Firstgiving

The fees they deduct before sending money on to the charity are ridiculous. Better to send the money directly to the charity or if you don’t want to do that for some reason, see if the charity will accept payment through PayPal.

I continue to question how well First Giving operates but there is good news. It occurred to me that I could use social media to bring attention to the problem to seek a resolution. I also wondered if perhaps other people who had used First Giving services might have ideas for us on how to break the stand off with the company (ie crowd sourcing a solution). So I posted on First Giving’s own open Facebook page that we would love to have the donations please. Later that same night amazingly someone (quite nice) from First Giving finance called me and said that as a very special exception she could in fact write the check and send it to the right place. The «special exception» was about a complicated issue relating to them not usually being able to/​wanting to send checks on to a fiscal sponsor. Hooray. Hooray. Human rights catastrophe averted.
This one star rating? The problems with First Giving and Indiegogo dancing hand in hand are legion. The donations were slid over from Indiegogo to First Giving and we never had a prior relationship with First Giving. This is not a good way to sign a non-​profit up for a service (ie signing someone up without really explaining). Then First Giving treated us badly and were wildly inflexible even claiming at one point that we *had* to receive a check at an address that we told them was totally wrong. Irony: the Indiegogo Program linked to First Giving is called the «flexible funding option.» And then when things do go wrong because of this poorly formed relationship between Indiegogo and First Giving, First Giving provides no good way of resolving issues. There is no way to speak to a supervisor or to finance. I did a run around by making the issue public on FB. That probably won’t work for everyone. After I posted, First Giving folks initially called me a «spammer» on FB, then the posted on FB that they had paid (ie not true). Using the secret power of Facebook was waaaaay stressful to me. Perhaps I got my first gray hair over it.
A word in defense of Indiegogo. They did call me yesterday also to try and work out the problem. They were very nice. Let’s just think about it like this. Indiegogo is an a bad relationship with someone, and that someone is First Giving.