Best Practices While Impacted by California Assembly Bill 488

While you work to reinstate your “good standing”, you’re prohibited from soliciting donations from California residents. To suppress California residents from solicitation emails in Altru, follow these steps:

First, create a selection:

1. From Analysis, Information library, add a constituents ad-hoc query.

2. Add criteria to identify the recipients you intend to exclude, such as active constituents with a California or blank primary address:

   Inactive is equal to No

   and Address (Primary)\Country is equal to United States

   and (Address (Primary)\State is equal to California)

   or Address (Primary)\State is blank)

   

3. Under the Set save options tab, enter a query name and select Create a selection.

   Tip: To ensure the selection always has the latest results, create a dynamic selection.

4. Select Save and close.

Then, exclude the selection each time you build or send an appeal mailing.

1. From an appeal mailing record, edit a letter.

2. Under Exclude constituents based on the following, edit Solicit codes and selections.

3. Under Exclude constituents that belong to the following selections, add the selection.

4. Select OK, then save changes.

Consistent with our legal obligation, Blackbaud fails one-time and recurring credit card, debit card, and direct debit donations to your organization from California residents until your “good standing” is reinstated. These transactions will have a gateway decline code of 812.

To identify transactions that failed due to AB 488, follow these steps:

First, configure credit card processing to handle permanent rejections.

1. From Revenue, select EFT, then select Credit card processing.

2. Add or edit a process such as Nightly Credit Card Processing for Recurring Gifts.

3. Select the Rejection handling tab.

4. Under What would you like to do with permanent rejections?:

   • Select Export transactions that have a permanent rejection and remove them from the batch

   • Under Export definition, select Standard card rejection export definition

   • Select Also create a select of the commitments to which the exported transactions apply

   Tip: For more information, see Credit Card Processing.

   

5. Select Save.

Then, the next time the process runs, download the rejection file from the Recent status tab of the process's record. You can use the info in this file to contact impacted donors. For more information, see Download a Rejection Export File.

Note: Payments that were prohibited from processing due to AB 488 regulations appear with gateway decline code 812.

Tip: Consider scheduling a future payment to process after your organization returns to "good standing."

Until your “good standing” status is reinstated, Blackbaud will identify and fail recurring credit card, debit card, and direct debit donations made to your organization after January 1, 2024 from California residents. To identify upcoming recurring donations at risk to fail, follow these steps:

First identify future transactions which are likely to fail:

1. From Analysis, Information library, add a revenue ad-hoc query.

2. Configure the query to include records where:

   Constituent\Addresses\Country is equal to United States

   and ( Constituent\Addressses\State is equal to California

   or Constituent\Addresses\State is blank

   and ( Recurring gift next transaction date is next month

   or Pledge/Grant award next month installment date is next month )

   and Payment method is equal to credit card

   

3. Under the Set save options tab, enter a query name and select Create a selection.

   Tip: To ensure the selection always has the latest results, create a dynamic selection.

4. Select Save and close.

Next, use the selection to contact these donors to inform them of the impact on their donation. Consider scheduling a future payment for after your organization is restored to "good standing."