Democracy in Action (DIA)

Vendor Site: www.democracyinaction.org
Example Client: www.reformohionow.org

Update 6/06: Democracy in Action has changed and substantially increased their pricing. Their least expensive option is now $100/month for a package that combines donations with email blasting, a constituent database, and more. This price point takes them beyond the scope of this report.

For those who need an affordable and very customizable donation tool, Democracy in Action is a great choice. It’s an even better choice for those who are looking to combine their constituent database, email functionality, and more with in a single tool. A self-serve administration interface allows organizations to set up their own account and make any needed changes down the road. However, the complexity of this setup process means it may not be the best option for those without technology expertise.

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

• $100 setup fee
• Monthly fee of $15/month (for up to 3000 donors/supporters in the database; $25 for up to 25,000)
• If the organization uses DIA’s merchant account, they are charged $0.40 per donation plus 3% of the donated amount
• Organizations can also 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. These fees include the gateway fee even if the organization uses their own merchant account

Merchant Account: Either

• Organizations can use either their own merchant account or DIA’s
• If the organization is using their own merchant account, the charge on the donor’s credit card will be shown in the organization’s name
• If using DIA’s merchant account, the charge will show up on the donor’s credit card as made to “Democracy in Action”

Company Background: Good

• Nonprofit organization that provides an online tool centered on an online database. They provide integrated features to support donations, emailing, registration and ticketing, product sales, petitions, scorecards, website content, and more
• They work primarily with 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations and political candidates. Their mission focuses on progressive and left-leaning organizations; they may decline to work with clients who depart too far from this focus (for example, an organization working against gay rights)
• They started taking online payments in 2003
• They have more than 200 clients

Setup and Support: Acceptable

• DIA is essentially self-service. DIA staff will create a basic template based on the organization’s current website, but then each organization sets up their donation form on their own
• The setup tools offer impressive functionality and control to the organization, but it is quite complex. No coding is required for a basic setup, but configuration will need to be done by someone with a technical bent. Advanced customization requires substantial HTML skills
• Support is available via phone and email for unusual difficulties; the expectation is that organizations will primarily use the administration tools and documentation to help themselves
• Feedback in regard to DIA customer service was mixed. While several found the service to be excellent, a few reported that their responses to questions are sporadic and occasionally not helpful
• One customer commented that DIA releases updates to the product in a manner that can on occasion break functionality on client websites without prior warning.

Donation Form Appearance: Excellent

• The donation form is completely tailored to the website, including the navigation, colors, and fonts. Integration is sophisticated and complete
• The standard donation form is very clean, friendly, and well-designed
• They do not support premiums
• The donation form can be hosted on the organization’s server, if the server has a SSL certificate

Donation Form Flexibility: Excellent

• Up to 150 custom fields can be added to support tributes, programs, custom needs, or whatever the organization desires
• Organizations can have as many donation forms as desired – for instance, to support different campaigns
• DIA allows organizations to update the full HTML of each page if desired – for instance to completely change the layout of a form

Payment Processing: Excellent

• Commonly process Visa, Master Card, American Express and Discover
• They can process credit cards issued by banks outside North America.
• They support recurring donations as a standard feature, but do not support eChecks
• Fraud prevention is a strength; they do a number of automatic and manual checks to try to flag and investigate anomalies
• They report their donation tool has had about 2 hours of planned downtime (in the middle of the night) and about two minutes unplanned downtime over the last two months

Reports & Data: Good

• A web-based administrative interface allows organizations to view donor information, see standard reports, and write custom queries
• Month-to-month or year-to-year comparisons are not available
• The data can be downloaded into a CSV text file; no customization of this file is available
• Data is available in an XML format for organizations who would like to build an automatic feed from the donation tool to an external database

Money Distribution: Good

• If the organization is using their own merchant account, money is deposited directly into the organization’s merchant account within a few days after donation
• The donated money is mailed to the organization once a month if they are using the DIA merchant account