GivenGain eTribuo

Vendor Site: www.givengain.com
Example Client: www.inspire.org.uk/

GivenGain offers extensive support to organizations and donors outside North America, including recurring donations and eChecks from donors in many countries and currencies, making it worth the higher price tag if worldwide support is a priority. Their additional content management and email functionalities may be of interest to organizations looking to combine all these functions under one roof.

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

• $199 setup fee (plus an additional optional $199 to customize the form to your website’s navigation and look)
• Monthly fee of $45.95
• 5% of the donated amount for new customers with no donation track record or other verified payment history; fees range down to 2.5% for established customers

Merchant Account: Vendor’s

• The organization will use GivenGain’s merchant account
• The charge on the donor’s credit card shows that it was made to “Given Gain: ” and then the organization’s name

Company Background: Excellent

• Private company that started taking donations in 2001, based in UK, Switzerland and South Africa
• They provide integrated online payment processing, email, and content management tools
• They report that the company is profitable, and the online payment functionality is self-supporting
• They have about 300 clients and more than 10 employees
• The vast majority of clients of who can be found through a search on “GivenGain” on the web are based in South Africa

Setup and Support: Excellent

• GivenGain staff will setup the donation form based on the organization’s needs in about 2 days
• Small changes to the setup can be made free of charge, but substantial changes require a new $199 setup charge
• Support is available via phone and email
• Several current customers 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
• The standard donation form is very clean, friendly, and well-designed
• A sizable GivenGain logo appears on the form; it is removable if the organization feels strongly about it

Donation Form Flexibility: Good

• As of October 2005, GivenGain can add custom fields “on request.” They report that they will release the functionality to allow customers to add any number or kind of customer fields in November 2005
• They do not currently support tributes, but plan to release this functionality in the next couple of months
• It’s possible to setup multiple donation forms – for instance, to go with different campaigns

Payment Processing: Good

• Commonly process Visa, Master Card, and Discover, and can process American Express by request
• They can process credit cards issued by banks worldwide
• They support single or recurring donations in US Dollar, Pound Sterling, Euro, Canadian Dollar or South African Rand by default. Any other major currency can be added upon request
• They support recurring donations as a standard feature. They handle the communication process with the donor as well – they send emails to let the donor know that their card will be charged, and follow up on credit cards that will expire
• They support eChecks for donors in the UK and Europe but not in the United States
• CSV code credit card checks are available
• They report that they had no planned downtime and only 15 minutes of unplanned downtime in the last six months

Reports & Data: Excellent

• A web-based administrative interface allows organizations to view basic donor information
• Reports are extensive but somewhat less-than-intuitive to use
• The data can be downloaded into a CSV text file; it is possible to customize this file
• GivenGain offers several methods to access data programmatically (i.e. various levels of integration with many other databases; custom SQL queries for larger customers)

Money Distribution: Excellent

• Money is transferred directly into the organization’s bank account as often as every business day, after it is received by GivenGain. It typically takes anywhere from a couple days to up to a month for GivenGain to receive the money, depending on what country the donor is in and what payment method was used