The Amount field should reflect the amount the donor pays inclusive of credit card fees.
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Leigh Plott
If a donor pays the credit card processing fee it should be added to the amount of the donation. Tips should not be considered or added because that is a fee paid to Give Butter.
For example:
Your donor make a $100 donation. The processing fees associated with this gift are 8%, or $8. Essentially, your organization receives a gross donation of $108, net donation of $100.
How do you thank the donor and record this gift in your fundraising CRM?
You thank your donor for $108 (full gift amount). The accounting entry would be a credit to Contributions of $108, Debit to cash of $100, and Debit to Expense (bank charge or fundraising expense) of $8.
HINT: You ALWAYS record the TOTAL gift amount in your fundraising CRM (this would include GIve Butters Engage, the transaction log and any amount passed in the Amount field using a ZAP_. You can worry about the details of processing fees and such in your finance system.
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Roxanne Thurston
My clients love GiveButter - but right now, the donor receipts and reports are only half-baked.
They don't offer the tip option - they cover the fee. When a donor chooses to cover the processing fee, that full amount is their charitable gift - no spreading it around, it goes straight to our animals. But GiveButter's receipts only show the base donation, not the total amount charged. That means donors who covered the fee walk away with a receipt that understates what they actually gave.
That's not butter - that's a problem. Especially when it comes to their tax records and reduced or rejected matching gifts.
The fix is simple: let the transaction amount and the donor receipt reflect the full amount charged. Don't leave donors - or nonprofits - guessing what melted off the top.
This community has been asking for this for years across multiple threads. It's time to spread the love all the way to the receipt and transaction reports to include this fee that our donors are opting to cover.
Tammy Aramian
If you have your donations set for the donor to covering the fee, and/or the donor is providing GB with a tip, those charges are NOT deductible nor owed to your nonprofit. This is an established accounting and IRS issue and outside the control of GB. Source: I've been fundraising online since 2012 on 3 platforms prior to GB.
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Dan Newman
Tammy Aramian It's my understanding that if the donor is choosing to cover the fees, then that
is
deductible (see, for example, https://bloomerang.com/blog/ask-an-expert-are-payment-processing-fees-deductible-by-the-donor/). It's true that GB tips wouldn't be, since they're (in the eyes of the IRS) an unrelated payment to the donation, but in the fee scenario, the donor is simply "grossing up" their donation to cover an additional business expense for the organization. FWIW, all other receipts I've received from my donations to large, national nonprofits this year (who run on different platforms) all indicate that the full
amount, inclusive of fees, is deductible—GB is the outlier here in showing that only the base donation, and not the fee coverage, is deductible on the system-generated receipts.J
Jamie Ribisi-Braley
Absolutely!! This is how fundraising accounting is done. We need to have this information come across in the record keeping.
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P Tyrone Smith
I have been SCREAMING at Givebutter about this. The current reporting system is making extra work for Database Administrators and Finance/Business Departments
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Leigh Plott
This really should be a priority for Give Butter outside of a voting system to ensure accurate data is being provided to your nonprofit customers.