Instant Websites for Nonprofits | Bellstrike

by sahillavingia • 15 years ago

70 20 15 years ago

masondesu• 15 years ago

Congrats to the Bellstrike team. Looks great, feels great, never lets you down.

aculver• 15 years ago

I ran into this on HN randomly the other day when I looked up the wrong user and saw this in a user's profile. The whole site, introductory video, tours, etc. are so tight! Amazing job, guys. Best of luck!

p0ppe• 15 years ago

According to the main page, Bellstrike will receive 9.5% of the total amount that people donate through the site. The TOS does, however, list a different commission; "As the sole consideration for Zekten's provision of the Service, each Client Nonprofit agrees to pay Zekten a transaction fee of 6% for each donation made to the Client Nonprofit using the Service, with a minimum transaction fee of $1.50."

Which one is it?

dcaldwell7• 15 years ago

Hi, I'm the founder of Bellstrike. The actual fee is 9.5% with no minimum transaction. We include the credit card transaction fees (WePay charges 3.5%) in the 9.5% fee. We originally were going to separate the two fees out but decided to include everything in one fee. Thanks for pointing out the type - we thought that had been corrected. We'll make the change.

garethsprice• 15 years ago

Beautiful design.

What was the thought process behind choosing a commission-based business model over a flat monthly subscription?

Are you sure that business model is going to be profitable, and (perhaps more importantly) not negatively affect your clients' conversion rate? I know if I was going to make a sizeable donation and saw that 10% of it was being eaten up in fees I'd be calling around see if I could mail in a check.

Edit: Also, have you looked into getting a referral fee when people sign up for an account with wepay?

dcaldwell7• 15 years ago

Well, to be honest, no we don't know if it'll be profitable yet. Mostly because we just launched and don't have enough data. We very well may introduce a monthly fee that allows nonprofits to only pay the percentag (3.5%) transaction costs that WePay charges. We're certainly not into taking advantage of nonprofits. Most nonprofits have under $25,000/year in revenue. If you make $12,000/year in revenue, it's hard to even justify paying $15 or $30 per month for something that you don't know if it works. We think with this model it will hopefully reduce the barriers to entry for small nonprofits so that they can get online quickly and easily and actually accept online donations. The majority of nonprofit websites don't even have an online giving option.

Also, if we do get a sizable number of nonprofits on the system, there are other services that we'd like to offer to them down the road for an affordable price (like $5 - $15/month). That may be a donor management database that's easy to use and stripped down for small nonprofits, a stripped down email marketing service, etc.

We looked into referral fees from WePay but they don't offer that for apps that use their API. That's really fine for us though. We kind of like the fact that we aren't telling nonprofits to use WePay with an ulterior motive of us making a little extra money. We use WePay because it is bar none the best marketplace payment processor that we know of... and that's with them having just released their marketplace API about a month ago.

dw0rm2• 15 years ago

Answer "Sure" to "Can I use my own web address?" is a bit misleading. The correct answer would be "No you can't."

dcaldwell7• 15 years ago

Maybe we should reword that.

The thinking behind that is that the really small nonprofits that we work with are generally relieved to find out that they can still use their domain name on their business cards and brochures and email and just forward the domain to their Bellstrike subdomain.

As a general rule most small nonprofits aren't techies, don't know the difference between hosting and a domain name and don't know what a 301 redirect is or that it's even possible. That being said, we'll certainly talk about rewording that so that it's clearer for the tech oriented audience and doesn't seem misleading. That's a pretty easy change :)

We do plan on offering a domain masking service like Flavors.me, Carbonmade, etc. where they won't have the need to do a 301 redirect.

Thanks for the feedback. We just launched today so we're glad to hear your thoughts so we can make corrections.

dw0rm2• 15 years ago

Plus the search engines won't index their domain, and if in some case they had to move away from your service (I don't say they should, as the service seems to be rather cool) then they would loose their presence in search engines. This is a kind of tradeoff they should be aware of in the first step.

Ability to have custom domain name will solve this problem.

bbornstein• 15 years ago

What features or services differentiate Bellstrike (9.5%) from WePay Giving (3.5%) or First Giving (7.5%)?

dcaldwell7• 15 years ago

We actually provide a full, branded website for nonprofits. Most everything is baked in for them - blog, automatic receipts for donations, etc. WePay is a great service but they don't provide websites - they handle transactions. We use do use WePay's API to handle the transactions on the nonprofits' websites.

First Giving is a great service as well but if I understand their model correctly, it is more of a fundraising page for an individual to raise money for a nonprofit.

JonLim2• 15 years ago

This looks really great!

A couple questions:

- What language/framework do you guys use?

- How secure are the transactions?

- What do you guys use for transactional emails (welcome, password recovery, donation receipts, etc)

I'm the Product Manager of PostageApp (http://postageapp.com) and I'd love to give you a hand with transactional emails, if you are so inclined! Let me know, keep up the awesome work!

dcaldwell7• 15 years ago

Thanks! To answer your questions:

1) Rails 2) WePay handles our transactions so they're secure - we use their new API. We highly recommend them. You can learn more about their security here: https://www.wepay.com/about/security 3) We actually already use Postmark. That being said, we'll check out PostageApp too :)

JonLim2• 15 years ago

Neat! Thanks for answering. Definitely something I'm going to pass along to a few friends who are in this space or are constantly starting something. :)

As for the mail, no worries! Let me know if you have any questions about us, or if you just want a bit of feedback regarding your transactional designs and copy.

Cheers!

chintan• 15 years ago

This is really a fresh breath of air. The current state of art in this industry is http://www.convio.com/

Good Luck Guys!

dcaldwell7• 15 years ago

Thanks so much.

cubicle672• 15 years ago

an audible bell strike when I pull the bell would be cool :)

dcaldwell7• 15 years ago

We've thought about that. Didn't know if it'd be annoying.

cubicle672• 15 years ago

1. you wouldn't want it too loud. just a hint is fine

2. it only sounds when the user pulls the rope, so it's fully within the user's control

jamhan• 15 years ago

The most effective charities spend around 10% of donations on all administrative costs and another 10% on fundraising. The current 9.5% fee for this "service" seems excessive.

Instant Websites for Nonprofits | Bellstrike

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