Online Payments for Grants

JenniferBrambley

With everything virtual these days, I wanted to see if other Foundations are making online grant payments to nonprofits? We normally mail checks, but have been asked by a few fund holders if we can make online payments in lieu of sending a check. This is normally because of a specific fundraiser they are participating in where it is all virtual.

If you have made online payments, are you doing so by credit card? Is there a best practice when it comes to making those transactions in Community Suite?

Thanks! 😀

LornaSandberg

Hi Jennifer - we have been using Electronic Funds Transfers for grant payments since we locked down in March. Once we process their grant, we send them a grant notification letter thru the GLM and ask them login to the Portal to review a follow up. The follow up we assign them tells them what we need to make the EFT and ask if they have sent it already and it is still current. The info we need is:

• a void cheque, or
• a direct deposit form, or
• The following details: Organization name and full address, Name and address of their bank as well as: Bank number, Branch number and Account Number

Most send a void cheque. We use for the first transaction and then delete the info we receive. It is retained in CSuite for future transactions. How it works in CSuite is the work of our finance director, so I can't assist on the tech side.

To maintain the idea of double signatures on each cheque, EFT transactions are approved by our ED and a board member - I think this is just a list of the grantees and amounts.

Once the transaction has occurred, we keep a pdf or jpeg record of the bank statement that indicates it was transferred.

There is no cost associated, as it is just like a regular bank deposit.

If there is a grant agreement that is required, we do this via the GLM as well. Both the grant agreement and the bank info form follow ups must be complete before we do the EFT.

We do our best to complete the EFT within 5 business days of completion of all required forms.

I will get phone calls from grantees confirming this is legit. When we communicated about our COVID plans this spring we advised we would be moving to EFT granting.