The Animal Shelter that Got Robbed $10,000...

The real crime was that it was all LEGAL. Yeah, I can't make that up, but it's heartbreaking what we see small businesses and nonprofits go through daily.

This was a no-kill shelter and that means they save animals, including puppies; and if you don't want to save puppies, you need to get right with the Lord. Seriously. But their merchant account was the issue. You see, they did about $17,000 a month in income on credit/debit cards from donations, adoptions, spay/neutering, and other services and unfortunately, we had to tell them they were overpaying $10,000 a year in fees that they DID NOT HAVE TO PAY.

Do you ever get an electric bill and send in more than the required amount? No?

To put it in perspective, we have a car dealership that does $1,000,000 a month in just plastic (that does not include cash, checks, or anything else). We got the account, because we saved them $30,000 a year in fees. They also would automatically donate through Sharing the Credit over $100,000 a year to their charity (that's what we really do), but the savings got them in the door. They were very happy.

To show how badly the animal shelter was hemorrhaging money, we would have to have saved that car dealership $588,000 a year to make it even. What's worse, as a nonprofit, that animal shelter needed every dollar they could scrape together. That money was potentially another staff member, or insurance, or several hundred animal rescues that they would have to turn away for lack of funding.

This was not the fault of Visa/MC, but of the group that set up the animal shelter's account. Its account wasn't monitored. It wasn't managed. And like leaving a 15-year-old at home with a Ferrari in the driveway, if unmanaged it gets away from you.

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Doing Good Is Good Business

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