn more about how DonorDock funds Online Donations here.
🙋🏼♀️ Why is it helpful for the Donor to cover the processing fees?
Covering fees on donations is often viewed as a beneficial practice for both donors and your non-profit organization. When donors choose to cover processing fees, this helps ensure that your nonprofit is receiving the intended donation and thus maximizing the impact of their contribution.
Even more important, Donors appreciate transparency in how their contributions are used. By giving donors the option to cover the processing fees, donors can be confidant that their donation is going directly to your organization.
When a donation is received through a DonorDock giving page where the Donor elected to cover the fees, a message will appear in green next to the processing fee field that Donor covered fees on the gift details page.
🙋🏻♀️ What if we received the donation through a platform other than DonorDock? Can we still record on the gift that the Donor Covered the Fees?
Yes! As of 8/14/2023, when creating a gift manually in DonorDock, through an import, or through a Zapier integration, you may set that that the Donor Covered Fees when a donation was received outside of DonorDock Giving Pages.
If entering the gift manually, this will appear as a toggle on the gift creation slide-out that may be turned on if the donor covered the fees. If entering gifts in bulk through an import, you may have a column on your spreadsheet for Donor Covered Fees, with values of True (if fees were covered) or False (fees were not covered). When creating a zap in Zapier, one of the gift fields available will be a True or False confirmation if fees were covered in the outside tool being integrated.
🙋🏿♂️ Can we run a report to see which gifts had the Donors Covering Fees?
You bet! When creating a gift report in DonorDock, after the report has been run, you may click the columns icon in the top left of the report and check to add the column for Donor Covered Fees to your report. This column will show a value of True or False if the Donor elected to cover the processing fees on the donation.