Ok, WSU just pissed me off yet again….
I got an e-mail message (some of you probably did too) showing my CAF rank and begging for money before the end of the year. I guess it caught me in my post-Christmas, Friday off sort of mood, so I did it.
Problem #1 - followed the link, ended up on the donor site and went to look at the available donation options. 404 error - site not found. A donation/solicitation site should NEVER have links that don’t work. But yet, WSU’s always do. If you’ve pulled a donor to your site and they can’t explore options…you lose donors. Guaranteed.
Problem #2 - Ended up finding what I was looking for, where I learned that if you donate to CAF for anything but unrestricted use, your donation doesn’t count for CAF membership (Caveat here, different areas of the site have conflicting info about whether the “unleash excellence” academic support fund counts). So, if you donate to the CAF you’re not a CAF member unless you let them decide how to use the money. It’s also a problem to have conflicting info on a donation site…this will also cost you donors.
Problem #3 - looked past all this stuff. Made the minimum donation to unrestricted CAF to maintain my membership and priority, and put the rest into academic support. Then went to the checkout page and found that they’re tacking on 5% fees to cover Advancement’s handling and expenses. I don’t recall ever seeing that before. WSU has long made it difficult to give them things, but now they’re actually charging me to give them money??? This damn near made me cancel the whole thing.
I used to know a VP in Advancement who told me that WSU’s donor system is the most backward he’d ever seen. You’re supposed to make it really easy to donate, especially cash. And if you work in Advancement, if you’re not bringing in at least 5x what you cost, you’re failing. Apparently he didn’t pass that lesson along.
I got an e-mail message (some of you probably did too) showing my CAF rank and begging for money before the end of the year. I guess it caught me in my post-Christmas, Friday off sort of mood, so I did it.
Problem #1 - followed the link, ended up on the donor site and went to look at the available donation options. 404 error - site not found. A donation/solicitation site should NEVER have links that don’t work. But yet, WSU’s always do. If you’ve pulled a donor to your site and they can’t explore options…you lose donors. Guaranteed.
Problem #2 - Ended up finding what I was looking for, where I learned that if you donate to CAF for anything but unrestricted use, your donation doesn’t count for CAF membership (Caveat here, different areas of the site have conflicting info about whether the “unleash excellence” academic support fund counts). So, if you donate to the CAF you’re not a CAF member unless you let them decide how to use the money. It’s also a problem to have conflicting info on a donation site…this will also cost you donors.
Problem #3 - looked past all this stuff. Made the minimum donation to unrestricted CAF to maintain my membership and priority, and put the rest into academic support. Then went to the checkout page and found that they’re tacking on 5% fees to cover Advancement’s handling and expenses. I don’t recall ever seeing that before. WSU has long made it difficult to give them things, but now they’re actually charging me to give them money??? This damn near made me cancel the whole thing.
I used to know a VP in Advancement who told me that WSU’s donor system is the most backward he’d ever seen. You’re supposed to make it really easy to donate, especially cash. And if you work in Advancement, if you’re not bringing in at least 5x what you cost, you’re failing. Apparently he didn’t pass that lesson along.
