Case Study:

St Vincent de Paul starts the switch to contactless donation

The Goal:
Test Contactless Donations to counter the decline in cash donations

Traditionally fundraising in Ireland is associated with volunteers on the streets, coin buckets-in-hand. Yet in an increasingly cashless society that may now be on the way out. London-based strategy firm The Future Laboratory has said that Ireland’s tech scene, coupled with its population demographics, will make cash payments a minority in the next five years. Research by the consultancy firm estimates that 440 million people will use contactless mobile payment services across the world
this year – feeding a market that will be worth €120 million by 2022. In Ireland, there has been significant growth in card payments, according to the latest Banking & Payments Federation Ireland report. Contactless payments grew by about 66% year-on-year both in volume terms and in value terms to 158 million payments valued at €1.9 billion.
To address this trend St Vincent de Paul decided to test the CollecTin® contactless donation solution with Sumup inside. The solution, sponsored by Visa, allows for a contactless payment version of the traditional bucket collection. St Vincent de Paul endeavoured to evaluate and
trial the CollecTin® solution to test ease of use for volunteers and willingness donors to give/receive non-cash payments. A 3-month trial was initiated with 5 CollecTins that were used across different fundraising environments.

“We were delighted to partner with Sumup and Visa for this trial. We were unsure how donors would respond given that we were one of the first charities to trial this but the engagement far exceeded our expectations!”

Quote from Nichola Mullen, Head of Fundraising, SVP

The Solution: Accepting contactless within minutes

St Vincent de Paul was provided with CollecTin® solution which included a SumUp Air® card reader and a smartphone with the companion donation app installed. The solution provided an easy way to collect contactless donation with just two taps. The volunteer clicks the donation amount in the mobile device and the donor just taps to donate. The Collectin® comes with custom wrap, three donation panels, a lanyard and a bag. SumUp was able to offer the St Vincent de a simple and easy onboarding process that enabled them to sign up in 5 minutes and receive their CollecTin® within days. SVP were given extra support in both signup and use of the service through priority boarding, the provision of best practice documents and access to SumUp support centre, email and telephone support.

The Result

SVP used the devices at 4 different events including a Church gate collection, bag pack, raffle and clothes swap, raising over €800 in donations or €200 per tin per event. According to these results, one CollecTin® could possibly earn SVP
around €5000 in donations every year – so at a cost of around €130 including reader, battery and custom wrap, it’s a great investment for a charity. Especially when considering more and more people are going to carry less and less cash, as the popularity of contactless grows. Volunteers said they loved the design and ease of use of the CollecTin®, finding the card reader easy to operate and the companion app simple and quick to use. Given the feedback received SVP decided to buy 80 CollecTins to ramp up their contactless donation collections across their network.

“I was tasked with learning how to setup the CollecTins and train volunteers on how to use them. I found it very easy and intuitive and SumUp were on hand for any troubleshooting issues we had. Volunteers and donors alike were excited to use them and we’ve had lots of interest from branches around the country to get going with them.”

Quote from Daniel Alvey, Fundraising Officer

Purchasing

If you are interested in finding out more about the CollecTin®, click here