The line at Starbucks stretched though the store and out onto the sidewalk.  Impatient and agitated Customers grumbled loudly.  I patiently waited my turn in line, determined to see the cause of this holdup.

Finally, I placed my order and handed the cashier my credit card.  She shook her head and instead handed me a clipboard and a ballpoint pen.  “Sir, please complete the attached form with your credit card information”, she said as the grumbling in the restless line behind me intensified.

I vowed to never again darken a Starbuck’s door.

Of course, this story is pure fiction.  In reality, Starbucks has a point-of-sale payment system –with myriad payment options –that is quick, easy and frictionless for the customer. Without it they wouldn’t be the customer-satisfying behemoth they are.

Contrast this with the kludgy,  square peg, round hold approach that many nonprofits use to make point-of-sale credit card donations as difficult and frustrating for donors as possible.

Nowhere is this problem more poignant –and ultimately self-limiting—than when it comes to Face-to-Face solicitation.  Although the intricacies of payment systems may seem beyond most fundraisers’ need-to-know, those who deal with in-person solicitation where payment details are taken at sign-up need to get on top of this and start demanding some solutions.

Let me explain.

As you’ll see in the Target Analytics chart below F2F canvassing accounts for nearly two-thirds of all the direct acquisition of recurring donors.

BUT… currently a large percentage of these interactions and transactions require the fundraiser and the donor to manually enter in payment details.    In short, these are “Starbucks-with-a-clipboard” systems.

And yet, there are some charities that do collect payment like Starbucks, your grocery store, your drugstore, your school’s book sale fundraiser… via a mobile card reader/swiper.

This black swan exists.  it isn’t theoretical or impossible to have every interaction be smoother, friendlier and take less time.  This last element – time – should get everybody involved within the F2F channel focused on joining these rare black swans.  If the notion of a good donor and canvasser experience don’t matter enough to force change then “Time” alone –the factor that directly equates to productivity and which directly equates to money– should.

What stands in the way?  Motivation or incentive perhaps, both for the charity and the F2F agency.  After all, if things are “working”, why change?

Currently, the “normal” process of  manual entry of donor details is done either on a “native” form provided by the agency or a web form provided by the charity.   The latter is, in effect, the online giving page form (or some manifestation of it).  In both cases, it amounts to a square peg for a round hole – retrofitting a “card not present” form and user experience and process flow for an in-person, “card present” dynamic.

This is the equivalent of an online giving page  prominently featuring a mailing address on it instructing donors to mail in the check – the retrofitting of the existing channel (online) to the new one (postal mail).

The negative, real-world effects of a nonprofit requiring the use of its web-based, forms (or the vendors’ native, manual entry form) process for face-to-face donations should not be underestimated.

• Costs of solicitation go up;
• Donor satisfaction –a measure of long-term, monthly payment, goes down;
• Manual entry of payment information opens your fundraising activity up to greater risk of stolen card details.
• The ROI of many F2F programs is not anywhere close to where it needs to be.

Why do we let this stand when all around us –in virtually every other phase of our lives—ease-of-payment is not an issue?

Here are the reasons I’ve gleaned from interviewing F2F firms and their nonprofit clients.

• The retrofitting of a “card not present” system to a “card present” process has one large benefit – it already exists.  Rather than demand a change to the proper application retrofitting is seen as” good enough.” (I challenge anybody to go out and canvass for two days in the winter in a cold market. Day one you use mobile card reader technology.  Day Two you use a manual “clipboard” form.  The days have to be sequenced this way because if we reversed them, you’d be unlikely to show up for Day Two.  Doing it this way you’ll be on a mission, a fix- it- now crusade to stop the insanity of a hideous (by comparison) user experience.)
• Poor Basic Payment Technology. Most nonprofits rely on the payment processing systems put in place by their CRM vendors.  Most of these systems are rudimentary, insular and not given to easy integration with more advanced systems capable of using credit card readers and tablets and returning donor information directly back to the organization’s CRM.
• Wrong Technology. When it comes to payment processing the principal goal of all CRMs and payment processors is the prevention of fraud and misuse of credit cards.  To that end all web-based systems are, for obvious reasons, based on a ‘card not present’ scenario.  That is, the payment protocol is designed to make sure the card is being used by its true owner.  Thus, the need to fill the online form with the proper information and all the fraud prevention necessary in that environment – e.g. CAPTCHA features.

BUT…the ‘card not present’ phenomenon does not exist when the donor is standing face-to-face with the solicitor and handing her his credit card to complete the donation.

Of course, the crude, self-defeating processes that many F2F operations have chosen to adopt are not isolated.  Similar “kludginess” exists with many on-line donation pages.  What should be troubling to any serious fundraiser is just how much her organization is losing because of this.

And even more troubling, just how many donors are being driven away as a result of this highly unsatisfying processes.  A lot!  How can I claim this?  I don’t have evidence you say, I haven’t run a test/control you say.   Which grocery store would you go to if one of them required you to manually fill in your credit card and the other had mobile processing?   Some things don’t require a test/control;  just application of the metaphor to walk a mile in those shoes.

We preach and preach and preach about donor experience.  Many a charity and many an agency extol the virtues of and claim commitment to the donor experience mantra.  And yet, in this relatively new, but growing and hugely impactful F2F channel we’ve made choices that run directly counter to those ambitions and claims.

This is a choice we’ve made.  Plain and simple. Even though we know the technology exists to truly enhance donor experience and satisfaction –and we bear witness to it in our everyday life as consumers– we tolerate something far inferior when it comes to donor transactions

Donor experience isn’t soft and fuzzy.   This is about raising more money.  We’ve seen huge increases in online form conversion by improving the user experience.   But when it comes to F2F it seems “good enough” and inertia wins the day.

We reap what we sow.  Needless to say, those organizations who break through the inertia and demand more than the “good enough” systems will reap much, much more.   then we’ll all reap what we sow it’s just that the black swans will reap much, much more of it.

Are you operating your F2F program with a “Starbucks-With-A-Clipboard” system?

Roger

P.S.  Coming Attractions: Google is undertaking its biggest search changes in years while Facebook will be flooded with 2020 election ads and traffic.   If you use either to help build or grow your audiences then don’t miss Nick’s three-part series on digital audience building starting Monday, November 4.