Website, E-commerce & Email Migration — 2026-04-05

Overview

Working session with Peter Tourville (WI Masonic Foundation) and Adam Rigden (WI Masons) to finalize three workstreams: migrating wimasons.foundation email from Google to the Grand Lodge's Office 365, adding a WooCommerce store for grant item purchases, and establishing an ongoing support retainer. All three were agreed upon by end of call.

Attendees:
- Peter Tourville — WI Masonic Foundation (external)
- Adam Rigden — WI Masons (external)
- Mark Hope — Asymmetric
- Karly Oykhman — Asymmetric

Key Decisions

Support Agreement Pricing

• One-time setup fee: $2,000 for WooCommerce store build and Stripe integration
• Monthly retainer: $500/month for ongoing updates, events, and support
• Retainer start date: January 1, 2025
• Authorized contacts: Peter Tourville and Adam Rigden only (no other staff to submit requests)

E-commerce: WooCommerce + Stripe

• Replace Square with Stripe to enable ACH payments for grant purchases
• Add a WooCommerce store to the existing site (fewer than 10 products initially: AEDs, FSTs, jump bags)
• Adam's existing Stripe account will be connected via Stripe Connect; payment links and product details will be used to populate product pages

Two-Step Capture Flow for Grant Purchases

Agreed to use Stripe's payment capture feature to enforce grant rules without over-automating:
1. Lodge submits grant form and provides payment info
2. Stripe captures (reserves) funds — charge is not completed
3. Staff reviews the grant form for eligibility, budget limits, and lodge maximums
4. Staff manually completes the charge in Stripe upon approval
5. Webhook fires: notifies FSS for fulfillment, sends confirmation emails to all parties

Rationale: Grant rules are complex and frequently changing ($3,000 max for medical, $1,000 for other categories; per-lodge annual maximums). Full automation would require constant maintenance. The two-step process preserves manual oversight while eliminating the current check-and-photo workflow.

Email Migration: Google → Office 365

• Migrate wimasons.foundation email from Google (currently forwarded, causing quarantine issues) to the Grand Lodge's Office 365 tenant
• Rationale: Consolidate under one platform, resolve quarantine issues caused by Google forwarding, and maintain IRS-clean separation between fraternity and foundation domains
• Interim fix: Peter to whitelist the website's sending address (peter@wi-masons.com) in Office 365 Security settings to stop immediate quarantining

Action Items

• [ ] Peter — Confirm whether Mike Burnham or Tom Stevens is the Office 365 admin; coordinate MX record handoff with Mark
• [ ] Peter — Whitelist website sending address in Office 365 to stop quarantine in the interim
• [ ] Mark — Send proposal to Peter: $2,000 store setup + $500/month retainer
• [ ] Mark — Send Adam the meeting link to schedule Stripe Connect + webhook configuration call
• [ ] Adam — Send Mark Stripe payment links (AED, FST, Jump Bag) and product details/descriptions
• [ ] Karly — Email Peter and Adam the assigned developer contact for ongoing update requests

Technical Notes

DNS / Email Migration Process

Two changes required in sequence:
1. Grand Lodge O365 admin (Burnham or Stevens) adds the wimasons.foundation domain to the Office 365 tenant and provides the target MX record value
2. Mark updates the DNS MX record for wimasons.foundation to point to the new Office 365 mail exchange

Current state: domain DNS is managed by Asymmetric; MX currently points to Google. Forwarding from Google to Office 365 is causing all inbound website form emails to land in Microsoft quarantine.

Stripe Connect

Adam has an existing Stripe account with pre-built payment links for AED, FST, and jump bag products. Connection to the website will be done via Stripe Connect (requires a live call for two-factor authentication). Once connected, product pages can be built using embed codes or standard WooCommerce product + Stripe gateway.

Webhooks

Webhook endpoint URL (to be generated on the Asymmetric/WooCommerce side) will be registered in Adam's Stripe account. On payment completion, the webhook will distribute notification emails to relevant parties (Adam, Erica, Rick at FSS, etc.) to trigger fulfillment.

Context

The WI Masonic Foundation operates with approximately 1.5 FTE staff. The current grant fulfillment process requires lodges to photograph checks, mail them in, and wait for manual bank deposits — a significant bottleneck. The store + ACH solution eliminates the check handling entirely for pre-approved grant items (AEDs, FSTs, jump bags). Other grant types (scholarships, veterans donations) still require check verification because they involve one-to-one matching with external organizations.

The foundation intentionally uses a separate domain (wimasons.foundation vs. wimasons.org) to maintain IRS-required separation between the fraternal organization and the charitable foundation.

Related

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