confirmation that donation was received

[andy5995]

I donated through Paypal on March 28/29, but have not yet received any confirmation/thank you email (aside from the one auto-sent from PayPal). My feedback is that I like to get a confirmation email from the project to which I donated.

One other bit of feedback @Jeru :  In this blog post where comments and suggestions are encouraged, the link to the forum post leads to a post and sub-forum where replies and new posts are disabled.

Edited April 10, 2017 by andy5995
fixed spelling of "confirmation"

[Lion.Kanzen]

@feneur

[Jeru]

Thanks for your donation, @andy5995!

My name is Aviv and I am a member of the 0 A.D. Treasury Committee.

I agree that a confirmation e-mail is in order. I believe that people who donate using Click&Pledge get one automatically, but donors who use PayPal might not.

Unfortunately, we cannot see donations or directly issue confirmations. Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI) handles the donations for us and only they have direct access to our financial data.

If you can kindly provide the sum donated, the e-mail address associated with your PayPal account, and date of donation, I will gladly ask SPI to confirm that the sum was donated. You can do this via private message if you prefer. I apologize in advance as it could take quite some time to get any response from SPI. 

Last but not least, I have made a new thread in the announcements forum with a copy of the financial report. I have also edited the link in the news post so that it now points there. I thought the treasury committee forum was open to the public. Thanks for letting me know otherwise.

[feneur]

1 hour ago, Jeru said:

I believe that people who donate using Click&Pledge get one automatically, but donors who use PayPal might not.

Unfortunately, we cannot see donations or directly issue confirmations. Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI) handles the donations for us and only they have direct access to our financial data.

They do, and at least for those donations we do get an email telling us that the person in question has donated. And I think that the donation process there includes a thank you message (and the email contains that message at the very least), so I don't think we've had reason to consider doing anything different. If the PayPal donation doesn't we might have to do something about that.

[andy5995]

@jeru Thanks for the response. Yes, I'll send you those details in a PM.

[Jeru]

Hi @andy5995, I have obtained a confirmation. Please check the the e-mail address associated with your PayPal account. 

[andy5995]

Got it, @Jeru

[elexis]

On 4/8/2017 at 2:26 PM, Jeru said:

Unfortunately, we cannot see donations or directly issue confirmations. Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI) handles the donations for us and only they have direct access to our financial data.

If you can kindly provide the sum donated, the e-mail address associated with your PayPal account, and date of donation, I will gladly ask SPI to confirm that the sum was donated

Seems unfortunate if we can't reward donors even with a simple "thank you" message or donors badge (hint) if we never know who donated.

That information ought to become available to us immediately. Perhaps one can use a crowdfunding service that uses SPIs paypal for the transaction but informs us independently of paypal and SPI. At least for the Indiegogo campaign it looks like it worked that way?

[feneur]

3 hours ago, elexis said:

Seems unfortunate if we can't reward donors even with a simple "thank you" message or donors badge (hint) if we never know who donated.

We do get an email with information when someone donates via Click and Pledge, but apparently not when someone donates via PayPal. As for rewarding people who donate, sure, but should everyone be rewarded the same way (even if they just donate whatever is the lowest amount PayPal allows)? Should we put in the effort when we receive confirmation of a donation to check whether there is a forum account registered with that email address/send an email asking whether they have one?

[elexis]

22 hours ago, feneur said:

should everyone be rewarded the same way (even if they just donate whatever is the lowest amount PayPal allows)?

Mostly wondering what reward mechanisms are actually allowed by 501c3. For example supertuxkart providing bonus levels for donators that are later added for everyone to the game. But they're not 501c3.

22 hours ago, feneur said:

Should we put in the effort when we receive confirmation of a donation to check whether there is a forum account registered with that email address/send an email asking whether they have one?

The first question is whether the site that contains the PayPal button can receive the information, or whether one could provide a different button on the forums for logged in people, so that the forum name is transmitted with the donation. Then it could become zero effort. It's in particular relevant if we would add a short message that people can send with the donation that could be displayed here or in the lobby. Secondly, if the technicalities imply considerable effort, why would that not be compensated proportionately like every other effort to run this place.