Enabling Seamless Donation Processing with ChargeOn for Non-Profit Organization
Introduction:
The client is a globally recognized non-profit focused on improving health, education, and economic development in underserved regions across Asia and Africa. Operating through multiple specialized agencies, they serve a diverse donor base spanning continents, with a strong emphasis on equity, inclusivity, and impact.
As their reach grew, they saw the need to modernize donation systems, especially to support recurring donations, offer donor self-service, and streamline transaction reconciliation. These efforts were driven by a commitment to operational efficiency, data security, and financial transparency at scale.
Reason for Collaboration:
Their team recognized the increasing friction in their donation management workflows, but weren’t equipped with the right solution to address it. Donors, especially recurring contributors, faced inconsistent experiences. The internal team also struggled with siloed tools, limited visibility into transactions, and no support for secure tokenized payments. Real-time reporting was lacking, making financial reconciliation both delayed and error-prone.
They were seeking a strategic partner who could help them in identifying and implementing the right solution. They reached out to our team, where we recommended a combined implementation of ChargeOn and Experience Cloud to modernize the donation infrastructure, enhance donor self-service, and unify backend operations.
Challenges:
1. Limited Guest Checkout and Online Donation Options:
The organization didn’t have a public-facing page where donors could securely contribute using a card or bank transfer, especially as a guest. Most payments were collected manually, which made the process slow and frustrating for both donors and staff.
2. Fragmented Payment Processing and Manual Reconciliation:
Card payments and ACH transfers were handled on separate platforms, with no unified reporting. The finance team had to manually track batch numbers, settlement dates, and totals, making monthly reconciliation time-consuming and prone to mistakes at times.
3. Recurring Donation Migration from Legacy Platforms:
The client was shifting from legacy systems like Paragon and EveryAction to Stripe and Salesforce. They were worried about losing donor data, dealing with failed payments, or experiencing downtime, mostly when dealing with sensitive recurring transactions.
4. Lack of Automated Communication and Donor Acknowledgments:
Donors weren’t receiving timely updates when payments succeeded, failed, or were about to renew. The absence of these touchpoints led to reduced donor confidence and a rise in unnecessary support queries.
5. Absence of Real-Time Payment Visibility and Reporting for Donor Teams:
The donor management team had no way to quickly view payment activity in Salesforce. They couldn’t easily see which payments failed, what was coming up for renewal, or the history tied to each donor, slowing down response time and donor engagement.
Solutions:
We integrated Salesforce Experience Cloud and ChargeOn to deliver a secure, self-service donation portal, automate donor communications, enable real-time reporting via Salesforce dashboards. Alongside, our expert also phased a tokenized migration from legacy systems to Stripe Integration and Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud.
1. Experience Cloud Site with Guest Payment Capability:
We created a secure public site using Salesforce Experience Cloud, where donors could easily make one-time or recurring donations, using cards, bank transfers, or e-checks, even without logging in. This enhanced both accessibility and ease of use for donors.
2. Batch-Level Reporting and Reconciliation Support:
We integrated ChargeOn to generate detailed reports that group transactions by batch. These reports now show key details like batch numbers, settlement dates, and transaction types. Also, these reports simplify the reconciliation of donations for the finance team, keeping them audit-ready.
3. Phased Migration Plan with Tokenization Support:
To move recurring donations from older systems like Paragon and EveryAction, we followed a phased approach. We also used tokenization, so sensitive card data was securely transferred, without donors needing to re-enter their payment information.
4. Automated Email Notifications Using Custom Templates:
We configured ChargeOn to send personalized emails at key moments like when a donation is successful, when a card payment fails, or when a recurring payment is coming up. This improved transparency for donors and reduced the need for manual follow-ups.
5. Real-Time Dashboards and Transaction History for Donor Teams:
Our experts built easy-to-use Salesforce dashboards that pull in live payment data from ChargeOn. Now, the fundraising team can instantly see donor activity, failed or refunded payments, and what’s scheduled next, right inside their Salesforce setup.
Benefits:
- Improvement in guest and recurring donation success rate
- Centralized visibility into donor payments within Salesforce
- Reduced reconciliation time with automated batch-level reporting
- Secured and scalable tokenized gateway migration
- Seamless integration with NPC custom data models
