With other credit card processing systems, charities are charged a transaction fee to cover the credit card company processing charges and bank costs. With GiveDirect, those costs are underwritten by Children's Charitable Alliance of Texas, which means no charges are deducted from your gifts. (Exception: American Express. AX deducts their charge prior to transmitting the funds, and there is no way to recover that amount.) Children's Charitable Alliance of Texas is able to do this by combining (but not commingling) accounts with one bank, which gives it enough "compensating balances" to offset much of these charges.

The Children's Charitable Alliance of Texas online giving system, referred to as GiveDirect, allows a visitor to your web site the opportunity to make an instant, online gift to your organization via a secure, encrypted web server. Donors can give using their Visa, MasterCard, or American Express.

No merchant account is needed. Donations received via GiveDirect are processed by Local Independent Charities of American. Your money is forwarded on to you once a month via EFT. The gift is confirmed with the donor immediately via email.

You also receive an email with the donor's information for acknowledgement and receipt immediately after the gift is made. Web based administration is available where you can review donations any time, search for a group of donors, and download donation information into your database or spreadsheet. Your deposit information is also located online, showing you the amount of the deposit and the date the deposit was sent to you.

Standard Form - The standard donation form is set up free of charge.

Custom Form - The donation form can be customized to maintain the look of the rest of your web site. Your logo can be placed at the top of each page of the form, and you can specify a custom background color or image, font style and size, and link colors. The customized form also includes a field where a donor can specify to which program area or membership level they want to direct their donation, and a Bonus Text area where you can give special instructions to the donor. A ONE-TIME set up fee of $150.00 is assessed for a custom form. There is never a charge to change the features on your custom form.

Setting up GiveDirect on your web site is simple. We will assign you an account on our secure server using a unique code. You will then be given the HTML link information using your code for linking to the server. You will also be sent a web site address from where you can download the GiveDirect graphic.

The donation form on this web site is the GiveDirect form. Click here to view the form.

• Read the GiveDirect FAQ
  
• See the GiveDirect policy for activation / termination guidelines.

If you are not already using GiveDirect on your web site, and you would like to, please email our GiveDirect administrator Janet Bargewell at info@givedirect.org, or call her at 866.459.6420. If you are using a commercial online giving service, which is charging you processing fees, you may want to consider switching to the Children's Charitable Alliance of Texas system. Change over is quick and easy.