Donor Cover
Admin Fees/Donor Cover
Do you want to ask your donors to cover your administrative costs of processing a gift? This could be just your credit card processing fees or even a little more than that to cover your internal overhead.
Admin Fees are calculated as a % or absolute dollar amount per gift, with the donor seeing an option to gross up their gift to cover those costs. This option can also be selectively made required if needed.
Grossing up the gift ensures that the intended donation amount is fully credited to the fund(s) of the donor's choosing.
How It Works
Optional Activation: Your institution can choose whether to present the option to cover admin fees on the donation payment page. This feature is not enabled by default, giving you full control over its implementation.
Customizable Settings: You can determine whether the admin fees are optional (allowing donors to opt out) or mandatory (requiring all donors to cover the fees).
Applies to: This feature applies to both the full giving form and the Give Now form, ensuring consistency across all donation types.
Fee Application
Recurring Donations & Installments: If admin fees are enabled for a donation, they will be applied to every payment associated with that donation. This includes recurring donations and installment plans.
Fee Types:
Set Amount: A fixed dollar amount is charged per payment.
Percentage-Based: A specific percentage of the donation amount is applied as the fee.
Important Note: You cannot combine both a set fee and a percentage-based fee (e.g., $0.30 + 2.9% as commonly seen with credit card processing fees). This limitation simplifies calculations and ensures consistent fee application.
Fund Exemptions: Certain funds (endowment and similar) may be exempt from assessment of an admin fee. This is a flag set at the fund level and can be pushed in to AlumnIQ as part of our nightly fund ingestion process.
This way no matter which Path/GiveNow the fund is included in we will not improperly display this assessment. Centralizing governance in your feed means your institutional controls over this remain entirely in-house. AlumnIQ will simply follow suit.
Examples
Covering Credit Card Fees:
To cover typical credit card processing fees, consider applying a 3% admin fee. This percentage, on average, covers the equivalent of a $0.30 fixed fee plus a 2.9% processing fee.
Example: A $300 donation would incur a $9 admin fee whether using a flat 3% or the standard $0.30 + 2.9% model.
Recovering O&A Expenses:
If administrative tasks related to booking a gift cost approximately $5 in staff time, you can set a flat $5 admin fee per donation to recover these costs.
Setup
To begin implementing admin fees, follow these steps:
Navigate to: Giving > Settings → Click “Admin Fee/Donor Cover” to access the admin fee settings panel.
Admin Fee Settings:
Enable Admin Fees: This toggle activates admin fees across the giving module, including both the full giving form and the Give Now form.
Are Admin Fees Optional?
If unchecked, admin fees will be mandatory, meaning every donor will be required to pay them.
If checked, donors will have the option to opt out of covering the fees. Some institutions prefer this flexibility to accommodate donor preferences.
Admin Fee Percent: When using percentage-based fees, enter the percentage as a whole number (e.g., enter "3" for 3%). Do not enter it as a decimal (e.g., "0.03") - we do not need you to do this math.
Admin Fee Charge: For flat, set amount fees, enter the desired dollar amount per payment. Amounts can include cents (e.g., $2.50), but cannot contain fractions of a cent.
Admin Fee Description: This text will appear on the payment page to inform donors about the fee. You can use the merge token
{fee}to dynamically display the calculated fee. This is particularly useful if the fee changes over time or if different fees apply to different donation forms.Give Now Admin Fee Description: Similar to the Admin Fee Description, but specifically for Give Now forms. Since these forms don’t display a calculated total on-screen, you can also use the
{total}merge token alongside{fee}to provide clear information to donors.Admin Fee in Confirmation: The term "admin fee" is sterile; when you come up with a term that is a better fit for your organization and should be visible to your donors, enter it here so it will flow through to your gift confirmation emails.
Path Settings
To start collecting admin fees for specific donation paths:
Navigate to: Edit Screen of a Path → Locate the “Gift Admin Fees” panel → Check the box labeled “Enable Admin Fee.”
Why is this a Per Path setting?
We’ve designed this feature with flexibility in mind. Enabling admin fees at the path level allows you to:
Support micro-campaigns or specific fundraising initiatives.
Accommodate donor commitments, where donors agree to cover fees for certain paths or appeals.
Reduce barriers for campaigns focused on maximizing donor participation, where fees might discourage giving.
While activation and visibility are configured on a per-path basis, the fee percent or amount are common across all paths.
Mass Activation Option: If your institution manages a large number of donation paths, enabling admin fees for each path individually can be time-consuming. In such cases, you can file a support ticket through the AlumnIQ admin portal to request bulk activation of admin fees, with the ability to exclude specific paths as needed.
Effect on Different Gift Types
1. One-Time Gifts
The admin fee will be clearly displayed alongside the donation amount, making it easy for donors to understand the total cost.
2. Perpetual Gifts
Donors will be charged the admin fee with the initial payment and with every subsequent scheduled payment(e.g., monthly, quarterly, or annually).
3. Recurring Gifts
Admin fees are applied to each scheduled payment based on the donation amount.
In the AlumnIQ admin interface, you’ll see:
The original donation amount entered by the donor.
The admin fee calculated based on that amount.
The payment schedule (e.g., monthly, quarterly).
The total expected amount vs. the actual collected amount.
4. Installments
Complex Calculations: Since installment amounts don’t always divide evenly, we apply the remainder to the first payment.
Example: A $304 donation split over 6 months results in payments of $50.70 (first payment) and $50.66 (for the next five payments).
Admin Fees: For percentage-based fees, the fee is calculated based on the amount of each individual payment.
First Payment: $50.70 × 5% = $2.54
Subsequent Payments: $50.66 × 5% = $2.53 per payment
This example demonstrates how small differences in installment amounts due to rounding can lead to slightly different admin fees. This is important to consider when evaluating the total expected donations and fees over the installment period.
5. Pledges with Multiple Gifts
Percentage-Based Fees: Applied individually to each gift within the pledge.
Set Amount Fees: Divided evenly across all gifts in the pledge.
Example: A pledge with two $5 gifts and a $5 admin fee results in a total of $15, with $2.50 of the fee allocated to each gift.
Reporting and API
The Omni Gift report and every API resource that conveys pledge and gift information also returns the following properties per gift and/or gift payment as appropriate:
pledge_totalAdminFeesCollected
pledge_totalAdminFeesExpected
gift_donationAmount
gift_totalAdminFeesCollected
gift_totalAdminFeesExpected
gift_adminFeePercentPerPayment
payment_donationAmount
payment_adminFeesCollected
payment_percentAdminFeesContributed
When interfacing with a perpetual gift the expected values will only look out to one future payment; summing over infinite time is not yet supported.
For additional support or questions, please contact us via help ticket. We'll happily consult on configuration!
Last updated