Enabling Payments for your Organization

1. Payments are not enabled by default. If your organization is interested in running a paid relational campaign, please reach out to us to turn on these features for you. You can start by reaching out to your partner success team member. They can help you enable payments for your organization and turn on permissions to edit payments for specific Directors in your organization. We recommend creating a new organization in Empower for every new paid campaign, rather than reusing an existing organization in Empower.
2. To find your partner success team member, click Training in the left hand menu and then Schedule a Meeting With the Partner Success Team and click their name or Schedule a Meeting.

1. Once payments have been enabled, Directors who have been given access to edit payments can find the payments settings under the Organization tab then clicking Manage Payments.
   

1. From the Payments page, you can specify who is eligible to earn payments using filters. For example, you may want to pay the Volunteer role, but not Organizers or Directors.
   

1. As a best practice, consider a region or tag(s) to keep track of volunteers who you do not want earning money in your program. For example, people who have been caught committing fraud could be tagged or moved into an ineligible region.
   
2. People who are ineligible for payments will be ineligible for all future and past earnings to the extent possible. If someone is moved into an ineligible region or has an ineligible tag applied, this will also prevent them from being paid for any past actions that have been earned but have not already been paid. Moving them back into an eligible region or removing the ineligible tag will allow them to be paid for any past actions again.
   
3. Note that new regions will not be eligible by default. If you create a new region during your program and they should be eligible for earnings, be sure to mark them as eligible.

Setting Up Earnings for Referrals

1. Referrals can help your program grow. To incentivize referrals with payments, Directors who have been given permissions to edit payments settings can first find the payments settings under the Organization tab then clicking Manage Payments.
   


2. To enable payments for referrals, change the toggle to Pay for Referrals.
   

1. Decide when you want to pay people for referrals and select the checkboxes to enable payments for the stage(s) of the referral process when you would like to pay:
   
1. To pay someone for a referral as soon as the person they invited signs up, select Referral signs up and enter the number of dollars the volunteer who invited that person should earn when the invitee signs up.
   
2. To pay someone when the person they invited builds their list, select Referral builds a list of at least this many people and enter the size of the list the person who was invited must build and how much the person who invited them will get paid when that action is complete.
   
3. To pay someone when the person they invited has relational conversations, select Referral has at least this many conversation attempts and enter how many conversation attempts the person who was invited must make for the person who invited them to get paid, then specify the dollar amount the referrer will get paid when that action is complete.
   
1. Note that both completed and in progress conversations (those marked "Waiting on response") count towards the minimum number of conversation attempts. Volunteers do not control whether someone responds to them or not, so payment earnings are always based on attempts, rather than completed conversations.
4. If more than one option is selected, people will get paid the sum of the payments listed for each completed referral. For example, a volunteer could be paid $5 when their referral signs up, another $10 when their referral builds their list and another $15 when their referral completes their conversations, for a total of up to $30 per referral.
   

1. As a best practice, it may be good to encourage volunteers to complete their conversations before paying them to refer others. To enforce this, ensure the checkbox is checked next to Require someone to earn a payment on a Call to Action before they can earn referral bonuses. If you would like to allow referral payments even for people who have not earned a payment on a relational call to action, you can uncheck this checkbox. Changing this setting will only affect referrals going forward and will not affect how people see past referrals.

Setting Up Earnings for Matching

1. Paying volunteers to match their list can help increase the number of people who match to the voter file. To incentivize matching with payments, Directors who have been given permissions to edit payments settings can first find the payments settings under the Organization tab then clicking Manage Payments.
   


2. To enable payments for referrals, change the toggle to Pay for Matching.
   

1. Payments are issued in batches. Specify how much money volunteers earn for each batch of match attempts and the number of attempts they must make per batch. You can also specify a maximum amount volunteers can earn from matching to prevent volunteers from earning very high payments just from matching.
   
Payments are based on number of people volunteers attempt to match, up to the maximum payment amount specified. For example, if you pay $10 for every 15 attempts and a Volunteer makes 35 attempts, they will earn $20. Match attempts do not have to be successful to qualify for payments, since volunteers are paid for their effort even if the person they are searching cannot be found in the voter file. Volunteers are never required to earn payment on a call to action to earn matching payments, even if this setting is enabled for referrals.

• It is important to note that payments for matching are never paid retroactively. This means that:

• People will not earn payments for matching that happened before paying for matching was turned on. This may be confusing to volunteers if they have already started matching their lists and may think they deserve to earn a payment for their work.
  

• Changing the batch size to earn a matching payment while a paid relational program is already in progress can cause confusing behavior. For example, if you asked people to match 10 people per payment initially and then changed it to only 5, someone who had previously matched 7 people would not earn a payment right away. However, if they match one additional person, then they would earn the payment under the new settings. This behavior may confuse volunteers, so as a best practice, you should not change the batch size once people might have started matching their lists.

Setting Up Earnings for a Relational Call to Action

1. Log into the Empower Web App. Click on the Calls to Action button on the left hand side of the screen.
   




2. Next, click on the New Call to Action button.
   

1. Volunteers are paid for the call to action after they complete a certain number of conversation attempts. Specify the payment amount and the number of conversation attempts needed to earn that payment.
   

1. Note that both completed and in progress conversations (those marked as "Waiting on response" count towards the minimum number of conversation attempts. Volunteers do not control whether someone responds to them or not, so payment earnings are always based on attempts, rather than completed conversations.
   
2. Volunteers are not shown the number of conversation attempts needed to earn payment, so this information should be included in the instructions for the call to action. This also makes it possible to set higher goals than you intend to require for payment, e.g. asking people to reach out to 50 people, but paying them when they reach only 40 because they made a good effort.
   

1. Click Publish Now to launch the Relational Canvassing Call to Action.
   

Manual Earnings Adjustments

1. To adjust earnings manually, Directors who have been given permissions to edit payments settings can first find the payments settings under the Organization tab then clicking Manage Payments.
   

1. Scroll to the section called Import from CSV and select Earnings in the toggle. 
   
   
   
2. Follow the instructions to import earnings adjustments. You will be required to include the EID for the person that you want to adjust earnings for as well as the adjustment amount, positive or negative based on whether you want to increase or decrease their earnings. The earnings adjustment will be applied at the time the upload is made.
1. You can include two notes. The internal note will be shown in the Organizer history so they can see more information about why the payment was adjusted, but this note will not be shown to the volunteer. The external note will be shown to the volunteer alongside the payment adjustment and should be a short phrase to show to the volunteer why the adjustment was made.

Manual Referral Override

1. Navigate to the page of the person who was referred to the program but signed up using the wrong link, for example, by using the search box.
   
2. In the upper right hand corner, select Edit.
   

1. Scroll to the section Who referred them?
   

1. Select the person who should receive the bonus for referring this person. 
   
1. If someone else has already received a payment for referring this person, this means two people will be paid for referring the same person. If someone else was previously listed as referring this person but had not been paid yet, only the new person will be listed as earning a payment for referring this person and only the new person will be paid.
2. The volunteer who is set as the referrer will earn money for a referral, but whoever is set as the parent will still see them on their list under "Volunteers you recruited." As a best practice, always change the parent of a person to be the same as the referrer to avoid confusion.
   
3. The person selected here will earn the referral bonus if payments for referrals are currently enabled according to the current paid referral settings at the moment the override occurs. For example, if referrals have been turned off (e.g. if the program has ended) that person will not be paid.

Importing and Exporting Payments Information

1. Directors who have been given payments permissions can find the payments settings under the Organization tab then clicking Manage Payments.
   

1. To get information about how much money volunteers have earned, scroll to the export section and select Export Earnings.
   
1. Note that if someone earns $900 or more, the payment will be split onto two lines so that no individual payment exceeds $900. 
2. Use the information in that exported file to pay those volunteers the amount they are owed. 
   
1. For advice and examples of how other programs have done this, please reach out to your partner success team member. To find your partner success team member, click Training in the left hand menu and then Schedule a Meeting With a Partner Success Team Member and click their name or Schedule a Meeting.


3. Once you have paid the volunteers what they are owed, you need to import the status of that payment back into Empower so the app can accurately display that payment status to the volunteer. To do this, scroll to the section called Import from CSV and select Payments in the toggle.
   
   
   
4. Follow the instructions in the import template to import the relevant information back into Empower.
   
1. The first 18 columns are the same as the earnings export from Empower. Once you have paid the volunteers what they are owed from that export, you can simply copy the data in to be imported again.
   
2. You can pay your volunteers however you like, but if you choose to use Rybbon gift cards to pay your volunteers, you can simply copy the data exported from Rybbon into the last 5 columns to be imported.
   
3. If you are not using Rybbon gift cards, the only required columns in addition to the first 18 that are exported from Empower are Creation Date, which should be the date the payment was sent (following the format in the template), and Reward Value, which is the amount paid the volunteer. That dollar amount must match the amount Empower says that volunteer is owed for those tasks.
   
4. If the payment date is the current date, Empower will set the time of the payment to be the time the CSV was uploaded with the payment information. If the payment date is in the past, the time will be set to noon EST on that date. Payment dates should never be in the future in the upload.

Viewing Earnings History as an Organizer or Director

1. Navigate to the page for the Volunteer whose earnings you want to view, either by searching for them in the search box or by clicking on their name from the People page, Home page, or the My Actions page.
   
2. Scroll to the section labeled History. If you want, you can select Payments to view just the history related to payments.
   

Viewing Earnings History as a Volunteer

1. From the mobile app, Volunteers should click the menu icon in the upper left hand corner of the app.
   

1. From the menu, select Payments. This option will only appear for Volunteers who have payment history with the current organization or who have the potential to earn a payment for the current organization.

1. Volunteers who have not yet filled out their W-9 form should click Fill out W-9 form and fill out the form to earn payments. No payments will be considered earned until the W-9 is complete.

1. Volunteers can go back to the Payments page to see the status of any paid tasks once their W-9 form is complete.
   

1. There may be times when a volunteer believes they have completed a task but the task does not show up as earned on the payments page yet. For example:
   
1. If a volunteer is required to earn a payment on a call to action before they can earn payments for referrals, all the referrals they made while paid referrals were enabled will show up on the payments page but will be shown as Blocked. The volunteer will need to earn a payment on a call to action and then they will be paid for those referrals retroactively.
   
2. Volunteers won't be paid for their work until they complete their W-9. If the volunteer has not completed their W-9 yet, their actions will show up on the payments page as Missing W-9. Once the volunteer completes their W-9, they will be paid for the paid actions they completed retroactively.
   
3. Users who are ineligible for payments will see their actions on the payments page but they will be shown as Ineligible. If they become eligible at a later date, any paid actions they completed will show up on the payments page and they will be paid for those actions retroactively. For example, if you suspect someone is committing fraud, you can mark them as ineligible, and if upon further investigation you determine that they deserve to be paid for their work you can move them back to being eligible to earn payments and they will earn money for the actions they have completed retroactively.
   

Collecting W-9s 

1. To get a copy of the W-9s submitted by volunteers, please reach out to us. You can start by reaching out to your partner success team member. To find your partner success team member, click Training in the left hand menu and then Schedule a Meeting With the Partner Success Team and click their name or Schedule a Meeting.