Now that Breeze offers Donor Covered Fees, you may be wondering how this will effect pledges. When donors opt to increase their giving, to cover the fee, they receive credit for the full amount they gave. As they always have, when the church was covering the fee, the donor still received full credit for the gross amount given.
If a donor who has made a pledge decides to cover their fees when giving online, it is expected that the total amount paid in the pledge will reflect more than what they initially pledged.
Let's look at this example:
Let's imagine that someone pledged $100 total to the church as part of the 2021 Pledge Campaign.
- If they decide to pay the $100 all at one time by credit card, and opted to cover the fees, their pledge will appear to show that they had a total paid of $103.30.
($3.30 paid in fees) - If this same person decided to pay $5 every other week by credit card, and opted to cover the fees, their pledge will appear to show that they had a total paid of $108.90.
($0.45 per donation in fees)
Communication is Important
You will want to make sure that you communicate this with your donors, so that they understand that the pledge summary displays the total paid amount and does not take into account if they have opted to cover the fees. This means, if a donor is covering the transaction fees, the total amount they have pledged may appear to be met (or paid in full), before it really is. As the fees are being credited to amount paid.
Communicating about this with your pledgers could be done within an email you send to all of your pledgers, within your Statements, or a letter you send out to your pledgers.