Get your minds out of the gutter, people.  I’m talking about our monthly check run in which we printed, signed, folded, stuffed, sealed, stamped and mailed over 800 checks to nonprofit organizations whose supporters raised money online with Firstgiving.  We had some mechanical assistance, but it was still quite a project.  But knowing that all that money – over a million bucks – is going to all kinds of great causes helped us through the rough spots.  Soon, this will be a thing of the past.  As some of our nonprofit clients already know, Firstgiving can send the money raised electronically to the NPO’s bank account. 

Recently, we’ve made some improvements to the system that will make this even faster and more secure.  I can’t go into all the details, but the important points are these:

If you are an NPO currently getting a monthly check from Firstgiving, you will soon receive information on how to sign up for weekly electronic funds transfer so you can get your money faster and more frequently.

If your NPO is already getting EFT payments from Firstgiving, you don’t need to do anything different, just concentrate on using all the time and energy you’re saving by not processing paper donations on promoting your cause and delivering good outcomes.

If your NPO is not yet signed up with Firstgiving, the process is simple: after you sign up, we’ll send a check for the first month’s funds to the registered address of your organization.  That mailing will include the information you need to verify you bank information so we can start processing future payments weekly by EFT.

If for some reason, you prefer to get good old paper checks on a monthly basis, that’s ok too.  But we’re hoping that as many organizations as possible join the EFT program since it saves everybody time and paper, and it lets NPOs spend more time doing what we all want them to do – making the world a better place.