Accepting Checks for Online Donations

How often do we hear the phrase “more is better” on any given day?  Everywhere we go, someone is offering us more.  More selection, more food, more minutes, more savings, more, more, more.  If people are offering us more, then more surely must be better.

It’s precisely this philosophy that leads to some pretty poor decisions when it comes to e-Commerce.  When setting up your online store, it generally is a good idea to have more payment options.  The better to accept customers money with.  Sometimes, however, there are exceptions.

In the case of accepting donations online, less is better.  Imagine this scenario – you have lots of money, and you want to give some away.  You go to your favorite organization’s website, and you see a button to Donate Now.  “Alright!”, you think, “that’s just what I was looking for.”

You click the button, and fill out the details on the donation form.  At the very end, the form asks you how you will be paying.  You select “Check” from the payment options, because you don’t feel like fishing through your wallet for your Credit Card at the moment.  A message appears telling you where to send your check, you receive a friendly Invoice reminding you to send your donation in.  You get up from your desk to go get your checkbook, and you remember its trash night, so you start to take the trash out.  Midway through, your daughter asks you to read her a book about Billy the Bunny.

Before you know it, it’s a week later and you’ve totally forgotten that you never sent that check to your favorite organization.  Meanwhile, your favorite organization has an open “invoice” for your donation.  They trust you, but now they are in the awkward situation of having to send you a “friendly reminder” to please pay your stated donation.

Clearly, this example has turned into a messy situation.  Our fictitious character never intended to mislead his/her favorite organization, yet the organization sits in limbo.

The best way out of this type of situation is to never get into it in the first place.  Choosing to only accept Credit Card payments for their Online Donations would have saved this organization a good deal of effort and lost money.  In this case, forgetting to send the money becomes a non-issue.

Considering payment options for Online Donations is a time when saying “No” to that “more, more, more” impulse is beneficial.

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