SAMSA Completes E-Commerce Website for Fundraising Client

Presidents and Co-Founders of ScripCents, LLC, Jane Leeuw and Mary Ellen Murphy, saw a need for a more effective way to fundraise. Since its inception in 2005, ScripCents, located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, has successfully offered non-profits a faster, easier, and more profitable way to meet their fundraising goals. From schools, churches, youth groups, sports teams, band boosters, and beyond, ScripCents is dedicated to maximizing a group's fundraising return, while minimizing the effort an organization has to put into it.

ScripCents came to SAMSA with a partially completed e-commerce website that needed to be completed. ScripCents states, "As for working with SAMSA, we were in great need of a web designer that could take our site to the next level. When we came to SAMSA we had a mess on our hands from a previous designer and SAMSA has come through for us in getting us up and running. We look forward to continuing our growth with SAMSA. As we develop our business, our website must grow with us." In completing the programming of the website, items that were of particular priority included:

- Ensuring registered users (Coordinators or Individuals) work in the proper shopping mode and ensuring that the order form displays the type of user that is logged in. The user mode controls such attributes as pricing, payment method, and product availability.
- Ensuring that category and navigation links are displayed the same for both Coordinator and Individual users
- Ensuring the product activation flag found in the administrative portion of the site accurately includes or excludes products at the site
- Replacing the link beside each product on the order form page with a thumbnail image for the product and including any required product disclaimer text
- Replacing the functionality of the category links with a subset of the order form that contains only the records in the selected category
- Investigating reported problems with proper charging for individually packed items
- Ensuring correct credit card icons are displayed during checkout in order to maintain credibility and authenticity of the site

By purchasing gift cards in volume from national, regional and local merchants, ScripCents receives a discount. The company then passes along the discounts to the non-profit organization. Whenever an organization buys these discounted gift cards (scrip) from ScripCents and resells them to its members at face value, it realizes the difference as profit. With over 150 merchants to choose from, everyone is able to participate in buying things they strictly want or need without spending a penny extra. ScripCents is the only scrip company currently accepting credit card as a form of payment for scrip. Currently, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is piloting this program throughout Michigan with the future goal being to implement this concept throughout the country. The list of vendors working with ScripCents continues to grow. From restaurants, department stores, and local specialty businesses, to grocery stores and various types of entertainment and gas stations, most merchants welcome the opportunity to increase sales. As mentioned by many participating merchants, "People often times spend more than they initially planned once they come into the store." Not only do merchants appreciate programs that keep customers regularly doing business with them, many gain satisfaction from supporting non-profit organizations. What began as a small venture in Kalamazoo, Michigan has now expanded to Indiana, Ohio, California, Texas, and Florida.