Connecting Blackbaud to Collect Payments

How to connect your Blackbaud account to Grasshopper Signup and collect card payments on your forms through Blackbaud Merchant Services (BBMS).

If your organization uses Blackbaud, you can connect your Blackbaud account to Grasshopper Signup and collect card payments directly on your forms. Payments are processed through Blackbaud Merchant Services (BBMS) and funds go to your own Blackbaud merchant account. This is an alternative to Stripe payments: you connect one or the other, not both, for a given form.

Sections in This Guide

Before you start

Two things are required:

  • A Premium or Boost account on Grasshopper Signup. Payment collection is a premium feature.
  • A Blackbaud Merchant Services (BBMS) merchant account that your Blackbaud login can access. This is the part people most often miss. Signing in with Blackbaud is not enough on its own: BBMS is what actually processes the card, so if your organization does not have a BBMS account, or your Blackbaud user does not have access to it, the connection will succeed but you will not be able to take payments. If you are not sure, ask whoever administers Blackbaud at your organization, or contact Blackbaud to get BBMS set up.

Connecting your Blackbaud account

The Connect button is on your Account Settings page, not on the form's Options page. If you are looking at the Payments section of a form and only see a Stripe button, that is why. Connect Blackbaud once from Account Settings, and it then becomes available to your forms.

Step 1

Click your account menu and go to Account Settings (the direct address is grasshoppersignup.com/account).

Step 2

Scroll to the Connected Accounts section. You will see a card for Stripe and, below it, a card for Blackbaud.

Step 3

On the Blackbaud card, click Connect.

Step 4

You are taken to Blackbaud to sign in and authorize Grasshopper Signup. This is a standard secure sign-in handled by Blackbaud: we never see your Blackbaud password.

Step 5

After you approve, you are returned to Account Settings and the Blackbaud card shows Connected, along with the Blackbaud user you connected as.

Choosing your payment account

Once connected, you need to tell us which BBMS merchant account to use. On the Blackbaud card, use Select a payment account, pick the account you want payments to go to, and click Save.

Some organizations have more than one merchant account, so choose carefully. The card then displays the selected account name, and whether it is in live or test mode. To change it later, click Change account on the same card.

Turning on payment for a form

With Blackbaud connected, open the Options page for the form you want to charge for, and find the payments section (it is labeled Blackbaud Payments once Blackbaud is your connected provider).

Turn on Require payment before submission, set your pricing, and save. Pricing works the same way it does for Stripe: you can charge a flat amount for the form, or set prices per option.

What your respondents see

When someone fills out your form and submits it, a secure Blackbaud payment window opens directly on the page. They enter their card details there and complete the payment without leaving your form.

Their signup is recorded once the payment goes through, and the response is marked as paid on your responses page. If they close the payment window without paying, no signup is recorded, and the slot stays open for someone else.

Fees and payouts

Funds go directly to your own Blackbaud merchant account, and Blackbaud handles payouts to your organization on their normal schedule. Blackbaud's own processing fees apply according to your agreement with them.

Grasshopper Signup charges a platform fee of 1.5% on payments collected through Blackbaud. This is shown to you on the form Options page when you enable payments.

Troubleshooting

"No payment account found"

This message means your Blackbaud sign-in worked, but we could not find a Blackbaud Merchant Services account your user can access. Payments cannot be collected until that exists. Contact Blackbaud, or your organization's Blackbaud administrator, to have BBMS set up or to have your user granted access to it. Once that is sorted, click Check again on the Blackbaud card.

I connected, but my form still shows Stripe

The form Options page shows the provider you have connected. If both Stripe and Blackbaud are connected, the form uses your Stripe account. Disconnect Stripe in Account Settings if you want the form to use Blackbaud instead.

I do not see a Blackbaud card at all in Account Settings

Blackbaud payments are available on Premium and Boost accounts. If you are on the free plan, upgrade first and the card will appear.

Disconnecting

You can disconnect Blackbaud at any time from the same card in Account Settings. Be aware that disconnecting turns off payment collection on all of your forms that were using it, so make sure no live form still depends on it before you disconnect.