Transaction costs
Boost conversion by encouraging supporters to cover transaction costs.
During their donation, you can present supporters with the option to cover the transaction costs associated with the donation they're making. When a supporter elects to cover transaction costs, they donate an additional amount that approximately covers the Fundraise Up platform fees and the payment processing fees charged by Stripe or PayPal.
Cost coverage modes
When you open the Transaction costs section of your campaign settings, there are five cost covering modes that can be configured — they are described below.
- Adaptive cost coverage: this fee covering mode uses AI to determine when a supporter should be prompted to cover transaction costs. By using AI to learn about supporters who are most likely to cover transaction costs, this approach optimizes conversion.
While the goal of some other fee covering models is to maximize the number of donations with cost coverage, the objective of our adaptive cost coverage is to increase revenue output, even if fewer supporters ultimately cover transaction costs.
Adaptive cost coverage is our recommended mode for transaction costs, and it is enabled by default in newly-created campaigns.
From the blog: The Science Behind Adaptive Cost Coverage - Show and preselect the option to cover costs: in this mode, the option to cover transaction costs is displayed to a supporter and is selected by default. If you cannot use the Adaptive cost coverage option for some reason, this is our recommended alternative. When the option to cover costs is preselected, a majority of supporters will opt to cover transaction costs.
- Show the option to cover costs: when this mode is enabled, a supporter is shown the option to cover transaction costs, but it is not preselected.
- Require that donors cover costs: when this mode is enabled, a supporter’s total donation amount will include the additional amount required to cover the donation’s transaction fees.
- Hide the option to cover costs: when this mode is enabled, supporters are not shown the option to cover transaction costs. The net donation amount that your organization receives is the supporter’s donation amount minus the fees assessed by Stripe and Fundraise Up. We do not recommend using this setting for typical implementations.
Tax deductibility
The tax deductibility of a supporter’s donation extends to the transaction fees covered by the supporter. This is because the supporter is simply increasing the amount of their donation. It is as if the supporter is making a second “cost of business” donation. The supporter’s donation receipt reflects the total donation amount, including the fees they covered.
Reconciliation
For accounting purposes, you may want to track the fees assessed on donations, even if they are covered by supporters. To accomplish this, you can use the Exports feature to create a report that includes fee amounts, or sync the fee information to a connected app using Fundraise Up’s built-in integrations.
Below are the available fields and properties related to cost coverage.
| Export field | Integration property |
|---|---|
| Converted Donation Amount Before Fees Covered Option ([account currency]) | Converted amount ([account currency]) before fees covered |
| Donation Amount Before Fees Covered | Amount before fees covered |
| Converted Payment Processing Fee ([account currency]) | converted payment processing fee ([account currency]) |
| Payment Processing Fee | payment processing fee |
| Payment Processing Fee Currency | payment processing fee currency |
| Converted Platform Fee ([account currency]) | converted platform fee [account currency] |
| Donation Platform Fee | platform fee |
| Donation Platform Fee Currency | platform fee currency |
| Refunded Platform Fee | refunded platform fee |
| Supporter Covered Fee | supporter covered fee |
Cost coverage information can also be sent to other apps and services using the JavaScript API. Learn more →
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