Banking Relationship for a Charity

[VJ99]

Does anyone have any insight/experience to share re. banking services for a charity.

I am on the board of a charitable organization. We currently bank with a credit union but their services are limited.
We need several services:
- chequing and savings in both CAD and USD, and including electronic wire transfers
- the ability to receive on-line donations and payments through the bank's secure service integrated with our own website
- Point-of-Sale solution
- a securities trading account to deal with donated securities

We are currently considering RBC & Moneris versus TD.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Vikash

[Just a Guy]

Well, I've been on many charity boards and most of the banking has been straightforward. The only real problem I see is the on-line part as Canadian banks are so behind the times there...

For that portion, most have gone straight through PayPal. There is also a service that Costco promotes for its members, but I've never used it.

[Mall Guy]

I sit on a couple of charity boards and have investigate different banking solutions. Number one, you are not going to get everything you want from a single bank or financial institution. If you find one that takes on-line donations, please let me know. In the meantime check out Canadahelps.org, for 3.9% they take care of the online donation, issue the tax receipt and transfer to your account weekly. You can link their "giving page" to your website. BMO has a very nice "community account" which saves on a number of service fees and should give you a savings (or GIC option) and chequing account in both CAD and USD and most likely the trading account. Recently we 'shopped' our business around several banks and BNS came up with a nice package (waived fees, bonus interest on GICs, etc., plus an annual 'pledge night' where they stay open to accept pledges for our annual event).

Good luck!

[VJ99]

Thank you for the info, Mall Guy.
Our board has rejected the Canadahelps option as too expensive.
But I will look into some of the other ideas.

[Mall Guy]

Thank you for the info, Mall Guy.
Our board has rejected the Canadahelps option as too expensive.

Well I don't know the type of charity, or the volume of donations, but i can tell you we introduced on-line pledging this year - the extra $10,000 we raise more than compensated for the 3.9% fee. . . family, friends and business associates were able to pledge as various team members sent tweets for our event. Then factor in they do the receipt including postage . . . guess you have to do the math. On-line was just one option for our event . . .