Recurring donations
How donors set up sustaining gifts, how to manage active commitments, and what happens when a renewal charge fails.
On this page
A recurring donation is a sustaining gift a donor commits to once and OrganizeOS charges automatically on a schedule. This article covers how to manage those commitments in your workspace. For creating the page donors give through and enabling recurring giving, see Creating a fundraising page. For one-time donations, see Donation records.
How a donor starts one
On a fundraising page's donation form, a donor toggles on recurring giving and picks a cadence: weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual. Their first gift processes immediately; OrganizeOS securely stores their payment method for future charges through Stripe.
Viewing recurring gifts
Your workspace includes a dedicated Recurring gifts page that lists every commitment for your organization, sorted so the ones that need attention (past due, then active) surface before paused and canceled ones. Each row shows the donor, the amount and cadence, status, next charge date, and lifetime total given. Your Donations overview also shows a running count of active recurring gifts.
Statuses
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Active | Charging on schedule. |
| Past due | The most recent charge failed; OrganizeOS is retrying automatically. |
| Paused | No charges are attempted. Can be resumed. |
| Canceled | Terminal. The donor would need to start a new commitment to give again on a schedule. |
| Completed | The commitment reached a defined end and finished normally. |
When a renewal charge fails
If a scheduled charge fails (an expired card, for example), the commitment moves to Past due and OrganizeOS retries automatically -- 3 days after the first failure, 5 days after the second, and 7 days after the third. If the charge still hasn't succeeded after that, the commitment is canceled automatically: the donor receives an email letting them know their sustaining gift was canceled, and your team is notified. No action is required from you during the retry window, but reaching out to a donor whose gift is past due can sometimes save the commitment before it lapses.
Pausing, resuming, and canceling
From the detail view of any active or past-due commitment, staff can:
- Pause. Stops future charges without canceling the commitment. A paused commitment does not retry or count toward past-due totals.
- Resume. Restarts charging on the original cadence.
- Cancel. Terminal -- the donor won't be charged again, and canceling can't be undone from your side. You can add an internal note explaining why (for example, "donor requested by phone").
Donors can also manage their own commitment -- canceling it or updating their payment method -- from a secure link in their donation emails, without contacting your team.
If your organization's verification lapses
Recurring charges only run while your organization's verification is current. If that status regresses, active commitments pause automatically rather than fail outright, and the donor is notified. Resolve your organization's verification, then resume the affected commitments from the Recurring gifts page.
Why this matters
Recurring gifts are the most predictable revenue an organization can build, but only if lapsed cards get caught before a donor quietly stops giving. The automatic retry schedule recovers most temporary card failures without any work on your part, and the Recurring gifts view puts past-due commitments at the top so your team can follow up with the donors most likely to need a quick nudge -- a new card number, a check-in call -- before a sustaining gift is lost for good.