I want to support local charities and offering guests the opportunity during checkout has proven to be successful. Many websites and companies have embraced this idea and it's time for us to do the same. I know the OwnerRez community would fully support this.
Hey, Rick O!
This is already possible. Have you considered creating an optional surcharge for direct bookings? You could describe the surcharge as being optional for donating to the charity of your choosing, and if a guest opts for it, you'd collect those funds as the host and then distribute them to the charity yourself. We have reports you can run to see what bookings that optional surcharge was applied to.
An optional surcharge will be displayed at the start of the Quote Acceptance process for your direct bookings. For example, here I've configured a surcharge for Otters R Us that a guest can check during the booking process.
If they click the "What is this?" link, they're provided with the description you've entered when creating that surcharge.
There's no obligation on the guest's part with an optional surcharge. If they'd prefer not to donate, they simply do not check the box and proceed with the Quote Acceptance process.
You can then run the Line Item Pivot report on a weekly or monthly basis to see which bookings added this optional charge, though you may want to export to Excel and do some manual filtering to get only those relevant bookings and total up that column.
You could also keep track of those bookings by way of a Tag Automation in OR which would allow you to not only identify them quickly on your Bookings calendar, but also set up custom templates and corresponding triggers that automate correspondence to those guests whose bookings were tagged.
More info on optional surcharges (add-ons) can be found here - https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/add-on-services
And more on Tag Automations here - https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/tags-automations
Alternatively, you could also consider upping your nightly rates by X dollars and including in your listing description that X dollars on every booking is donated to charity for visibility. This way, you're expanding your reach to the channels as well as direct bookings.
I believe Airbnb may have a donation program of their own that would be worth looking into. Something to consider.