
Instant Websites for Nonprofits | Bellstrike - sahillavingia
http://bellstrike.com/
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p0ppe
According to the main page, Bellstrike will receive 9.5% of the total amount
that people donate through the site. The TOS does, however, list a different
commission; "As the sole consideration for Zekten's provision of the Service,
each Client Nonprofit agrees to pay Zekten a transaction fee of 6% for each
donation made to the Client Nonprofit using the Service, with a minimum
transaction fee of $1.50."

Which one is it?

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dcaldwell
Hi, I'm the founder of Bellstrike. The actual fee is 9.5% with no minimum
transaction. We include the credit card transaction fees (WePay charges 3.5%)
in the 9.5% fee. We originally were going to separate the two fees out but
decided to include everything in one fee. Thanks for pointing out the type -
we thought that had been corrected. We'll make the change.

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garethsprice
Beautiful design.

What was the thought process behind choosing a commission-based business model
over a flat monthly subscription?

Are you sure that business model is going to be profitable, and (perhaps more
importantly) not negatively affect your clients' conversion rate? I know if I
was going to make a sizeable donation and saw that 10% of it was being eaten
up in fees I'd be calling around see if I could mail in a check.

Edit: Also, have you looked into getting a referral fee when people sign up
for an account with wepay?

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dcaldwell
Well, to be honest, no we don't know if it'll be profitable yet. Mostly
because we just launched and don't have enough data. We very well may
introduce a monthly fee that allows nonprofits to only pay the percentag
(3.5%) transaction costs that WePay charges. We're certainly not into taking
advantage of nonprofits. Most nonprofits have under $25,000/year in revenue.
If you make $12,000/year in revenue, it's hard to even justify paying $15 or
$30 per month for something that you don't know if it works. We think with
this model it will hopefully reduce the barriers to entry for small nonprofits
so that they can get online quickly and easily and actually accept online
donations. The majority of nonprofit websites don't even have an online giving
option.

Also, if we do get a sizable number of nonprofits on the system, there are
other services that we'd like to offer to them down the road for an affordable
price (like $5 - $15/month). That may be a donor management database that's
easy to use and stripped down for small nonprofits, a stripped down email
marketing service, etc.

We looked into referral fees from WePay but they don't offer that for apps
that use their API. That's really fine for us though. We kind of like the fact
that we aren't telling nonprofits to use WePay with an ulterior motive of us
making a little extra money. We use WePay because it is bar none the best
marketplace payment processor that we know of... and that's with them having
just released their marketplace API about a month ago.

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aculver
I ran into this on HN randomly the other day when I looked up the wrong user
and saw this in a user's profile. The whole site, introductory video, tours,
etc. are so tight! Amazing job, guys. Best of luck!

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bbornstein
What features or services differentiate Bellstrike (9.5%) from WePay Giving
(3.5%) or First Giving (7.5%)?

~~~
dcaldwell
We actually provide a full, branded website for nonprofits. Most everything is
baked in for them - blog, automatic receipts for donations, etc. WePay is a
great service but they don't provide websites - they handle transactions. We
use do use WePay's API to handle the transactions on the nonprofits' websites.

First Giving is a great service as well but if I understand their model
correctly, it is more of a fundraising page for an individual to raise money
for a nonprofit.

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masondesu
Congrats to the Bellstrike team. Looks great, feels great, never lets you
down.

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JonLim
This looks really great!

A couple questions:

\- What language/framework do you guys use?

\- How secure are the transactions?

\- What do you guys use for transactional emails (welcome, password recovery,
donation receipts, etc)

I'm the Product Manager of PostageApp (<http://postageapp.com>) and I'd love
to give you a hand with transactional emails, if you are so inclined! Let me
know, keep up the awesome work!

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dcaldwell
Thanks! To answer your questions:

1) Rails 2) WePay handles our transactions so they're secure - we use their
new API. We highly recommend them. You can learn more about their security
here: <https://www.wepay.com/about/security> 3) We actually already use
Postmark. That being said, we'll check out PostageApp too :)

~~~
JonLim
Neat! Thanks for answering. Definitely something I'm going to pass along to a
few friends who are in this space or are constantly starting something. :)

As for the mail, no worries! Let me know if you have any questions about us,
or if you just want a bit of feedback regarding your transactional designs and
copy.

Cheers!

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jamhan
The most effective charities spend around 10% of donations on all
administrative costs and another 10% on fundraising. The current 9.5% fee for
this "service" seems excessive.

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chintan
This is really a fresh breath of air. The current state of art in this
industry is <http://www.convio.com/>

Good Luck Guys!

~~~
dcaldwell
Thanks so much.

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dw0rm
Answer "Sure" to "Can I use my own web address?" is a bit misleading. The
correct answer would be "No you can't."

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dcaldwell
Maybe we should reword that.

The thinking behind that is that the really small nonprofits that we work with
are generally relieved to find out that they can still use their domain name
on their business cards and brochures and email and just forward the domain to
their Bellstrike subdomain.

As a general rule most small nonprofits aren't techies, don't know the
difference between hosting and a domain name and don't know what a 301
redirect is or that it's even possible. That being said, we'll certainly talk
about rewording that so that it's clearer for the tech oriented audience and
doesn't seem misleading. That's a pretty easy change :)

We do plan on offering a domain masking service like Flavors.me, Carbonmade,
etc. where they won't have the need to do a 301 redirect.

Thanks for the feedback. We just launched today so we're glad to hear your
thoughts so we can make corrections.

~~~
dw0rm
Plus the search engines won't index their domain, and if in some case they had
to move away from your service (I don't say they should, as the service seems
to be rather cool) then they would loose their presence in search engines.
This is a kind of tradeoff they should be aware of in the first step.

Ability to have custom domain name will solve this problem.

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cubicle67
an audible bell strike when I pull the bell would be cool :)

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dcaldwell
We've thought about that. Didn't know if it'd be annoying.

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cubicle67
1\. you wouldn't want it too loud. just a hint is fine

2\. it only sounds when the user pulls the rope, so it's fully within the
user's control

