Steve
Great concept, poor execution (initially) but GREAT FOLLOW UP!
UPDATED: First, I contacted the charities I donated to through Charity on Top. They all received their funds, so no concerns there. Also, I see that COT also distributes within a week of receipt now, which is a huge improvement going forward. I've changed my rating from a 3 to 5 because of how responsive they have been AND because of the upgrade. Cheers! First, let me state that I regret having to leave a somewhat negative review. My employer generously allows us to convert unused PTO into contributions and I was very happy to find all my favorite charities participating. However, I was disappointed to learn two things about redeeming a gift card for a charity. First, the charity receives the funds anywhere from 30-60 days from redemption by check. I've contacted my charities and none have received notice that contributions are coming. I understand there are reasons for a time gap (verification of the funds, etc) but that seems to be an extraordinarily long time. I don't know if the donation funds are kept separate from operations - if they aren't, a cash lean operation could be tempted to use them to pay expenses until other funds come in. Second, my charities only received 85% of what I donated. Again, I don't begrudge COT from taking fees to cover costs, but that seems high as well. If they could close the time gap and lower the fees to under 10%, that would be a confidence boost for me personally.
Response from Charity On Top Foundation, Inc.Dec 31, 2020
Hi Steve, we so appreciate your questions and are happy to address them. When you buy Charity On Top gift cards directly from charityontop.org you have the option to cover the 3.75% we charge to the charities. And, it's awesome - about 95% of our customers do this so we then send 100% to the charities when the card is redeemed. We are full-time volunteers so it is easier for us to keep the maximum amount of money flowing to charities. We started COT because we know how hard it is to raise money, so we are incentivized and motivated to move that money to charities, and as much of it as we can. But our website is only one place to buy our cards. In order to invite so many more people like you to give the gift of charity through our cards, we utilize amazing 3rd party platforms and partners to help sell and distribute our cards, including employee incentive programs and direct to consumer gift card portals like Amazon. They all have back-end fees to operate and each of them charges a small amount to do this. When we pay the charities, we let them know a card was redeemed for them, and if it was originally bought by a 3rd party, there can be up to 15% taken out of their gross amount. The charities are given a link to FAQ's with their check, along with direct contact info to ask us any questions. Few have inquired further about the 15% that these 3rd parties charge, but once they understand it, they are grateful to be getting these funds without having to spend any money or employing more fundraising staff to receive them. They like the free money and we like giving them the free money. The larger we get, the more cards we sell, the better discounts we can negotiate with our 3rd parties. So the more cards the merrier for everyone! As you can imagine, our process for sending checks to a variety of 1.8 million charities is logistically pretty complicated and now that we are growing and scaling at a very rapid pace, we are in the process of transitioning to an automatic payment system. We are hoping to roll this out by March 1. We don't have email addresses for all the charities, so we can't alert them of a payment that is coming without the time and expense of a paper mailing. But with our new rollout, they will be able to be notified in advance. And, we just switched over to paying our charities at the end of each week! (updated 02/19/21) Now, that's fast!! Our low operating funds are kept separate from our big charity payment funds. Hope that helps answer your questions! Please do email us again at [email protected] if you have any questions or want to discuss further. We are also happy to schedule a call. Charity On Top is about giving and we live and breathe charity. Thank you and your employer for choosing to give generously and intentionally to charity. THANK YOU so much for the updated review!! I can't even tell you what that means to us that you would take the time to update and improve your review! We have been working very hard to improve - especially with charity payments! We created and implemented an entire automated back-end now for charity checks and after 5 weeks of work and refinement, we are super excited to pay the charities faster than ever. We call our weekly charity payday - "Fund-ay Monday!" Cheers and thank you for helping us to be the best we can be for all charities and their awesome donors! :)