The content in this article only applies if you are leveraging GiveCampus' integration with WePay for payment processing.
When looking at your donation report, you will likely notice a variety of terms listed within your ‘states’ column. Each state provides insight into how a donation was made and what stage of processing it is in. Whether a gift is made via credit card, instant verification, or manual bank transfer, the following guide can be used to understand the what a donation’s ‘state’ represents.
Credit/Debit Cards
Donation Flow:
1. The donor makes a gift and immediately receives a confirmation email. These gifts are counted in the campaign totals and appropriate leaderboard. School administrators with gift notifications turned on will also get an email notification at this time.
2. The gift will show up immediately in your donation report as ‘Authorized’ At this stage, the gift is still processing and has not been settled.
3. The gift will move from ‘Authorized’ to ‘Paid’ within hours after WePay has settled it. With WePay, GiveCampus does not have visibility into when gifts have been deposited into your bank account. Please refer to your WePay account and WePay deposit reports for this information.
States:
- ‘Authorized’: The gift is still processing and has not yet settled.
- ‘Paid’: The gift has been processed and has settled. A ‘paid’ state does not necessarily mean that the gift has been deposited into your bank account.
- ‘Confirmed’: The gift is a Matching Donation or Challenge that is pending and has not been fulfilled yet; the donor has not yet been charged.
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‘Failed’: The gift was unsuccessful; the donor was not charged and had real time notification that the gift failed. Failed gifts only display on the campaign specific donation report and do not appear on date range reports. Failed gifts will not display in your campaign totals or leaderboards.
- Failure reason
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General Decline: The donor’s bank declined the transaction. The most common reasons for general decline in credit card gifts are:
- Address (AVS) or ZIP mismatch
- Invalid CVV/Expiration date
- Transaction timing out
- Insufficient funds
- Restrictions on the card itself
- Fraud or risk decision
Bank Transfer - Instant Verification
Donor logs in with their online banking credentials
Donation Flow:
1. The donor makes a gift and immediately receives a confirmation email. School administrators with gift notifications turned on will also get an email notification immediately.
2. After the gift has been made, it will read as ‘Authorized’, meaning that the donor's bank account has been verified but the gift is still processing. Depending on the donor’s bank, the gift will typically take 1-4 days to settle.
3. Once the gift has finished processing completely and settled, it will appear as ‘Paid’. At this point, the gift has been or will soon be deposited into your bank account. Please refer to your WePay account and WePay deposit reports for this information.
States:
- ‘Authorized’: The donor’s bank account has been verified and the gift is still processing.
- ‘Paid’: The gift has finished processing completely. It has been or will soon be deposited into your bank account. As a reminder, with WePay, GiveCampus does not have visibility into when gifts have been deposited into your bank account. Please refer to your WePay account and WePay deposit reports for this information.
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‘Failed’: The gift was unsuccessful; the donor was not charged and had real time notification that the gift failed. Failed gifts only display on the campaign specific donation report and do not appear on date range reports. Failed gifts will not display in your campaign totals or leaderboards.
- Failure Reason
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‘General Decline’: The donor’s bank declined the transaction. The most common reasons for general decline in instant verification gifts are:
- Transaction timing out
- Insufficient funds
- Restrictions on the card itself
- Fraud or risk decision
Bank Transfer - Manual Verification
Donor’s account information is manually verified by entering the routing # and account # and confirming the amounts of two small deposits (aka “micro-deposits”) that will be deposited into that account.
Donation Flow
1. The donor makes a gift and immediately receives a confirmation email from GiveCampus. The gift will show up in your donation report as ‘Authorized’ within minutes; at this point, the donor has not confirmed the micro-deposits and no funds have been transferred to your bank. Once a gift is authorized it will appear in the overall donor count and associated leaderboards.
2. The donor immediately receives a second email from support@wepay.com with the subject line "Microdeposits on their way". At the bottom of this email, it says, "These deposits should appear in your bank account within the next few days. When they arrive, confirm your bank account by visiting this link: [link]." Next, the donor must click this link and confirm the micro-deposit amounts to complete the gift. Until the donor completes this verification, the gift cannot be processed and the funds are not transferred (this is to prevent fraud and prove that the donor owns the bank account they used). The donor has 30 days to complete this verification; after 30 days, the gift authorization is cancelled.
3. The payment processor makes two micro-deposits into the bank account provided by the donor. The micro-deposits are two small deposits under $1. Micro-deposits can take 1-4 business days to show up in the donor’s bank account.
4. The donor receives a series of reminder emails with instructions on how to confirm the microdeposits from WePay every other day for up to 30 days until they confirm the micro-deposit amounts. While receiving these messages, the gift will continue to be in the state of ‘Authorized’.
5. Once the donor confirms the micro-deposits, the gift will settle and the “state” will transition from ‘Authorized’ to ‘Paid’ within 1-4 business days. At this point, the gift has been or will soon be deposited into your bank account (you can refer to your WePay account to track when the gift is deposited). Additionally, the following updates will be made to your donation report:
- ‘datetime_of_pledge’ will stay the same. This is the date/time that the donor submitted the Giving Form and their payment information.
- ‘datetime_of_capture’ will update to the date/time that the micro-deposits are verified.
States:
- ‘Authorized’: The donor has not confirmed the micro-deposits and no funds have been transferred to your bank.
- ‘Paid’: The donor has confirmed the micro-deposits and the gift has finished processing completely. The gift has been or will soon be deposited into your bank account.
- ‘Pledged_unpaid’: If the donor offers a match or challenge gift and the terms of the match or challenge are not met, the funds offered through the match/challenge will not be added to the campaign totals and will no longer be recoverable through GiveCampus.
- ‘Pledged_failed’: The gift was set up as a match or challenge. When the match or challenge was fulfilled and the donor was charged, their payment method failed. When the campaign that was successful we tried to charge them and then it failed.
- 'Revoked': If the donor does not confirm the micro-deposit amounts within 30 days, the gift authorization is cancelled and the “state” transitions from ‘Authorized’ to ‘revoked’. Once a gift moves to ‘revoked’, it is removed from the overall donor count and associated leaderboards. At this point, the gift is no longer recoverable through GiveCampus.
Manual Transfer Notes:
- The vast majority of manual bank account donors take the required action within five (5) business days. If you see a gift that is still showing as ‘authorized’, and the 'datetime_of_pledge' column shows a date/time from over 7-10 business days ago, we recommend that you contact the donor to ensure that they take the required action (i.e. confirm the micro-deposits) so that the transaction can be completed within the 30-day timeline.
- Some of the reasons donors occasionally do not take the required action and confirm the micro-deposit(s) within 7-10 days include:
- The donor mistyped their email address on the giving form, and thus is not receiving the emails that prompt them to confirm the micro-deposit(s).
- The emails are being ignored by the donor or are being filtered into Spam.
- The donor does not do online banking and therefore cannot confirm the micro-deposits until they receive their next paper statement in the mail OR contact their bank to find out the micro-deposit amounts.
- The donor does not remember which bank account they used and therefore which statement they need to check.