One thing clients often question is the wisdom of collecting membership dues online.
Why should we give away 3% to the credit card company?
Why pay when checks don’t cost us a thing?
Why make things more difficult?
We believe the benefits of accepting dues payments online far outweigh the costs. One of the first councils to use our payments system had excellent results. Top amongst them were:
- Collected more than one year of arrears from 6 members
- Received prompt payment from several members who usually don’t pay until receiving a Knight Alert letter.
- Reduced number of bounced checks.
- 90% of dues were collected before January 1st, as opposed to 60% the previous year.
- Significantly less work for the Financial Secretary and retention committee.
For this council, they found online payments were a complete success. The reduction in workload alone justified the cost. However, from a purely financial perspective, the amount paid in credit card fees was less than the increase in dues collected. At the end of the day, they increased the net amount of dues deposited.
Still worried about the fees?
In their second year, the same council decided to apply a $1 surcharge to online payments. The results were almost identical. They collected nearly the same number of credit card payments and had the same general result but reduced the total lost to fees.
The most important reason to collect dues online is…
Making dues payments easier for younger members.
More and more of your younger members may not even have checks. Additionally, more and more banks are charging for depositing checks and cash. Members under 30 are more likely to have a credit card than cheques and tend to prefer online bill payments.
Ultimately, online dues collection helps your council attract and retain younger members, collect arrears, and reduce the workload on your council executive. With our KofC Hosting Platform, you can activate the online dues payments in under 30 minutes. We help you open your account with Stripe, and manage all the technical stuff.
Check it out today. Rember you can try our platform free, for 30 days.
