Blog & Company News
Aug 12, 2015
NewtPay Zero & Political Campaigns: Optimizing Donor Contributions
With the 2016 presidential election approaching, candidates are now firmly focused on their campaigns. November 8
th, 2016 is not too far off, and candidates are racing to raise millions of dollars - millions which will be spent on what many experts predict will be the most expensive election cycle in U.S. history. This leads us gracefully to the topic of processing payments, and how donor funds get from point A (your hands) to point B (their campaign machine). Most donors fail to realize that there are processing fees involved in all ACH, debit, and credit card processing activities.
What happens when an individual donor decides to contribute to a candidate’s campaign?
In most cases, a donor visits a candidate's website to explore their options. From the donations page, they can select a pre-set amount, or define a specific amount. For this example, let’s say our hypothetical benefactor wants to contribute a $100 donation. From the donations page, the donor fills in their contact and payment information. After importing payment information, the donor is notified that the transaction has gone through, and they will later see a charge for the applicable amount on their payment statement.
Behind the scenes, it’s not much different than an online purchase. The system will now have to determine the processing fees associated with that $100 transaction. If the donor uses a Rewards Card, or an American Express Card, the rates will be higher than if they used their check / debit card issued from their bank. After all associated fees, the candidate could only be realizing $95 of that $100 contribution.
Here’s a question to the donor:
If you were informed ahead of time that more of your contribution could be made available to the candidate by simply changing the method of payment, would it change your funding preference?
Enter NewtPay Zero.
NewtPay Zero takes the guesswork out of processing fees, with built-in logic to determine which method of funding will get your candidate more of your donation.
Let’s take another look at the $100 donation example from earlier, but this time from the perspective of a candidate utilizing NewtPay Zero on their payment page.
As the donor is entering their American Express number, the payments algorithm is already thinking. By the time the donor enters their 6
th digit of the card, it knows what processing fees are going to be applicable and offers alternatives, for example:
“With your current card, your effective donation amount will be $96.40. You can use a debit card to increase your effective donation amount to $98.60. If you pay by ACH / E-Check, your effective donation amount will be $99.60.”
By changing the funding preference from the donor’s high cost Amex card to an ACH / E-Check, the candidate now has an additional $3.20 from that donation. $3.20 may not seem like a lot in a singular example, but consider this, in the 2012 presidential election, over 550,000 people donated money to the Obama campaign during the first three months of official fundraising efforts. If even a modest amount, say 20% of that group, had changed their funding preference in order to send more of their contribution to the candidate, it would equate to an extra $352,000 in the campaign’s war chest.
If you are interested in learning more about NewtPay Zero, give our team a call at 1-800-277-6990 or email us at
[email protected] .
With the 2016 presidential election approaching, candidates are now firmly focused on their campaigns. November 8th, 2016 is not too far off, and candidates are racing to raise millions of dollars - millions which will be spent on what many experts predict will be the most expensive election cycle in U.S. history. This leads us gracefully to the topic of processing payments, and how donor funds get from point A (your hands) to point B (their campaign machine). Most donors fail to realize that there are processing fees involved in all ACH, debit, and credit card processing activities.
What happens when an individual donor decides to contribute to a candidate’s campaign?
In most cases, a donor visits a candidate's website to explore their options. From the donations page, they can select a pre-set amount, or define a specific amount. For this example, let’s say our hypothetical benefactor wants to contribute a $100 donation. From the donations page, the donor fills in their contact and payment information. After importing payment information, the donor is notified that the transaction has gone through, and they will later see a charge for the applicable amount on their payment statement.
Behind the scenes, it’s not much different than an online purchase. The system will now have to determine the processing fees associated with that $100 transaction. If the donor uses a Rewards Card, or an American Express Card, the rates will be higher than if they used their check / debit card issued from their bank. After all associated fees, the candidate could only be realizing $95 of that $100 contribution.
Here’s a question to the donor: If you were informed ahead of time that more of your contribution could be made available to the candidate by simply changing the method of payment, would it change your funding preference?
Enter NewtPay Zero.
NewtPay Zero takes the guesswork out of processing fees, with built-in logic to determine which method of funding will get your candidate more of your donation.
Let’s take another look at the $100 donation example from earlier, but this time from the perspective of a candidate utilizing NewtPay Zero on their payment page.
As the donor is entering their American Express number, the payments algorithm is already thinking. By the time the donor enters their 6th digit of the card, it knows what processing fees are going to be applicable and offers alternatives, for example:
“With your current card, your effective donation amount will be $96.40. You can use a debit card to increase your effective donation amount to $98.60. If you pay by ACH / E-Check, your effective donation amount will be $99.60.”
By changing the funding preference from the donor’s high cost Amex card to an ACH / E-Check, the candidate now has an additional $3.20 from that donation. $3.20 may not seem like a lot in a singular example, but consider this, in the 2012 presidential election, over 550,000 people donated money to the Obama campaign during the first three months of official fundraising efforts. If even a modest amount, say 20% of that group, had changed their funding preference in order to send more of their contribution to the candidate, it would equate to an extra $352,000 in the campaign’s war chest.
If you are interested in learning more about NewtPay Zero, give our team a call at 1-800-277-6990 or email us at [email protected] . 
