Recurring donations

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, after refunds. Your Donations overview also shows a running count of active recurring gifts.

Statuses

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. It then shows as Canceled on the Recurring gifts page, with Retries exhausted in its Audit log. 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.

In a commitment's Audit log you may also see Duplicate charge skipped. It means that when the daily run came to charge this cycle, it found that this cycle's charge had already been started, so it did not charge the donor a second time. Usually the earlier charge is still going through: one entry is normal, and for a gift paid from a bank account one entry a day is normal until the bank confirms the payment, which can take up to about a week. When the earlier charge had failed, the entry appears next to a Charge failed entry (or Retries exhausted, after the last retry), and the gift follows the retry schedule above. The same entry day after day beyond that means the charge is stuck, and charges that stay stuck are flagged to the platform team automatically.

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, from the next cycle date in the future. If the commitment sat paused past one or more scheduled charge dates, those cycles are skipped rather than collected -- the donor is never billed for the time their gift was paused, and never charged more than once for a single cycle. When a resume moves the next charge date forward, the retry schedule starts over.
• 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 cannot manage a recurring gift themselves yet. The Donations guide for members tells them to contact your organization to change or stop one. You stop one by canceling it from its detail view, as above. A donor who wants to give with a different card starts a new gift, and you cancel the old one.

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. Each pause is recorded in the commitment's Audit log as Paused for verification. 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.