CharityWeb

Vendor Site: www.charityweb.net
Example Client: www.makeawish.org

Half an online donation tool and half a web-development shop with a specialty in payment processing, CharityWeb offers custom tailored donation solutions (as well as solutions for membership registration, events, and products). With high setup fees and a merchant account required, CharityWeb is not for organizations just getting started with online donations, but it could be a great choice for those ready to invest in a custom donation solution.

Fees and Transaction Costs
Setup Fees: High Fees When Few Donations: High Fees When Many Donations: Medium

• $1295 setup fee
• Monthly fee of $59/month (this includes the payment gateway fee)
• $0.79 per donation
• Organizations must use their own merchant account. Pricing for merchant accounts vary, but ranges from about 3.3% per transaction to $50/month and 2.1% per transaction. The $59/month fee includes the payment gateway fee
• They are happy to do custom programming for $100/hour
• Recurring donations are an additional $499 setup and $75/month

Merchant Account: Organization’s

• The organization must use their own merchant account
• The charge on the donor’s credit card will be shown in the organization’s name

Company Background: Good

• Private company that specializes in custom development of payment processing solutions
• They report that they also have an integrated email solution in beta testing that will be available in Spring 2006
• The company endorses “Peace, Love, and Life” as company values, and may decline to work with clients who they feel do not fit with these values (a representative gave “pro-gun, pro-abortion, or pro-war” organizations as an example of organizations)
• They started in 1997, and have three employees
• They have about 60 clients, including high-profile customers such as Idealist, Make A Wish, Young Life, and the Special Olympics

Setup and Support: Excellent

• CharityWeb staff will setup the donation form based on the organization’s needs in about three weeks
• Two hours of changes or custom programming are included in the monthly fee, which covers most routine changes; they are happy to make additional changes for $100/hour
• Support is available via phone and email; high volume clients are given a cell phone number as well
• The only current client that we were able to reach reported that the staff have been very responsive and helpful

Donation Form Appearance: Excellent

• The donation form is completely tailored to the website, including the navigation, colors, and fonts
• Their client forms are clean and professional looking, and include no CharityWeb branding

Donation Form Flexibility: Excellent

• Each form is completely custom designed for the organization, including custom coding as needed
• Any fields can be added to support tributes, programs, custom needs, or whatever the client desires

Payment Processing: Excellent

• They commonly process Visa, Master Card, American Express and Discover
• They can process credit cards issued by banks outside North America
• They support recurring donations for an additional $499 setup and $75/month. They provide tools to the organization to allow them to communicate with the recurring donors as necessary
• They support eChecks as a standard feature
• Fraud prevention is a strength – they do a number of automatic and manual checks to try to flag and investigate anomalies
• They report that they have had about 45 minutes of unscheduled downtime in the last six month; scheduled support is done about twice a year in the middle of the night

Reports & Data: Good

• A web-based administrative interface allows organizations to view basic donor information
• Month-to-month or year-to-year comparisons are not available
• The data can be downloaded into a CSV text file. Some customization of this file – such an a different field order or field names – could be included in the two hours of custom programming; additional customization could be done at an additional charge
• They have in the past set up automated processes via secure HTTP connections to programmatically synchronize CharityWeb data with separate donor databases

Money Distribution: Excellent

• Money is deposited directly into the organization’s account within a few days after donation