I received a thoughtful response to a criticism of MissionFish's pricing policies from Sean Milliken, their Executive Director.
I have to give credit to Milliken for his transparency on how MissionFish arrived at its unfair pricing policies.
But I can't credit MissionFish or MIlliken for arriving at rational conclusions. Milliken and his team felt that it was unfair to charge nonprofits $3.00 for processing a transaction but it was fair to charge them $99 for doing the same thing. Huh? That must have been an interesting set of meetings.
Milliken goes on to state that "Value is a tricky concept." No it isn't. It's disturbing to hear this kind of rationale from a company that is handling donations. There really is nothing tricky about it.
Missionfish's sliding fee schedule is unfair to donors. It's appalling to think that a transaction processing company would take $99 of if I made a $1000 donation to my charity. $99! Missionfish should charge a flat fee for their service. They are doing the same exact thing for a $10 donation and a $1000 donation. Nothing different. Absolutely nothing.
But as Milliken noted, 1000's of charities are using MissionFish. All that says is that charities are all too willing to compromise their donors. That's an unfortunate and longstanding truth.
But, things are changing and donors are assuming more responsibility. And once they find out that a huge chunk of their money is not going where they want it to go, someone will have to answer.
