Payment Processing for Non-Profits
Blackbaud is a software and merchant account provider that specializes in solutions for nonprofit organizations. Its payment solutions allow merchants to process credit card and ACH payments. Founded in 1981, the company has grown from a simple computerized billing service into one of the largest all-in-one solutions available for charities. Blackbaud utilizes Chase Merchant Services, Wells Fargo, and First Data Canada for its backend processing.
Blackbaud Location and Ownership
Blackbaud is headquartered at 65 Fairchild Street Charleston, SC. The company’s payment processing service is called Blackbaud Merchant Services and will be the primary focus of this review. Michael Gianoni is listed as the president and CEO of Blackbaud.
Blackbaud Merchant Services Review Table of Contents
- Costs & Contract: Blackbaud offers a month-to-month merchant account contract with no early termination fee and a flat-rate for all transactions.
- Complaints & Service: Blackbaud has received more than 10 public complaints.
- BBB Rating: Blackbaud has an “A+” rating with the Better Business Bureau and has received 10 complaints and 3 reviews in the past 3 years.
- Sales & Marketing: Blackbaud does not appear to hire independent sales agents and has received very few complaints about its sales practices.
9 Responses
This payment-enabled fee of $50/mth from Blackbaud started at the beginning of March. According to the information, it would only be for customers that use payment-enabled services, such as processing payments, etc. Come to find out that even if you only use the database to store and record donors, and not to process any transactions through your bank, you are still expected to pay this fee. Which by the way they say is a monthly fee of $50, but they will be billing it annually…so $600.00 EXTRA dollars in addition to the renewal amounts that do not list any additional fees after the renewal charge. But all their CEOs and Directors are making bank selling their shares…it’s ridiculous.
On March 3rd Blackbaud implented a $50 per month Payment Enablement Fee to take effect and be billed April 1st for April through December. This is an unexpected and disappointing hit to the budget.
We are equally upset about this. The additional charge $450 annual charge was imposed outside of our signed contract. A Blackbaud rep told us today: “Your account executive or sales person would likely have had no idea of this charge, this was only
recently introduced by the highest levels of Blackbaud, I do not think they would be able to help.” We do not use any merchant services with our subscription as we have a separate setup with PayPal which is adequate (and reasonable!) for a nonprofit our size. Whoever these people are at “the highest levels”, they just lost our business.
Blackbaud offers an integrated payment program, but we are currently working with a merchant that is using Blackbaud and their current program is a “bill back” payment program. Most of the time these bill back programs don’t not work out in favor of the merchant. Bill back programs are confusing and allow processors to “hide” fees and charges. I’d like to hear your feedback on bill back and why a processor would ever use this kind of program.
The merchant we are working with does about $3-4M a year in revenue, so they are a decent size merchant.
Thanks for your comments on this Phillip!
Phillip:
Thank you very much for your review of Blackbaud Merchant Services. As the Payment Business product marketing manager, I wanted to reach out and let you know that we don’t charge an early termination fee. Clients can come and go as they wish without penalty.
Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions or if there’s any other information that you need.
Best regards,
Kendra DeWitt
Product Marketing Manager, Payment Business
Blackbaud, Inc.
[email protected] | blackbaud.com
Thanks for taking questions. Why is Blackbaud introducing this fee outside of contracted terms after all of your customers had to win back the trust of donors when you had the largest data breach in the history of the nonprofit world? Shame. On. You.
Joe,
We complained to Blackbaud and they told us it was for the betterment of all Blackbaud customers, those who use and those who do not use their payment system.
What legitimate business today gets away with and has the audacity to unilaterally charge all their customers, especially nonprofit customers for an additional program that we never agreed to , wanted, or signed up for, right in the middle of our contract term!
Class action?????
WE certainly agree with all of these comments regarding this payment service fee
which we did not sign up for and never intend to use. It is an awful way to treat a customer base.
The “Payment Enablement Fee” is infuriating! Every time I see that fee on an invoice, I’m angry all over again. I imagine if Blackbaud weren’t still embroiled in the data breach class action suit, that one(s) of us would have launched such a suit about this fee. If it weren’t so complicated and time-consuming to switch databases, we would have done so when this fee came out of the blue, non-negotiable, for a service to which we don’t and won’t subscribe (and which we pay another company to provide to us).
When the fee first came up, along with being disgusted, I imagined some cost center within Blackbaud was not making its numbers, thus this fee to cover.
You know how a disgruntled customer tells 7 people who might each tell 7 more…?
When people ask what database software we use, I suggest they steer clear of Blackbaud.