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Task #2243

closed

Blog about Donation Issues

Added by Italo Vignoli almost 7 years ago. Updated over 6 years ago.

Status:
Closed
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
Target version:
Team - Q2/2017
Start date:
Due date:
2017-05-20
% Done:

0%


Files

tdf-donationsmessage.odt (22.7 KB) tdf-donationsmessage.odt Italo Vignoli, 2017-06-05 11:09
Actions #1

Updated by Florian Effenberger almost 7 years ago

  • Target version set to Q2/2017

Before publishing let's quickly sync - maybe some hint on the donate page is better than a blog post, but undetermined atm. It's a technical detail, the text will be the same in any case.

Actions #2

Updated by Florian Effenberger almost 7 years ago

Topics consist of:

  • rejected credit cards
  • refunds
  • download issues
  • donation receipts for Germany, Europe, US and rest of the world
  • easy donation confirmation
Actions #3

Updated by Italo Vignoli almost 7 years ago

  • File tdf-donationsmessage.odt added
Actions #4

Updated by Florian Effenberger almost 7 years ago

Thanks for that! Some comments:

  • add words of thanks for our donors and supporters, you can take these
    out of the annual report if you want
  • staff -> team
  • "tender specific tasks" is enough, remove the improvement part of the
    sentence
  • for the cost of donations paragraph, maybe add some hint that
    donations under 5 € might cost more in the end than they bring us
  • a paragraph about other payment options is worthwhile; we often get
    asked about that, and it's a nightmare in terms of accounting and
    administration and not worth the hassles to add YourFavoritePay service
  • for download issues, add that refunds of donations take administrative
    time we prefer to use for the project work plus it costs quite some
    fees; but if someone wants a refund, please mail
    with their PayPal transaction ID rather
    than filing a complaint with PayPal
  • for donation confirmations, add that we can provide informal English
    ones or formal German ones. However, writing, signing, printing and
    snailmailing these cost time and money, and for donations below 200 €
    there's an easy donation confirmation [cf. link on the German website]
    they can use
  • credit card rejections also happen when the card has been issued in a
    different country than where the IP originates from
  • for refunds, see above, maybe makes sense combining these
Actions #5

Updated by Italo Vignoli almost 7 years ago

  • File tdf-donationsmessage.odt added

Document updated, and uploaded.

Actions #6

Updated by Italo Vignoli almost 7 years ago

  • File deleted (tdf-donationsmessage.odt)
Actions #7

Updated by Florian Effenberger almost 7 years ago

I'll reply later this, early next week

Actions #8

Updated by Florian Effenberger almost 7 years ago

Didn't proofread yet, but one other thing that popped to my mind, as we
had this recently:

A donation confirmation can only be issued on the name associated with
the donation. Private PayPal accounts cannot get a confirmation on the
business name, and with credit cards the problem is the same, plus
usually they only have a private name on them.

Actions #9

Updated by Florian Effenberger almost 7 years ago

  • old: The download and donation mechanisms are completely independent
    • new: The download and donation mechanisms are completely independent,
      donations are purely optional, and LibreOffice can always be downloaded
      free of charge
    • in the same paragraph also add a note about the "To manually download
      click here" link which many people miss :)
  • Donation confirmation
    • you can add a hint that it's complicated to issue a reliable
      confirmation, as sometimes there is a huge delay from e.g. credit card
      vendors
    • also add a note that due to the nature of it, we cannot issue a
      confirmation for BitPay or Flattr donations
  • Donation receipts
    • Add a note "Donation confirmations take a significant amount of time
      and work we would rather use for your project activities. In case your
      donation is below 200 €, we kindly ask you to go work with the
      simplified donation recipiet first."
Actions #10

Updated by Italo Vignoli almost 7 years ago

  • File deleted (tdf-donationsmessage.odt)
Actions #11

Updated by Italo Vignoli almost 7 years ago

Document updated with latest comments, this should be the final version.

Actions #12

Updated by Florian Effenberger almost 7 years ago

Sounds great to me, thanks a lot!

One thing is missing, maybe you can add this:

A donation confirmation can only be issued on the name associated with
the donation. Private PayPal accounts cannot get a confirmation on the
business name, and with credit cards the problem is the same, plus
usually they only have a private name on them.

And another clarification:

  • "Often, it is difficult to issue an automated/instant donation
    confirmation for credit cards" the automated/instant is key ;-)
  • You can also leave out "Before asking for a donation receipt, though,
    you should verify if the donation to a German charity can be deducted
    from your tax declaration." - people usually need this for accounting
    purposes to have any form of receipt.

The text has all it should, but - the more I think about it, the more I
think it feels rather negative. I don't have any better idea either, as
the donation handling is painful in fact. ;-) But I fear a bit we
might distract people from donating...

Mike, do you have any idea how to phrase that more positive?

Actions #13

Updated by Mike Saunders almost 7 years ago

Florian Effenberger wrote:

The text has all it should, but - the more I think about it, the more I
think it feels rather negative. I don't have any better idea either, as
the donation handling is painful in fact. ;-) But I fear a bit we
might distract people from donating...

Mike, do you have any idea how to phrase that more positive?

If it's a page that we point people to when they have problems donating, I'm not so worried about negativity as those readers will already have experienced a problem. In that sense, would it be worth putting it on the TDF blog as a page, rather than a post? Then it won't appear on the front page or regular feeds -- it's just something we can use when we need it.

In any case, I think it's good that we have a positive message at the beginning -- so maybe we should end as well with a short and positive section like:

Thank you!

As mentioned, donations are vital for helping The Document Foundation and LibreOffice to thrive. With your support, we can improve our infrastructure, pay our team, organise our conference and do many other things to make LibreOffice even better.

A couple of other things:

  • minumum -> minimum
  • on our bank account -> in our bank account
  • In addition,we -> In addition, we

There are a couple of mentions of "credit card circuit" but that doesn't seem to be common wording... Is it referring to credit card payment gateways?

Actions #14

Updated by Florian Effenberger almost 7 years ago

experienced a problem. In that sense, would it be worth putting it on
the TDF blog as a page, rather than a post? Then it won't appear on
the front page or regular feeds -- it's just something we can use when
we need it.

Sounds sensible indeed. And how about then linking it from the download
& donate page as "Experiencing problems with downloading or donating?
Please read our extensive FAQ." or something like that; wording
proposals appreciated. ;-)

"Thank you!

As mentioned, donations are vital for helping The Document Foundation
and LibreOffice to thrive. With your support, we can improve our
infrastructure, pay our team, organise our conference and do many other
things to make LibreOffice even better."

Sounds great!

There are a couple of mentions of "credit card circuit" but that doesn't
seem to be common wording... Is it referring to credit card payment
gateways?

How about "credit card processors"? Is that the common term?

Actions #15

Updated by Florian Effenberger almost 7 years ago

Italo, can you create the draft page in the blog with the latest changes factored in?

Actions #16

Updated by Italo Vignoli almost 7 years ago

Will prepare a draft during the weekend

Actions #17

Updated by Italo Vignoli almost 7 years ago

Page preview (I don't know if it works for everyone):

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/?page_id=5662&preview_id=5662

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