Outreach project

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Hello everyone,

For sometime now our church has been sponsoring a ministry to the service men and women in iraq. You can see details on my churches website, but the basic idea is get food, and personal products that can't be found readily oversees and send them along with a pocket sized Camouflaged colored bible and some stationary and send them to troops in the bases in Iraq. Today I spent two hours (along with a couple other people from my church) filling out customs forms for nearly 90 boxes to be sent. One lady asked what was in all those boxes and when I told her she asked if they could be purchased online (uh oh the gears in my head are starting to turn). That got me thinking why not put a donation button online. So I put it out to you the members of this forum.
What are the pros and cons of having a donation button on your website for a service project?
What service would you use to do it?

[JackWolfgang]

What are the pros and cons of having a donation button on your website for a service project?

I've never done anything like this, but I am going to take a blind stab at pros and cons:

Pros:
Might get donations
Might get more than you could ask or imagine

Cons:
Recordkeeping
Getting the Money
Proving to People that your organization is trustworthy

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Jack,

Let me address a couple of your cons for both the record keeping and getting the money problems if you set up an account with say Paypal and set the price of an item to whatever you wanted the donation price to be you would have a professional company( I only used PayPal as an example for those of you that hate it sorry) doing the money handling and the people would feel at least a small amount of security. As for trying to make yourself look trustworthy I don't really know. Thanks for the input.

[flutem3]

Hello everyone,

For sometime now our church has been sponsoring a ministry to the service men and women in Iraq.
What are the pros and cons of having a donation button on your website for a service project?
What service would you use to do it?

Hi, Kyle,

I looked at your page about sending stuff. You have a typo on the word, support, in the heading. And it is Beanie Babies instead of Bennie.

Now, I think there are some considerations other than bookkeeping. After some money is acquired, who is going to be the person to spend it wisely, package the stuff properly, get the papers it needs, and get the package (s) sent? Is this going to be an ongoing project? If so, it would need a project leader who would, over time, be responsible for the above.

I think you would get your greatest response if you accept Visa, Master Card, and PayPal. People who have cards usually have one of the three.

Is this set up so that the money can be deducted from their taxes? What kind of receipt will they be getting to prove they gave the money? Since this is through the church, I am assuming you are already classified the kind of organization a person can give money to and deduct it from taxes. Personally, I think if a person gives money, he/she should not receive relief of the taxes because it just reduces the amount of taxes paid overall. But that is another issue.

Go for it!!

Carol

[JackWolfgang]

Is this set up so that the money can be deducted from their taxes? What kind of receipt will they be getting to prove they gave the money? Since this is through the church, I am assuming you are already classified the kind of organization a person can give money to and deduct it from taxes. Personally, I think if a person gives money, he/she should not receive relief of the taxes because it just reduces the amount of taxes paid overall. But that is another issue.

That's the "Recordkeeping Con" I mentioned. There are IRS rules in providing documentation for gifts, or you will end up providing a reciept for every gift.

[Faithhb_lutheran]

With the PayPal option you wouldn't be able to provide people with a charitable gift receipt so that could hinder usage.

Carol,

We already have a project manager for this. Thanks for the typos.

One last question you mentioned using visa and mastercard so,

What system for credit card processing would you recommend?

[flutem3]

Kyle,

I asked your question of the people on UMConnect. The following answer is a good one so I am sharing it with you. The church in question is the largest UMC in Michigan which has 3500 members if that makes any difference. Mary wrote:

"It is my understanding that PayPal charges 2.9% of the amount of the transaction plus 30 cents per transaction. That is $1.03 for a $25 transaction. I'm not sure if that is only for credit/debit card transactions or if it is the same cost for EFT from bank accounts as well. I thought that charge applied even if both the sender and the church had PayPal accounts, but I may be wrong about that.

Our finance committee has been investigating things like this for on-line donations and is concerned about the cost of credit card and debit card transactions, not just via PayPal but via other online systems as well. If the donation is new money, then the fee seems worth paying. But if the donation is money we would have gotten anyway, the fee is a significant additional cost to the church.

That's just my two cents worth. We aren't currently doing any online registration, so we don't have people paying for things online. We are probably going to set up online donation in the next couple of weeks but only via EFT from bank accounts so we can avoid the fees for credit/debit cards."

I thought you might like the fact that you have use of her finance committee's work as well.

Carol

[flutem3]

Kyle,

Here is another answer to the question about card processing.

"We use Vancoservices to process both EFT and credit card charges.

For EFT, you receive the full amount of the donation, but pay a small fee of about 45 cents per transaction (I'm estimating, not looking up that detail!). For Credit cards, the credit card company takes 2.75 % (most cards). I think American Express takes 3.0%. Vanco also takes the small processing fee.

For our current pledgers (including myself) we asked that they prayerfully consider raising their pledge slightly to account for the credit card fee. Just about everyone did that. We credit the giver with the full amount of the transaction.

So note that Vanco Services can do both EFT AND Credit Card charges. We have been using them almost a year now and did have an auction fund raiser where we ran almost $6000 through their credit card processing system.

If anyone wants to ask about Vanco Services, please email me directly. I'll be happy to recommend them and discuss how we use their system.

Dave"

I am including the entire answer so you can get a better idea of what they are doing. This is a fascinating topic. I imagine you will find something workable from somebody.

Carol

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Carol,

Thanks for that answer. I knew that PayPal among others does charge a little high of a price for CC processing and the post you copied had the right idea these type of projects have to be geared at new money not members or current participates that would of given anyway. again thanks for the help.

[flutem3]

Carol,

Thanks for that answer. I knew that PayPal among others does charge a little high of a price for CC processing and the post you copied had the right idea these type of projects have to be geared at new money not members or current participates that would of given anyway. again thanks for the help.

Hi, Kyle,

Those answers made sense to me as well. I knew that at least some of the people on UMConnect had considered this issue before. If there is any other kind of feedback you need, let me know. I will see what other information they have stored in their collective brains.

Take care,

Carol