We wanted to take a second to give you an update on Clover Donations (our brand new product we’ve been working on for the past few months). We announced it a little while ago, and since then we’ve posted a few followups answering questions and (hopefully) giving a little clarity about what the product will actually look and function like.
Well, here’s our newest update: We’re still working on it.
I know that’s not the update many of you were hoping for, but it’s the best we can do right now! A lot of you have been emailing, commenting and calling, looking for a release date, but the most we can say is “soon”.
One of the biggest hiccups we’ve had has been how to balance the sheer amount of features we are offering, while still providing an easy, intuitive, and non-overwhelming interface. For example, we were about 90% done with the first iteration of our Form Editor and we decided to start over because we felt pretty strongly that it was too confusing for a non-techy person.
With this new version, we’re creating a “Simple Mode” and “Advanced Mode”. It allows us to make the design process incredibly easy for an average user, while still providing tons of power and customization for those who want more flexibility.
The Form Editor is just one of the many pieces of the Donation Center we’re creating, but this change is an example of our design process. Although it means more development hours, for us it’s the difference between making a good product and a great product.
So all this to say that we are still working hard on Clover Donations… It hasn’t launched as soon as we hoped, but it is already a lot better than it would have been if we forced it out in December like we had originally planned.
Thanks so much for your patience and support as we continue to work on our new product. If you can hang in there, this thing is going to be the absolute best way for your organization to accept donations online. Seriously.
If you have any more direct questions about Clover Donations (or Clover websites, for that matter), shoot us an email.
Here are some screen shots of what we’ve been working on:
We just added a few more social icons to the feature for you to use on your Clover website. Most prominent are the 2 Google+ icons we’ve added… They are in your Greenhouse Dashboard now, so check them out!
Posted on November 17th, 2011 under Company News by Jim with 6 comments.Hey everyone – thanks for all the feedback about Clover Donations so far. You’ve asked a lot of specific questions, and you’ve been patient for the past couple weeks! To be honest, the payment processing industry is one of the most convoluted industries we’ve ever ventured into. Please feel free to ask as many questions as you’d like about our new product… If something is unclear to you, it’s more than likely because it is actually confusing. And we will always do our best to answer your questions as directly as we possibly can!
Here are the answers for everything you’ve asked so far:
What is the price?
We’ve done everything we can to simplify our end of the price. We’ll charge a 1% fee for all transactions, and that’s it. You’ll also need a merchant account (which is kind of like a license that allows you to accept money online). We’re working with a company that provides merchant accounts at the lowest rate we could find anywhere (starting at 1.96% + $.25 per credit card transaction). They pass through their direct costs (the fees that the card companies and banks charge), so the final transaction fee varies, but it’s always the lowest you can get.
Also, the fee for a bank transfer is significantly less (0% + $.45), and this is one of the areas where many other companies (especially PayPal) make their money. PayPal prompts its users to enter their bank account info by calling it “getting verified”. Then they pull money from that bank account instead of using the credit card on file. And even though this costs them much less, they still charge their full rate.
Bottom line:
- When you take in a $100 donation from a credit card, you’ll pay Clover $1 and the merchant fees will be between $2 – $3 on average.
- When you take in a $100 donation from a bank transfer, you’ll pay Clover $1 and the merchant fees will be $.45.
Can the donor choose to pay the credit card fee?
For the initial version, we weren’t planning on having that as an option. But we think that’s a great feature and we’ll definitely consider adding it!
Can I use Clover Donations if I don’t have a website with Clover?
Yes! You can use Clover Donations with any website you have, or even if you don’t have a site. Everything is hosted on our secure servers, so you can simply link to your donation forms, or you can embed them in your site. We’ll also provide code to easily embed “donate now” buttons in most sites, as well as simple links to share your donation forms on social networks or over email.
How will this integrate with a Clover site?
If you have an existing Clover site, there will be lots of ways to link to your donation forms with Clover Donations. You’ll be able to add a “donation page”, which will create a customizable “donate now” button (similar to the launch button for a media player, calendar, photo album, etc.). You can also link directly to your forms with a text or picture link. We’re also working on an option to embed your donation form in your Clover site, rather than linking to it.
Will Clover Donations be available for customers outside of the US?
Unfortunately, the financial system (and the regulations for providing merchant accounts) vary widely from country to country. We will be working to find ways to provide Clover Donations to all our international customers, but for now, it will be limited to those in the US.
Can I accept money from donors outside the US?
Yes, you will be able to accept donations from almost every country. They will come out of your donor’s accounts in their currency, and be converted to US dollars when they’re deposited in yours. Additional fees will apply, and they vary by country. We’ll do our best to provide more detailed international pricing as soon as we can.
Can I use Clover Donations for event registrations?
There are ways to make your donation forms work for event registration, and we’ve made sure to put several specific features in place to make this work (things like allowing you to set specific pricing options, and giving you lots of control over wording on your forms and receipts). We plan on providing more features for event registrations in the future, though, because we want the solution to be great, rather than just ok.
Will there be a way to set up different pricing options for event registrations or for selling products?
Yes, you can set your own pricing options, and it should work well for events. However, because we’re not making a full e-commerce solution, you won’t be able to set options like “small t-shirt: $12″, “medium t-shirt: $15″, etc.
Can I run reports for donors? And use them for tax reporting?
A huge part of our solution is robust reporting and donor management and search abilities. This is where many other companies fall short (like PayPal), and what most sophisticated non-profits spend tons of money trying to accomplish. We also send automatic email receipts to your donors (which you can customize), which covers part of your tax reporting obligations. For end of the year reporting, you’ll most likely need to export your data so you can merge it with your records of everything that you’ve collected offline.
Can I export information to Quickbooks or Excel?
Most definitely. Our tools make it easy to export information for donors and transactions based on a specific search, a date range, or for all your data at once. For those of you that have existing donor records in other systems, we’ll even provide a way to add your own unique id’s to your data in Clover Donations to make reconciliation easier!
Will there be an option to not allow credit cards?
Yes. You can choose to accept credit cards, bank transfers, or both.
Is it possible to differentiate between debit cards and credit cards?
Unfortunately, no… at least, not at this time. Online transactions are very different than in-person transactions at a retail store, and as of now it’s not possible to differentiate debit vs credit transactions to only allow one or the other.
Is my card and bank information secure? Will Clover Donations be PCI certified?
We wouldn’t be much of a solution if we didn’t keep your information secure. We take security very seriously, and we’re also kinda geeks when it comes to encryption and privacy. Everything that happens on your donation forms and in the Donation Center is secured by SSL encryption, and is protected in many other ways. We’re also becoming PCI Level 1 certified, which is the highest level possible. Part of that certification is an ongoing audit by a recognized security agency, so our security measures will be proven and reliable.
One of the best things about this is that it means that you bear the smallest amount of liability and burden for security.
Are the fees different for bank transfers vs credit card transactions?
Yes. Bank account transfers (also called eCheck or ACH) have a much lower rate. You’ll still pay the 1% for Clover Donations, but the merchant account that our partner offers charges 0% + $.45. So for a $100 donation, you’ll pay $1 to Clover and $.45 for merchant fees.
Will there be a version for general e-commerce or a store that for-profit companies can use?
Right now, it’s only for donations (or giving, tithing, or whatever you call it). You don’t have to have a 501c3 or 501c6 status to sign up, though. And the price is the same regardless of your official non-profit status.
Will there be a way to link this with a form page on a Clover site?
At this point, our two products won’t be integrated in that way. But we have lots of plans for getting there in the future.
What are the fees for bounced checks and declined credit cards?
There are no fees for declined credit cards, but there is a fee for “insufficient funds” via a bank transfer. There is also a fee for something called a “charge back”, which is when someone pays with their card and then later disputes the charge with their credit card company. This is extremely rare when it comes to donations, so it’s not something to worry about too much. And the costs for these two items are pretty standard across the industry. When we have more information, we’ll provide it.
Will I be able to use my own existing merchant account if I have one?
Yes! We’re working on integrating our system with the major merchant account providers and gateways. If you have an existing merchant account that you’d like to use, and it’s through one of the providers we support, we’ll be able to set you up with no additional work.
How often will we get deposits to our bank account?
All your donations will be grouped together each day, and deposited on a rolling basis two days after they’re made. This is actually faster than the industry standard, which is 3 days (and can range up to 7 days with some companies).
Does Clover Donations come with a way to swipe cards in person?
Clover Donations is strictly an online tool for now, but our merchant account partner can set you up with all kinds of other solutions for credit card processing in house.
.
Hopefully that answers all the questions you’ve had up to this point. Feel free to keep the conversation open. And of course, as we get closer, we’ll explain more things in detail. We can’t wait for you all to try this thing out!
Posted on November 16th, 2011 under Company News by Ben with 26 comments.
Hey everyone -
Even though we’re in the midst of working on our new product (Clover Donations), we wanted to give you a heads up on our direction as a company. In the middle of all the excitement around Clover Donations, we also have big plans for Clover Sites.
Here’s a little background:
We launched Clover three and a half years ago, and a lot has changed since then. At the time, Facebook was mostly being used by kids, mobile browsing was more a theory than a reality, and the most cutting-edge technology for websites was Flash (which is what we built our sites on). We’ve worked hard to add a ton of features over those years, and The Greenhouse is still the most amazing website management tool out there.
Over the past three years, though, other technologies have eclipsed Flash (especially in the mobile world). As valuable new technologies have become available, we’ve integrated them into Clover alongside Flash. We’ve always pushed hard to be on the forefront of technology and design.
So we wanted to let you know that the next phase for us will be transitioning Clover to HTML5. Right now, many pieces of your site are in HTML in the background, but we’ll be recreating the parts that are in Flash so everything will be completely made in HTML.
What this means is that your full website (not just a mobile version of your site) will be available on an iPhone, iPad, or any other mobile device. There will also be lots of little improvements, like faster loading times, better accessibility for visually-impaired visitors, and new options to embed code in your site. And as always, we’re super excited to give you yet another upgrade for free.
Over the years, we’ve worked in dozens of different programming languages, and we’ve enjoyed making Clover Donations in HTML5 (as some of you may have noticed). Our primary concern has always been creating a great user experience, and we finally think HTML is ready to provide that for you.
This transition will probably be a long process, but we wanted to give you an idea of where we’re headed. We’re really excited about this next season of Clover. Stay tuned, and we’ll keep you updated as things progress.
Posted on November 14th, 2011 under Company News by Ben with 48 comments.Hey everyone-
Thanks for all your comments on our last post. We’re glad so many of you are as excited as we are about our new product, Clover Donations. We genuinely think this thing is going to be such a great tool for you and your organizations, and we’re working as hard as we can to bust this new product out.
Along with all the encouraging comments on the post, we received a handful of questions about pricing. Instead of answering each of the questions one-by-one, we thought it would be better (and faster) to chat openly about the pricing via video. Check it out:
Let us know if you have any more questions about pricing. As always, feel free to email us or even leave your questions on this post. And be sure to check out cloverdonations.com for more updates.
————————-
Update:
As of 11/16, we’ve answered each of your questions surrounding Clover Donations in a new blog post. Hope it helps!
Exciting news!
We wanted to tell all of you about our brand new product called Clover Donations. We are creating the easiest and most intuitive way for your organization to accept donations online. We’ve been plugging away super hard at this new product for a few months now, and we’re ready to tell the world about it.
Check out our announcement video below:
Many of you have been asking for a solution to online giving, and up to this point our recommendation has unfortunately been PayPal. We’ve decided to finally solve this problem and fix the gap in the church and non-profit industry in true Clover fashion. As easy and robust as it can possibly be.
Clover Donations will allow you to accept donations online. You will be able to accept money online from anywhere with an internet connection – whether from a computer, mobile phone or tablet… Your donors can give wherever they are.
You will also be able to accept all major credit cards as well as bank account transfers… with one-time gifts or automatic recurring donations. You can customize your donations forms for your organization, and even set up multiple different forms.
On top of simply accepting donations, you’re also going to want to manage things. We created a brand new tool called the Donation Center. The Donations Center gives you donation reporting, transaction control, and even donor management. Plus, it allows you to customize your forms and receipt emails. It’s designed specifically for churches and non-profits, so it should serve your needs much better than a generic payment processing company.
Pricing: If you know anything about the merchant service industry, you know that setting up the ability to take donations online is a beast of a task… You’d typically have to set up your own merchant account, gateway, and even find someone to create and host your online donation form, all with setup and monthly fees involved.
We really feel like this industry should be easier than that. We’re working closely with a great company called CashLinq to drastically simplify the process, and allow us to set up everything you need for just $10/month (with no setup fee!). Plus you get the Donation Center and access to our awesome customer service.
Launch Date: As we mention in the video, we are shooting really hard for the beginning of December to allow you guys to have this product before the typical ramp up for end of the year giving. Once we’re up and running, we’ll be sure to announce it all over the place so you can sign up and start accepting donations!
In the meantime, check out www.cloverdonations.com to read a little more about our new product. (We’ll have a full site coming later).
————————-
Updates:
There has been a couple of new posts after this initial announcement. He have a pricing update post, as well as answers for a bunch of FAQ’s. Check them out!
Excited to say that next week, for the first time, we’ll be sponsors at Catalyst One Day in Orange County! As most of you know, we’ve been sponsors of Catalyst East, West, Dallas, and now we’re very happy to be a part of Catalyst One Day near our headquarters in Southern California. Here’s some information on the One Day event at Saddleback Church!
Once again, we’d love to help out with some tickets, so we’ll be doing another giveaway! We will pick two winners and give them 2 tickets each. Here’s how you qualify:
1. Must be willing to take care of your own travel to Orange County, CA. This contest is not limited to locals, but you’ve gotta get yourself to So Cal and handle your own food and lodging. We’re simply taking care of your One Day tickets.
2. Must Re-Tweet the following phrase:
@cloversites is giving away 4 tickets to #CatOneDay. Go here for more details: http://bit.ly/p0bl5r
Or, if not on Twitter comment “Hey Clover – I want to go to Catalyst One Day!” on this post off our Facebook page.
Like last time, we’ll do a drawing and announce it on our blog (and Twitter and Facebook). We’ll announce it at 12PM Pacific on Monday (October 24th). We’ll be sure to contact the winners asap, and arrange getting your tickets to you!
Good luck!
Posted on October 19th, 2011 under Company News by Wes with no comments.Happy Monday. As of today, every Clover website comes with the ability to have photo pages.
We’re super excited to get this new feature to you guys, and thank you for your patience as we tried to get this feature just right. There are a ton of photo players online, but it’s hard to find one that does everything perfectly… We’re hoping the whole experience of your new Clover photo page (from creation to viewing) is about as good as it gets. Here’s some quick features:
Each photo gallery:
There are a ton more features, but you have to check it out for yourselves. Try it out on your Clover website’s Greenhouse, or demo it here.
For those of you that want a walkthrough of this new feature, check this out:
Posted on August 1st, 2011 under Company News by Jim with 40 comments.
You read that correctly.
In honor of the launch of our brand new Photo Page, we are paying out 100% more for every referral to Clover that purchases a Clover website for the month of August. We felt this would be even more of a motivation to spread the word this summer (as if our normal $100/referral was too small) to all the people out there that need a touch of Clover in their lives.
The release of the Photo Page really opens Clover up even more to photographers, designers, realtors, and everyone else who has a huge need to have photo galleries on their websites. So keep doing what you’re already doing and spread the word!
Remember, though- This promotion is for the month of August. The person or organization you refer needs to purchase a Clover website by August 31st, 2011 for you to get the cash. You also need to be a Clover Friend, so if you haven’t signed up for our affiliate program do it today.
Good luck!
Posted on August 1st, 2011 under Company News by Jim with no comments.Hey everyone -
We’re just about to launch the photo page, but we actually have a little surprise feature that we’re rolling out today. We just made it so you can embed external videos in your media player.
That means that instead of using the video conversion that’s built into Clover, you can directly embed videos from Vimeo or YouTube or any other video service!
This is especially useful for those of you who already put your videos on both your website and another video sharing site. Now you’ll only have to upload and convert them once, which should save quite a bit of time.
It also means that you can put full HD videos in your media player, taking advantage of the super high quality video that services like Vimeo offer.
The new feature is very easy to use and your videos will be organized in your media player just like normal. So you can still add a title/speaker/description/etc and even attach a document to each one.
The only caveat is that embedded videos won’t be included in your podcast (because iTunes can’t handle them).
Try it out on your website or in a demo on cloversites.com.
Posted on July 25th, 2011 under Company News by Ben with 20 comments.