Challenge

Donorbox was created to give nonprofits an all-in-one platform for collecting online donations, easing the burden of regulatory compliance and protecting them from fraud. Many nonprofits run lean organizations, which means that managing payment technologies, complex reporting requirements, and the distribution of tax receipts all consume valuable resources. Nonprofits are also easy targets for fraudsters who commonly test stolen credit cards against these resource-constrained organizations.

“Nonprofits work with lean teams, and devoting limited resources to compliance, reporting, and fraud greatly detracts from their ability to be impactful,” said Charles Zhang, founder of Donorbox.

Donorbox set out to solve these challenges for the nonprofits who rely on donations to do their good work. After reading positive online reviews touting Stripe’s ease of use, straightforward code, and helpful documentation, Donorbox decided to make a change.

Solution

Donorbox wanted to offer its customers a smoother payments experience on top of robust reporting and fraud prevention. It chose Stripe Elements to streamline the overall payments experience for nonprofits and donors, Stripe Connect to power a seamless integration into Donorbox’s existing platform and reduce Donorbox’s regulatory burden, and Stripe Radar to detect and block fraud without adding friction for legitimate donors.

“For nonprofits to be successful, it’s imperative they present donors with a smooth and slick checkout flow,” added Zhang. “The robustness of Stripe Elements, with features like real-time validation and card account updater, creates an excellent donor experience and encourages continued giving.”

Results

With Stripe, Donorbox has been able to expand into 40+ countries as its small-but-nimble development team improved the user experience, optimized payments processing, and significantly reduced losses from fraud.

Over 30% reduction in lost recurring donations

With Stripe’s easy-to-use offering, Donorbox was able to quickly deploy a streamlined user experience while improving security and enabling its continued growth and expansion.

Providing a fast and simple experience for donors is critical to maximize captured donations, and Stripe helps remove roadblocks by pre-populating donor data and validating payments in real time. For recurring donations, Stripe’s card account updater eliminates declines so donations continue to flow even if a donor’s card has been replaced. Stripe’s integration with Plaid also allows nonprofits to easily accept ACH payments for larger donations or from institutional donors.

“Seemingly small optimizations like Stripe’s card account updater are critical to these nonprofits because so many rely on recurring donations,” said Zhang. “Card account updater alone helps reduce lost revenue by more than 30%.”

80% reduction in fraud in a high-frequency market

Criminals commonly target nonprofits for card testing, which leads to both hefty losses and inadvertent denials for legitimate donors. Stripe Radar uses machine learning to detect and block fraud while keeping real donations flowing to Donorbox’s nonprofit customers. Small nonprofits often struggle to stay afloat due to hundreds of chargebacks and fraudulent payments. With Radar, Donorbox has been able to reduce fraud by over 80%.

Simplified payments infrastructure offers more capabilities with less development effort

Stripe Connect serves as the payment facilitator, which removes the compliance and regulatory burden from Donorbox, while getting donations to nonprofits in less time. Stripe’s global capabilities also enable easy integration with international payment providers, allowing Donorbox to quickly expand around the world.

“Stripe offers us a suite of payments products that are easy to integrate so we can quickly give more benefits to more nonprofits,” said Zhang.