Within the Enterprise Platform, you have the ability to add an optional calculated fee on your forms that allow the donor to "cover the fees."

However, because Enterprise works with so many different payment gateways that all have different fee structures, we needed to create a tool that allows everyone to use it. As a result, our calculated fee (also known as Cover the Fee) feature is the ability to allow donors to choose to increase their donation amount by 'X'%, and that excess amount would be used by your organization for administrative costs, like processing fees.

Due to how our platform interacts with payment gateways, the full amount is sent to the gateway and is also subject to processing fees. That means the intended net donation amount PLUS the calculated fee are subject to processing fees. When incorporating the calculated fee on your forms, you need to ensure that the percentage applied is enough to cover the processing cost of the gift and the calculated fee as well.

With Stripe, they do send our Platform the processing fees for each transaction and they should match the fees stated in your contract; these processing fees also include GiveGab's platform fee. This provides your team insight on what percentage to add as your calculated fee.

Like many payment gateways, Stripe's processing fees are a mix of a variable (percentage) and a fixed ($0.30) fee. Due to this fee combination, there will always be some donations that do not have their processing fees fully covered and some that will have their processing fees fully covered in excess. You can then use the excess fees collected from those gifts to cover the processing fees for the gifts where the fees were not fully covered.

To determine the calculated fee percentage that would cover the majority of your processing costs for gifts, you may want to determine your average gift size and also select a couple of donations above and below that amount to test out the fee structure on.

So if you know your average gift size is $50, you would want to select gift sizes like $10, $25, $30, $60, $75, $100 to see how the calculated fee would impact these different gifts.

The easiest way to this is through a tool like Excel or Google Sheets, so it provides an easy visual for your team.

Column A: Donation Amount

Column B: Calculated Fee Percentage on Form

Column C: GiveGab Processing Fee

Column D: Stripe Processing Percentage Fee

Column E: Stripe Processing Fixed Fee

Column F: Blank Space

Column G: Total Charged to Donor's Card

Column H: Total GiveGab Processing Fee

Column I: Total Stripe Processing Percentage Fee

Column J: Total Stripe Processing Fixed Fee

Column K: Total Processing Fees

Column L: Net Deposit Amount

Using the outline above, we can walk through an example!

Let's say your team has determined that your average gift size is $50. On your contract, you have a 3% GiveGab Processing fee and Stripe's Processing fees are 2.5% + $0.30 per transaction; in total, 5.5% + $0.30 per transaction. As stated earlier, the calculated fee percentage needs to be high enough to cover the processing fees of the intended net donation amount and the calculated fee amount itself.

If you set the calculated fee percentage to just 5.5%, you're leaving out the $0.30 uncovered. Depending on the size of the gift, $0.30 could be a large percentage of the gift: $0.30 of $10 is higher than $0.30 of $50.00. We can run through this fee though:

Donation Amount: $50.00

Calculated Fee Percentage: 5.5%

GiveGab Processing Fee: 3%

Stripe Processing Percentage Fee: 2.5%

Stripe Processing Fixed Fee: $0.30

Total Charged: $52.75 ($50 * 5.5%)

Total GiveGab Fee: $1.58 ($52.75 * 3%)

Total Stripe Percentage Fee: $1.32 ($52.75 * 2.5%)

Total Stripe Fixed Fee: $0.30

Total Processing Fees: $3.20

Net Deposit Amount: $49.55

In this situation, a 5.5% calculated fee did not cover the full processing cost of the gift and $0.45 was left uncovered.

Now let's say you set the calculated fee percentage to 6.5%:

Donation Amount: $50.00

Calculated Fee Percentage: 6.5%

GiveGab Processing Fee: 3%

Stripe Processing Percentage Fee: 2.5%

Stripe Processing Fixed Fee: $0.30

Total Charged: $53.25 ($50 * 6.5%)

Total GiveGab Fee: $1.60 ($53.25 * 3%)

Total Stripe Percentage Fee: $1.33 ($53.25 * 2.5%)

Total Stripe Fixed Fee: $0.30

Total Processing Fees: $3.23

Net Deposit Amount: $50.02

In this situation, a 6.5% calculated fee did cover the full processing cost of the gift and provided an excess of $0.02 that could be allocated elsewhere.

Doing this within Excel or Google Sheets allows you to test out different calculated fees easily with formulas and will help you quickly determine the fee you should add to forms.

If you ever need any assistance in determining the best calculated fee for your form, please reach out to our team at enterprise-support@givegab.com.