RaiseDonors has the capacity to support multiple gateways at once for your organization, allowing your organization to:
- have backup gateways ready to go if a gateway is offline for any reason
- support multiple currencies, by configuring a single gateway per currency type
- have flexibility in gateway fees
To properly configure gateways in RaiseDonors, you'll need to make adjustments in both the Gateway and RaiseDonors.
Gateway Specific Instructions
RaiseDonors Specific Instructions Per Gateway
Mode Types (Live vs Test vs Sandbox)
Now that RaiseDonors is connected to your gateway, you will configure the connection mode. This is super helpful when on-boarding and you don't want to charge real money, you can mock the integration.
Live Mode
Real money is flowing to the gateway, Payment types will be charged for real, and money will be sent to your bank. This implies real information must be used. To enable this mode, Test Mode is off and Use-Sandbox mode is set to No.
Test Mode
RaiseDonors NEVER communicates with your gateway. RaiseDonors is instead pretending to charge all donations. All payment information is made up (ie: fake credit card numbers) and RaiseDonors will pre-fill in the donation form for you with fictitious information. To enable this mode, Test Mode is on.
The donation pages will display a yellow banner at the top of the page indicating the page is in test mode.
Sandbox Mode
RaiseDonors is communicating with the gateway, but in the gateways "sandbox" mode. No real money is used. Each gateway will have its own list of fake payment information to use. The gateway will record all information and this approach is as close as you can get to real integrations - without moving real money. RaiseDonors will pre-fill in the donation form for you with fictitious information - and with gateway appropriate fake payment information. This mode is very helpful when performing tests across multiple systems and you need to know how all systems work together before going live. Specifics for each gateway's test mode is here:
To enable this mode, Test Mode is off and Use-Sandbox mode is set to Yes. Additional information will be required if using Stripe. The donation pages will display a yellow banner at the top of the page indicating the page is in test mode.
Recurring Donations
Recurring donations are made from two components. These components may have different names across individual gateways, but the concepts will remain the same.
Schedule - how often should the donor's payment method be charged? ie: once a week, every month, biannually, etc.
Payment Profile - what payment device should be charged when the schedule is fired? Credit cards are common, but ACH, E-Check, Apple Pay, and many others exist.
RaiseDonors always strives for maximum security and has decided to not manage or host any of the schedules or payment profiles. All of those will live at the gateway. This means the gateway is responsible for completing the "charge" across the schedule and payment profile. RaiseDonors will be notified from the gateway whenever a schedule has been charged (success or failure) and take the appropriate action steps.
For this reason, RaiseDonors is also not responsible for doing the actual "charge" when a schedule iteration hits. Each gateway operates differently and have many different kinds of error codes. RaiseDonors will always record the error reason and code - and also the successful transaction information.
To ensure RaiseDonors can listen for schedule related charges from the gateway, various settings need to be configured inside the gateway. Specifics for each gateway's settings are here:
Setting Configurations
Recurring Donations
Enable or disable? This feature when enabled, allows RaiseDonors to accept recurring donations. This will also allow your donors to indicate a recurring donation. Note, each page in RaiseDonors can be configured to allow or dis-allow recurring donations.
Import scheduled donations
When a donor creates a recurring donation, a schedule of donations is created at your gateway. Enabling this feature imports those scheduled donations back into RaiseDonors when they occur. This enables reports to be updated and receipts to be sent out to donors and all CRM integrations to receive incoming donations.
Import Pre-existing Recurring Donations
If you have recurring donations that were setup outside of RaiseDonors, enabling this feature imports them from your gateway. This enables reports to be updated and receipts to be sent out to donors and all CRM integrations to receive incoming donations. Because these schedules and payment profiles were created outside of RaiseDonors, there is no context for which page, Project(s), motivation code, source code, etc was used. RaiseDonors allows you to provide the Project to be used for all incoming donations in this context. This is the passive approach described here.
Import Test Transactions
It's possible to have transactions at the gateway that were performed in test mode (sandbox). You can configure RaiseDonors to optionally import these test mode transactions.
Currency
RaiseDonors supports many different currencies - which are all controlled by the gateway being used. For a full list of currencies, see this article.
Select the currency you will use for this gateway. This should match the currency you have configured in your merchant account. All communication to donors, CRM's, etc will provide the proper currency symbol.
American Express Requirements
If you have completed the setup process for American Express and your gateway has also completed the setup process for American Express, you can enable this credit card type. This simply accepts AMEX as a credit card type on the donation pages. Visa, MasterCard, and Discover are all supported by default. If you have AMEX enabled in RaiseDonors, but AMEX is not enabled in your gateway, the donor will receive an error when attempting to donate.
CVV Requirement
The CVV code is a security feature for "card not present" transactions. Enabling this is useful in reducing fraud and may be required to maintain your credit card rates. You have two levels of configuration for the CVV code. Enabling the CVV code will present the CVV field on the donation page and ask the user to fill it in but it is not a required field and can be left empty. 'Make CVV required' will ensure the CVV field is populated and it becomes a required field.
FAQ
The Live, Test, and Sandbox modes can only be adjusted at the account level, meaning that all pages inherit this setting. However sometimes it's needed that after an account moves into the "live" mode, for a specific page to be setup in "test" mode. Unfortunately, individual pages cannot be setup in the "sandbox" mode, but specific pages can be turned into "test" mode.
To enable "test" mode for a specific page, include the optional parameter "forceTestModeOn" in the url for the donation page.
For example, if your donation page url is:
https://raisedonors.com/your-org-name/example-donation-page
you'd add the above parameter to the url to make it as follows:
https://raisedonors.com/your-org-name/example-donation-page?forceTestModeOn=true
It's important to note that the first parameter is prepended with "?" and all subsequent arguments are added with "&".
Please note, that it is your responsibility to ensure this parameter is removed when you are ready to take the page live.