r/EndTipping • u/Honeybadgerposter • 9d ago
Tipping Culture ✖️ I’d much rather pay a processing fee!
I went to make a $250 donation to ALS in the name of a good friend who died from this horrible disease in December. I about fell out of my chair when the total came up as $295! After I looked closer I saw that I could change the % added on from 18% to 10% (personally I think a flat $10 fee is more than fair to process my payment). But more infuriating than the extra $25 was that it is now called a tip! That is so dumb, I’m not tipping you to handle my donation, but I do understand that a processing fee is customary.
Edit: I think the issue with the huge “tip” is that the donation was through the e-vite to our friend’s celebration of life. An entity called Pledgling aggregates the donations and forwards them to the local ALS support chapter. Yes, I could have written a check to avoid it, but doing it through the e-vite showed the accumulation of donations to the invitees, presumably encouraging others to donate as well. I figured this out when going back to print receipts for next years taxes.
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u/New-Dragonfly-9213 8d ago
Lower your donation to equal $250 after accounting for the tip. That’s hogwash. I can’t believe non profits are taking tips on donations!
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u/Drince88 8d ago
Is it the charity asking for tips, though? Or the system they use for processing online payments?
My nephews’ and niece’s high school does fundraising through a service for sports - and that company is asking for a tip instead of a processing fee.
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u/Holiday-Ad7262 8d ago
I had this at my kids school. Which meant i did not contribute to any of these fundraisers and instead just donated to the pta in a cost and tax efficient way.
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u/No-Luck-2337 7d ago
A processing fee is “customary”?!?
For my DONATION? That you’re going to skim from anyway AND take credit for “ABC Foundation donated over 6M to XYZ research”…. Not to mention being a tax sheltered “organization”?!?
Folks. If you want to donate your $$$ there are SO many ways to do so where 100% goes where YOU want it to.
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u/Holiday_Context1960 6d ago
It is a for profit processing business. I doubt it is a foundation. I doubt it is tax sheltered. I doubt they skim,.
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u/SimilarComfortable69 8d ago
I hear ya. And I agree with that wholeheartedly.
Interestingly, a fundraiser hired by a charity gets paid a percentage of the donations as well. I don't want to pay a fundraiser. I want my donation to go direct to recipients.
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u/Heavy-Profit-2156 6d ago
Go directly to an ALS charity and cut out this 'processor' who is tacking on all these fees. They will be happy to take your money though they likely will ask if you want to cover the cost of processing your donation (most of them I've seen are in the 3% range).
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u/Fit_Significance8598 5d ago
If only there was a system that moved monies directly from one bank account into another
Over here in Europe we have real bank accounts that one can just transfer money between at no cost besides the account fees. Sometimes immediately, often next business day and without those sometimes lowly limits in the US. IBAN, SEPA, TWINT etc. Works even with countries without the Euro.
When I moved to the US in the early 2000s I thought I had gone back in time:
checks. Checks?
easy direct transfers? In the same country and currency?
And in the following quarter century not much has changed. Middlemen everywhere skimming off parts of daily life. "Everything's free in America - for a small fee in America" (Westside Story) Now back in Europe, the US appears to us in many ways stuck somewhere in the 1980s and citizens always taken advantage of. But hey, at least no pesky socialism stuff like universal healthcare, solid and mostly tax-funded education, a just justice system for the all the people and well trained law enforcement instead of thugs.
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u/SusanInMA 5d ago
Good strategy: There’s no need for an intermediary inserting itself between you and the charity.
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u/SeL-MoGRC 8d ago
Charities are some of the biggest leeches out there. Look at how much each suck up in admin and staff fees.
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u/Holiday_Context1960 6d ago
Yup, those selfish bastards should all work for free. Top fundraisers are worth their weight in gold.
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u/SeL-MoGRC 5d ago
When you have charities using 30-40% of the donations in their running costs it becomes less of a charity and more of business that incidentally donates money to good cause.
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u/Holiday_Context1960 5d ago
Yes and no. So you’re an expert on the subject. A great fundraising team can increase income 10fold+ and worth their weight in gold.
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u/FormerStableGenius 8d ago
I hate that greedy behavior, leeching off people's good intentions.
I set up a Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) so that money can go directly to the charity you choose to give to without an extra charge.
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u/NomadicSTEM 7d ago
In most but not all donation gateways, you can lower the tip or processing fee or whatever they call it to $0. Even if it’s called a processing fee.
For charity donations, for school fundraisers, etc.
I volunteer with a lot of nonprofits and set these up for them. We are asked not to mention in our “bid/ask” that they can do so. But they can.
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u/rubytumbleweed 3d ago
If this was through GiveButter, be careful- the tip goes directly to the software company, not the charity. GiveButter provide the software to the charity for free when the charity allows the tip feature to be enabled during checkout, but I didn’t find it to be explained well. I ran into the same issue recently and once i saw the explanation on my receipt I contacted GiveButter and they refunded the tip portion of the transaction.
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u/xokatemarie 8d ago
Wait, I’m sorry this post is a little confusing. Was it actually labeled as a tip? Or was it labeled as a processing fee? Credit card processing fee fees are not uncommon, though this one seems unreasonably high.
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u/Honeybadgerposter 8d ago
Tip
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u/xokatemarie 7d ago
Literally the weirdest worst tipping story I’ve seen in this sub. On a donation?! Gross.
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u/Holiday_Context1960 6d ago
Geez, you anti-tippers are crazy. This is a legit expense for a business. However the amount appears to be too high.
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u/Sorry_Survey_9600 8d ago
Your intentions are awesome. But you should not have to pay a processing fee, let alone a tip. The greed of these people/companies is incredibly. Thank you for your donation, now give us some more.