Terre des Hommes

FinDock
September 30, 2022

Use case: Managing high volume membership payments as a political party.

The challenge of party membership payments

For political parties, managing a large and dynamic membership base presents unique challenges. With fluctuating member engagement, election cycles, and fundraising drives, ensuring reliable and efficient payment operations is crucial. High volumes of direct debits, recurring payments, and peak donation periods create financial complexity that demands a scalable and automated solution.

Political parties often rely on non-Salesforce CRM systems that lack the capabilities to effectively manage payment operations. This can lead to operational inefficiencies, high payment failure rates, and a frustrating member experience. In many cases, parties managing hundreds of thousands of direct debit memberships experience failure rates exceeding 5-10%—a common challenge for large-scale recurring payments. This results in increased arrears, manual reconciliation efforts, and a disrupted membership experience.

Some of our customers process over a million payments in single direct debit collection runs, and our solution is built for high-volume transactions on Salesforce. These runs process automatically, typically overnight, with times varying by Payment Service Provider, Bacs Bureau, or direct bank submission for SEPA, taking about an hour per 100,000 payments for smooth, reliable processing.

What we see as key payment challenges:

  • High direct debit failure rates, causing membership cancellations and revenue loss. Save the Children Netherlands reduced their Direct Debit failure rate with 60% by using Salesforce + FinDock. 
  • Limited payment flexibility, restricting members from choosing their preferred payment methods.
  • Manual reconciliation efforts, leading to increased administrative burden. FinDock customers spent 70% less time on reconciliation (source: FinDock impact report). 
  • Fragmented payment data, preventing a unified view of member transactions.
  • Arrears management difficulties, affecting overall retention and engagement.
  • Handling fundraising peaks during election cycles, where donation volumes can spike by over 200% within weeks.

Especially when you have elections on the horizon, focussing on membership retention and donations can be very important. As a political party, you need a scalable and integrated payment solution that can handle high-volume transactions, provide real-time visibility into payment data, and improve the overall membership and fundraising experience.

The solution: FinDock + Salesforce

By implementing FinDock’s fully native Salesforce solution, political parties can transform their approach to payment operations. The combination of FinDock and Salesforce offers:

  • Reliable direct debit payment processes, reducing failure rates and ensuring consistent revenue streams.
  • A unified view of all member payments, including online and offline transactions.
  • Scalability to handle fundraising peaks efficiently, ensuring smooth processing during election-driven donation surges.
  • Seamless payment operations, allowing members to manage both subscriptions and donations effortlessly.
  • A real-time dashboard for leadership, offering complete visibility into membership trends and payment statuses. Did you know FinDock customers experience 150% better customer insights? (source: FinDock Impact Report)
  • PayLinks for quick and easy arrears collection, allowing members to update payment details or settle outstanding balances instantly and customer centric.

Bringing Payments Operations to the next level

With FinDock and Salesforce, political parties can significantly reduce payment failures and arrears, potentially recovering 20-30% of previously lost revenue. The ability to support multiple payment types, including direct debits, card transactions, and local specific payment options, ensures that members have flexible options to stay engaged and contribute.

Additionally, by automating arrears collection with PayLinks and streamlining offline payments, political parties can increase membership retention rates before the next election cycle. 

Frictionless Payment experiences driving Customer Payment Happiness

As the political landscape evolves, so do the financial and operational needs of parties. By leveraging FinDock’s payment operations platform, political parties can ensure sustainable growth, improved member engagement, and frictionless donation experiences, delivering Customer Payment Happiness at every stage.