CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

in 3.1 it is possible to configure donations of any amount on pages where memberships are sold. If someone donates at the time of purchasing a membership, two contribution records are created in civicrm_contribute. Unfortunately, the contribution page only allows a single contribution type to be defined, but normally organizations using this feature would want to have a way to distinguish between monies collected for membership purchases and donations.

I suggest moving where contribution type is specified (currently for the whole page) from the Title and Settings page to the Contribution Amounts page. As an aside, Contribution Amounts should be renamed Contribution Information since it includes things like Payment Processor besides amounts.

On the Membership Settings page, if 'Separate Membership Payment' is selected, then a 'Contribution Type for Membership Payments' field should be displayed. The appropriate contribution types would appear for each payment in the civicrm_contribute table when someone paid both a membership and donation amount.

I agree with Joe's synopsis of the "issue," and like Dave's implementation -- making the contrib type configuration at the membership type level. If we eventually move forward with having the ability to setup multiple memberships in a join/renew page, then it would be particularly useful to designate where the various selections go.

We should just make sure whatever we do will play nice with payment processors. As it is, PayPal Std/Google Checkout and perhaps others, don't support the two-transactions-in-single-process behavior. It seems to me the primary issue is how does Civi handle things, so maybe that's not an issue. But it needs to be considered.

Joe - Yes, the contribution portion with separate payments would continue to use the contribution type specified for the contribution page. We can add documentation about how contribution types are assigned to membership signup / renewal on the Membership Settings page (under Manage Contribution Pages). We can also potentially add a "heads-up" on the upgrade successful screen.

you're right Dave. have to admit that I forgot that the contrib type can be selected for a specific member type.
and I definitely agree there should be more help text outlining this.
i suggest that primarily happen in the contrib page > title and settings page, where the contrib type is selected (indicating if the membership option is enabled the member-specific contrib type will be used), and also on the membership settings page, where the option to split donations is presented.

suggested tweaks:

On Title and Settings page - Contribution Type field:
"NOTE: If you are using this contribution page for membership signup and renewals, the contribution type configured in the membership type settings will be used when recording the membership payment. The contribution type selected here will only be used if you are also collecting additional contributions (as configured on the Membership Settings page).

On Membership Settings - Separate Payment field:
"The contribution amount covering the membership fee will use the contribution type configured with the selected membership type (see the membership types configuration tool to review those settings). Any additional contribution will use the contribution type configured for this online contribution page."

I have a question that is related to this topic but involves PayPal Standard. 

I understand the rationale for not supporting separate transactions (e.g., membership fee plus optional additional donation) for processors like PayPal Standard, but would it be possible to have a single financial transaction with PayPal that aggregates the two contributions, yet track the donation within CiviCRM as two contributions?  I would see this as a separate option on the Membership Settings page that would allow the administrator to offer an additional donation option and designate the contribution type.  The membership fee and added donation would be aggregated for the Paypal transaction, but there would be two contribution records created for associated contact.  Each of these contributions would "monitor" the same Paypal transaction ID to set the status of the transaction (e.g., pending, completed).

For small non-profits who wish to avoid the security requirements and costs associated with Paypal Pro, this would provide a way of tracking additional donations.