Alright, this is one we are absolutely pumped about because it’s going to have a massive impact on a lot of our customers. Let's dive right in ...
The Challenge - Raising Funds and Event Monetization
A serious challenge for events over the last while has been generating revenue, especially for organizations that depend on donations or more generally, contributions, from their attendee base to survive, grow, and further their missions.
The marketing hype in the event technology space is rampant with companies promoting event monetization strategies that sound great in a blog post or in a webinar, but rarely ever actually work. As a product-first company, at PheedLoop we focus on building new products to solve new problems. They don’t always work perfectly the first time around, but we take feedback very seriously and iterate to perfection - this has been our approach since 2015.
The Solution - Built-In Real-Time Donations
Simply put, PheedLoop now offers a highly visible and accessible donation button. The donation button pops open a simple tool where event planners can fully customize the messaging and capture contributions within seconds. Attendees simply enter the amount they’d like to donate, any comments, whether they’d like to be anonymous, and their credit card information - and that’s it!
Attendees are all made aware in real-time of contributions (including anonymous ones) to help encourage more contributions, and the donors themselves can download receipts immediately after each of their contributions. The receipts can be customized with content like charity registration numbers, information, links, and more.
Donations are sent immediately to the event organizers and are not held by PheedLoop at all, and event managers can even set a custom additional fee percentage if they like to offset card processing fees.
Virtual, Hybrid, On-Site - It’s All the Same
To be totally transparent, the difference between virtual and hybrid events from a technology standpoint (short of streaming options) is minimal. PheedLoop already offers on-site services for badge printing, check-in, streaming, mobile apps, etc. and just like everything else we build, the donations feature can be available for on-site attendees too, and we have many creative ways coming soon to encourage attendees on-site to donate more/frequently to help events further their missions.
Customization for Other Fund Raising or Monetization Goals
If you’re an event interested in escaping the “donation” terminology but still want to use the real-time revenue generation capabilities this feature unlocks for your events, you are very easily able to use our advanced translations system to convert all text, labels and messages to accommodate your use-case. We’ve designed the system to be extremely customizable.
Fees and Pricing
There are no additional fees or fixed costs beyond PheedLoop’s standard payment processing fees (identical to event registration). There’s the 1.9% transaction fee, and 2.9% + $0.30 payment processing fee (or lower, if you are able to negotiate a lower rate with Stripe as they do offer lower rates for not-for-profits). For precise and the most up-to-date pricing information about all of PheedLoop’s virtual and on-site technologies, please submit your request here and you’ll unlock instant access to pricing and demo information.
Experience it Live on March 31st
Are you looking to give real-time donations a test run in a live event? Great! Register now for our quarterly user conference, this time called PheedLoop Changemakers. We’re raising awareness and funds for ovarian cancer research as part of our initiatives with PheedLoop Cares. You can meet 1,000+ event planners, check out the donation tool yourself, and see so much more about the PheedLoop platform on March 31st.
Roadmap
This is going to be more of a teaser than a roadmap. We work so fast that we've realized if we start giving away specifics, customers hound us for exact dates and details! The roadmap for donations in PheedLoop is very bright and immediate. You can expect new ways to capture donations in more parts of the attendee experience (including on-site), new ways to recognize donors, and new ways to customize the experience.