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| Credit cards. Image source. |
Here's something I noticed recently, that happened on several different charities' websites: I go to set up a monthly donation, let's say for $10, and then the website asks me if I want to pay for the credit card processing fee, by changing my donation to $10.30 instead.
I'm so fascinated by this!
Why are they framing it as "pay the processing fees so that your entire donation will go toward supporting our work"? When I was planning to donate them $10, I didn't care about the internal workings of how that $10 gets divided up and spent on different things. Asking me to pay the credit card processing fees feels like we're in a universe where the donor is like, "I want to give $10 to this charity. But what's this? There's a processing fee so the whole $10 doesn't actually go to the charity? Oh no, we can't have that! I want $10 to go to the charity! I need to add this small amount to my $10 in order to pay the processing fee."
Why does it matter that there's a credit card processing fee? This is really no different than just asking me "Hey could you donate $10.30 instead of $10.00?" And if I feel like $10.30 is fine, then I say yes. Why bring up the credit card processing fee, as if that matters? Are they also going to say "25 cents of your donation goes toward keeping the heat running at our office, would you like to increase your donation by 25 cents so that the whole original amount will go to the work we do?"
I mean, the fact that there's a processing fee doesn't really matter. They're just asking if you could give a little bit more, and then floating this excuse about the credit card processing fee so that there's some pretext of logic to their request.
When this happens to me, sometimes I say yes. If I just had a vague idea that I want to give this charity $10, but I didn't plan out a very exact budget- then sure, the 30 cents doesn't matter to me, so I say yes. But if I've already made a plan like "I want to give x amount of dollars to different charities every month, I will subdivide it among these different organizations, I will give this amount to this one", then I say no when they ask me to pay the processing fee. I've already made a plan! I've already decided what amount to give to charity! I'm not gonna just change it- if I was willing to give 30 cents more, then that would have been factored into the plan at a much earlier step.
This "can you also pay our processing fee" is the sort of thing that works well on donors who decided to give $10 just because it's a nice round number, not because that's the maximum amount that would make sense for their budget.
So it's presented like it's for donors who are so incredibly concerned about controlling the exact details of their donation, who feel like "it's VERY IMPORTANT to me that the charity receives 10 dollars from me, NOT less than 10 dollars due to a credit card fee"- but actually it's for donors who are so unconcerned that they're like "oh, 10 dollars, or 10 dollars and 30 cents? yeah sure whatever."
I really don't think there exists a person who says "I am willing to give exactly 10 dollars- oh but now that you've told me that credit card processing fees exist, that changes everything- now I am willing to give $10.30."
Don't get me wrong: when I say I'm fascinated by this, I'm not criticizing the charities. Nothing wrong with them asking for a bit more, and then making it painless for you to say either yes or no. Nothing wrong with that. It strikes me as a good strategy, because probably a lot of donors will feel like "oh sure whatever, just increase it by a few cents, who cares."
I'm just so fascinated by the psychology of it. Why bring up the credit card processing fee? It doesn't matter! I don't care what they specifically use every small part of my donation for- I just care about the work they are doing overall. (And I think if people are overly concerned about the credit card processing fee, that's illogical.) But instead of asking "hey could you maybe give a little bit more?" they say "hey can you maybe give a little bit more because of the credit card processing fee?" Oh my goodness, this is so fascinating.
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