Hi Joe,
Thanks very much for your message. This sounds like a great
application and is the intended goal of the API.
To answer your questions:
1) The API listed on
globalgiving.org will work for the GlobalGiving
UK site. That being said... see #2
2) We have to make a couple of minor edits to the API key permissions
on our end to switch it over. If you email me
(
kco...@globalgiving.org) your API key and/or email address that the
API key is tied to we can move this over.
FYI: A given API key will work either for
globalgiving.org or for
globalgiving.co.uk, but not both at the same time. If you ever want to
support donations to both sites, you'll need two keys, one for each
site. We can switch a given API key over to the UK for you or anyone
else reading this. Just let us know your key in an email or on the
contact us form.
3) To submit donations, you should use the 'Submit a Donation' call.
That will actually process the donation at the time. The 'Order' call
is used for partners that want to inform us that a donation is
happening but funds are not actually being transfered/paid at the time
of the API call. You can think of this as an account receivable model.
As you note there's a special access token for this as we tend to have
special partnerships set up for orders. General donations should use
the donation call. We're happy to discuss this further, answer any
questions, and see if the Order model is better for your application.
Based on what you've said so far, the Donation call sounds like the
better fit, though.
4) The minimum donation on UK is £5 and on GG.org is $10. This is
because we have to pay the credit card processors a flat fee per
transaction plus a percentage of the transaction amount on each and
every charge. Below £5 (or $10), the cost overhead becomes
inefficiently high. You are allowed to charge both pence or cent
increments (e.g. £5.12 or $11.23) - it does not have to be whole
pounds/dollars.
One question: Will your users be putting in their credit cards to make
the donation - or will you be making the donation from a single/master
card held by your company? If it is a single card, then you could
aggregate points from multiple users and make a single transaction to
redeem those points to a given project. This would allow you to make
allocations on your site go as low as you want on your site while
still being able to meet the minimum levels through our platform by
polling together allocations into a single donation. This won't work,
however, if the individual users will be paying for this as you can't
batch up multiple cards in a single charge.
We're happy to help work through any of the details or answer any
questions that you. I'd love to see it once you get it up!
Thanks,
Kevin
--
Kevin Conroy -
kco...@globalgiving.org
Director of User Experience and Product Development
GlobalGiving
1023 15th Street, NW, 12th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
Phone:
202-232-5784
http://www.globalgiving.org
On Jul 9, 6:12 am, Joe <
joe.ly...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I'm in the process of developing a website that integrates with the
> GlobalGiving API. The concept I have is to reward the loyalty of my
> site's users by awarding them credit on their accounts which they can
> then donate toward GlobalGiving projects of their choice.
>
> I have a few points/questions I'd like some confirmation on, so I'll
> run through them here and any advice at all would be much appreciated
> (please bear in mind I'm not very technical myself, but I do have an
> experienced software developer who'll be working on this project with
> me):
>
> 1) I am based in the UK and intend to integrate with the UK
sitewww.globalgiving.co.uk. I can see that the UK site is generally scaled
> down from the US sitewww.globalgiving.organd contains no mention of
> the API, but from reading a discussion on this board it looks like the
> API works for both sites (though there will be some differences in
> configuration such as the currency code). Can you let me know if this
> assumption isn't correct?
>
> 2) I've just requested an API key using the standard process, but on
> one discussion on this board I saw that integration with the UK site
> requires a special API key, so I will request this athttp://
www.globalgiving.org/contactus/unless I hear otherwise.
>
> 3) To make donations to projects I plan to use the API Operation of
> 'Submit an Order' rather than 'Submit a Donation'. I appreciate that
> this requires an access token (for authentication purposes), so I will
> request this athttp://
www.globalgiving.org/contactus/unless I hear