We started using credit cards this year. It has really helped boost our silent auction proceeds but it is expensive. We set it up through the bank that has our bank accounts. The were not easy to work with. We decided to purchase our own credit card terminal as it should pay for itself in 18 months. We got it on ebay much cheaper than purchasing it through the bank. Just make sure that you get the one that's compatible with the company that does your processing.
We leave a space for credit card numbers and signatures on the bottom of every flyer we send out that sells something (food preorders, extracurricular class fees, etc). Then our treasurer punches in the transaction later. We also do this at our silent auctions and our carnival and other events. It is more expensive to do it this way but we don't have access to a phone line at these events.
We use it for all our fundraisers except our Scholastic Book Fair - we use their credit card processing then. We are going to use it for our pledge drive next year and allow people to pay their pledges in installments - we will bill them monthly.
If you have a big school and do a lot of fundraising it does seem to be worth it.
For the Book Fair, Scholastic's use of MC/Visa is great, and I think that it helps our sales substantially (and Scholastic gives you a little bonus for using it).
For our auction, we take MC/Visa. The school has a merchant account because they take MC and Visa for capital campaign, so the school just processes all the credit card stuff and transferst the funds to the parent group accoutn once the bank charges clear (I think last year the charges amounted to about 2%).
I didn't find it hard to do, because we only have the credit card available at the end of the event during auction check-out, so there wasn't a long period of time that the person authorized to process credit cards had to be available.
We got set up to handle Visa and MC through a local guy, though I did compare his fees with some of the bigger outfits. I think he ate some of his profit because he was a parent in our school.
We did it primarily for our December scrip sale, and I believe it helped volume, but we have no way to prove it. It does, as you know, eat into your profits, however. We found that, when all was computed, we paid about 2% of all our profits back as fees (that % includes the impact of scrip sales made by check, so if we looked only at cc sales, the fee percentage would be even higher).
For month-to-month scrip sales, we do not accept credit cards. It's just too much hassle for the little amount of volume we've been doing each month.
Here are some of the fees you need to research:
one time set up fee: $0 - $100
monthly statement fee: $10
Visa/MC "discount rate" on a $100 transaction: 1.59% - 2.5% (this can vary lots and can really eat into your scrip profits on vendors with low profit percentages)
Visa/MC "per transaction" fee: $.05 - $.30
ACH Daily Batch fee: $0 - $.20
Monthly minimum fee: $0 - $15
Equipment Rental fee: included - $14 on up
Equipment Purchase: $300 on up
You will pay less per transaction if you can physically swipe the credit card into an electronic reader, but we have never successfully done that. Usually, you have the cc number written down and then key it in to the cc terminal at one time. The CC company charges you more for that since the risk of fraud is higher (you don't actually have the card in your hand).
We use Scholastic for our book fair, and they provide the merchant account, not us.
At another school, we got set up to accept credit cards for our auction. To me, that's essential since you are hoping people spend lots of money.
This might sound confusing, but the only hard part is really understanding what fees you are going to pay BEFORE you contract. We found we got charged minimums from AMEx and Discover even though we did not ask our guy to set us up with those cards - he said he did it because he "always does". You need to be vigilant, but the benefits can definately be worth the extra work.
Hi Ellen-
We do not use credit cards. I think it would be really difficult as a fundraiser to have to constantly be available to process the credit cards. In my opinion it would make that job as chairperson that much more difficult. I do not know the ramifications about the fees involved or incurred by doing this though and if anyone out there does use credit cards, I would love to hear how the process works too.
HI all - This is my first question to all of you - I've been a lurker for a long time and found lots of great info.
Do any of your parent organizations accept credit cards for fundraising activities? If so, can you point me to some good vendors? I use ProPay for my own home business and am going to check with them, but figured I'd see what other people use as well.
We're thinking of accepting credit cards for our book fair and possibly scrip program, but don't know if the fees would eat up the profits.
