I just finished adding the donation links to our site and it looks great. I found it a little confusing when going thru the donation steps. The first page shows all the credit cards that can be used and after you add the dollar amount and click continue it takes you to a page that offers you the choice of "check" or "PayPal". I find this may be confusing to people by thinking they need a PayPal account. Can we change that radio button to read "Pay by Credit Card" or "Credit Card/PayPal or something more than just PayPal?

I agree with Robert. Again, it's a question of making everything as clear as possible so that all levels of understanding are catered for.

Incidentally, I asked this question elsewhere on the forums but as I haven't received a response yet and it's important to me I hope you won't mind me repeating it here -

I've almost set up my Donations page etc but notice the payment areas refer to 'Dollars' and not the English 'Pounds' I need. Can this be corrected?

I can see wanting to make this more clear for the member and if a member is not familiar with the PayPal system, they might not know that they do not need to be a member. Below the checkout box, when PayPal is an option, we already have the following message: You will be directed to Paypal to complete payment. Payments can be made from your PayPal account, or by using a regular major credit card. No PayPal account is required. My suggestion is to call this out a little more by adding an asterisk. So, nest to PayPal, it would appear: PayPal* and then the subsequent line would have a matching asterisk: *You will be directed to Paypal to complete payment. Payments can be made from your PayPal account, or by using a regular major credit card. No PayPal account is required. I am wondering if that might be a clear enough solution?

Scott,

suggested re-wording...

"*You will be directed to PayPal to complete payment. No PayPal account is required. Payments can be made by major credit card or your PayPal account if you have one."

Just a thought ... but I'm guessing more people do not have PayPal accounts than do (no data; just gut)

I agree with Mark.
Not only that...I don't like that the donate button takes you to my donor page...you have to scroll down to complete the process...and I have reset in blue with brackets around it. Hard to explain..I guess I need to take a screen shot..I'm on my tablet right now..so I will have to do that later.
The donation module does not work for me.
If someone from CC, would like to check it out for me it would be nice.
I would like to have the old one back until all the bugs are worked out of the new one.
When I check the box for the homepage and not the donor page...the button still takes them to the donor regcognition page..which is very confusing.

Mark Abrams wrote:

I can sympathise, Darlene. I don't agree that the Donation module should be a 'one size fits all' module. I don't believe it does.

Mine is a small site for a school that closed 45 years ago. Donation traffic is small and ticket and other item sales are a road we're never likely to go down. What I have now works easily for me and for those who have already donated or want to donate.

I've set up a Paypal Business account for the new module but will continue to use my old PayPal account and existing button on my Home Page until we are given no other choice.

Scott, wording along the lines you suggest should work and Mark A's suggested rewording fits the bill.

Any word on my dollars v pounds question, Scott?

Scott,
You are assuming people are going to read the instructions! Most people don't read unless they run into a problem. They just go where they are directed. How hard could it be to add another radio button that says "Credit Cards"?

I agree also, I decided to go with the new event planner (after a conversation with Scott) and spent about an hour on the phone with PayPal. After I got part of the event set up and saw what the wording was going to be and how confusing it was, I switched back to reunion planner right away.

This needs to be fixed before we go any further. I had more confusion going on with the "update my registration" button in reunion planner that I almost canceled my 4 ClassCreator websites. 80% of my members clicked on that button and it stopped there registration. They thought they had completed their registration.

Get the wording were it won't be a confusing issue.

Don't use any of the new stuff! They are a big joke!!! They don't work properly and they are unfinished. I hope CC isn't going the way of the Obamacare website that doesn't work either...are you sure you don't have government workers or contracted out to some software place that is incompetent??? How long have they been working on it?
I am not use to this...our IT dept tested the hell out of programs before they launched them..there are always some bugs..but this is totally pathetic. None of these programs....donation, event & the so called store have been tested properly.
I want my old donation module back...it's not there anymore since I went with the new and not working donation manager. I have a paypal biz account and had np getting my donations with the old module..Now I have nothing.
I just opened a new site..but only using ads right now...I did have to pay for the domain name and stuff.

I have an active reunion registration going on using the old reunion planner.

The facebook app is a joke too...I tried it..looks nothing like the webpages on my site. We (my website team) have decided not to go with it.

I am frustrated with not being able to get donations to help run the site..we are no longer part of the reunion committee since they became a corp. Long story..we are their service provider now.
I just wish they would get this fixed already. You can tell I am very frustrated and not a happy camper...wish I wouldn't have spent the money on the new site already.
Randy Jennings wrote:

Darlene: Are there any current bugs in the Donations Manager that you're aware of?

The new Donations Manager allows for multiple donations. Also allows for fixed options (like radio button selections). The Donations page itself can contain much more expanded content if desired than what would fit inside of the small home page module. For this reason we're currently bringing people to the main Donations page if they click on the home page Donations module.

Brad...it's a boon doggle..can't get it to work...I have tried to get it to work..I want my old one back...not a happy camper right now...enough to deal with a hostile reunion committee now this.

Brad..I don't want that..I just want them to go to the paypal page they use to...no hassles..they could donate whatever they wanted.
Please give me back the old module.

A very unfortunate thing happened totally coincidentally at the time of the Event Planner launch. PayPal pulled their Premiere account entirely. I have no idea why they did that, but this is so new that even PayPal's own FAQs and help sections still reference the former Premiere accounts and they provide non working links to it.

The ONLY account you can use now is a Business Account. They wouldn't have chosen a worse time for this. Many people aren't going to open a Business account just to accept a donation. Or to plan a reunion. It's just way to hard now....

As a result we have chosen to:

1) Rename the former donation module "Easy Donations" and add it back to the system. We will put a blue question mark help blurb there explaining that with this module you won't get any internal reporting or goal setting, etc, but that you can easily set it up with just a personal PayPal email address and see all of your financials directly inside of PayPal.

2) Add native credit card processing back to the Event Planner. While it costs about twice as much in terms of processing fees, for many people this is still a better alternative to opening up a PayPal Business account. With the disappearance of the PayPal Premiere accounts they've really left us no choice but to put this back in. I don't know of government regulations or whatnot caused them to make this decision, but whatever it was, it's just too hard now.

Facebook app: No, the Facebook app won't ever look like your class web site. It has the exact same data though. It's not for everyone. There's classes now that are ONLY using the app and nothing else. It really depends what you want, and where people are (often age based) makes a huge difference.

A group of 30 year olds is far more likely to use just the Facebook app. A group of 70 year olds is more likely to use the web site. Those 50 somethings or so like myself may use both -- it's common for classes from the 80s to have classmates both on and off Facebook. Younger classes also have less concerns about privacy and security. Giving information to social networks to them seems normal. A typical 70 year old is far more concerned about what Facebook does with personal data.

Finally, the new Event Planner is far better than the old. It handles so many more things. Some of those things many might not fully understand. People jury rigged so many things together in the old Reunion Planner because it didn't accommodate what they were trying to do. The new planner is already growing and expanding based on user feedback. Any wording or points of confusion will be addressed. As I mentioned, we'll add native credit card processing back in thanks to PayPal's abandoning Premiere accounts. It only gets better from here, hang in.

By the way Darlene, I'm wondering what isn't working on the new Donations Manager. Although the "easy donate" feature is coming back, is anything about the new Donate module not functioning properly?

I'm not talking about the button leading to the larger donations page. If we want to we can easily just shoot that directly off to PayPal (if that's the only payment option the Admin has created). Thus it would really function virtually the exact same as the "easy donate" feature, but would have the benefit of all the internal reporting.

Is something actually not working, or when you say it's not working for you, do you mean you just don't like it going to the Donate page before going to PayPal? If that's all it is, if somebody has a PayPal business account, they're much better off using the new Donate feature. We could also give Admins the option of module going straight to PayPal for payment, or going to the Donations page where an Admin may choose to write a longer description of the donation than could fit in the home page module.

Brad...I don't like that it goes to the donor recognition page..I want it to go straight to paypal like it did before. If I want it there I would like to put it there myself. People don't need a website page telling them to donate..IMHO!!!! The old way worked just fine..we got donations...we will start excepting checks once our biz bank account is set up...and there is an option for that too.
I have a biz account for donations. I converted one of my paypal accounts to biz...no biggie..it's easy peasy.

BTW..if the event planner is so good..why are people not using it..that have multiple sites??? I tried it and it didn't work for me either..too many bugs.

Oh lots of people are using it. Many newer people don't even know there ever was a "Reunion Planner." People are used to what they knew. Change can be hard at first. The new Event Planner handles so many things so much better.

That's not to say it's without issues -- you are certainly correct. Lack of a couples option was a big issue and we're adding that. Any bugs hit we always try to fix as briskly as possible. Based on user feedback the main output page needs some restructure. Working on it too. Donate option to go straight from home to PayPal is a sensible thing to add, I agree.

When couples tickets, the opening page restructure, and native credit card processing are in there it will be a better universal setup than it is now. I know the PayPal biz account is actually easy, so take my word for it on this one, it's a big issue here due to perception alone. "I just don't want to do that" is a very common sentiment. I understand. It was easier before to just toggle on credit card processing. Many people are expressing desire to simply do that vs. setting up a PayPal Business account even though you and I both know that's easy. They would rather pay twice the processing charge..... So! We're going to make it easy for them to do that again. I wouldn't do that myself. But our job is to listen to what people want....and that's what a lot of people want.

We've been listening and reading all your posts. Our 50th reunion announcement is set to go live on 1 April 2015. Right now we're playing with the event planner in preparation for this. BUT, are we supposed to be using the Event Planner, or the Reunion Planner? And, when will Class Creators go live with the credit card option mentioned by Brad Switzer in Response 12 and 15? What do you anticipate the transaction charge to be?

I don't have any ETA on adding native credit card processing yet, but if you need that right now, yes you should use the Reunion Planner. Note the Event Planner also processes credit card payments via PayPal, with no PayPal account required. Transaction costs are also half the cost. Some people have expressed desire to use native credit card processing despite double the cost, and this is for reasons we understand. However, it won't apply to most. Most people should utilize the Event Planner with PayPal processing.

The native transaction charge in the Reunion Planner is 4.9%. When we implement this in the Event Planner we're thinking of raising the cost to 5.9%. This may seem a bit high but there are considerable costs for making the native credit card system possible. Unless you have a good reason otherwise, I'd strongly recommend the Event Planner with the new integrated PayPal payment system.