Formed in 1921 to perpetuate the legacy of Hoosier Poet James Whitcomb Riley, Indianapolis's Riley Children's Foundation is at the forefront of serving Indiana's children.

The Riley Children's Foundation (a 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation) is dedicated to the health and well being of the children of Indiana through its philanthropic leadership of:

• Riley Hospital for Children: A renowned pediatric medical center
• Camp Riley: A nurturing recreational environment for children with special health needs
• The James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home: A Victorian preservation educating young and old on the life of James Whitcomb Riley, the "The Hoosier Poet"

For pledge donations requiring periodic payments, our donor database system (BSR Sungard Advance, running under an Oracle database) maintains a corresponding payment schedule. In addition, for pledges being paid by credit card, Advance provides data tables to register credit card account information (e.g., account number and expiration date). Advance does not, however, provide a method to automatically process EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) monthly credit card pledge payments with a third-party credit card processor. Credit card information must be entered manually and separately processed using third-party credit processing systems, and credit card processing results must be entered manually into the Advance gift batch system. Thus, the tedious processing of monthly credit card pledge payments can take up extensive amounts of dedicated staff labor.

Using Cold Fusion 7.01 and MS SQL Server technologies, the Riley Children's Foundation developed a Web services system (EFT Payment Management System - EPMS) that efficiently processes thousands of credit card pledge payments each month. The system pushes large volumes of credit card payment requests to a third-party credit vendor and, based on credit card payment results, automatically creates pledge payment batches in Advance. The system provides a comprehensive dashboard control panel for launching and monitoring payment processes, and it provides several utilities for managing individual payment change situations (e.g., pledge payoffs and pledge withdrawals). In addition, using embedded ColdFusion 7.01 reporting options, the system can generate on-demand highly customized end-of-year donor statement letters in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

Before this system was deployed, the staff spent up to a week each month manually processing monthly credit card-based pledge payments. Now, monthly processing can be completed in just a few hours. For staff, this system has been a godsend and has allowed us to expand our pledge donation program without adding processing staff. For me, I have been lauded a hero. This system is truly an example of ColdFusion's capability to quickly and easily apply an effective solution to seemingly intractable computing and data processing problems.

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