Manage recurring donations

Who can do this Owner, Admin, Finance, Member

The Recurring list shows every donor’s standing gift, whether it’s charging normally, and what to do when a charge doesn’t go through.

Before you start

• Recurring giving in DonorCARE only works by card. A donor who wants to give again automatically has to set that up with a card — there is no recurring option for FPX, e-wallets or bank transfer.

Steps

1. Open Donations, then select Recurring.

2. Read the list. Each row shows the donor, campaign, amount, frequency, status, next payment date, next retry date (if one is due) and how many charges have failed in a row. Use the tabs above the list to filter by status.

   

3. Know what each status means.

   • Active — charging normally.
   • Paused — charging has stopped, either because staff or the donor paused it, or because repeated charge attempts failed and DonorCARE paused it automatically.
   • Canceled — stopped for good. There is no way to resume a canceled subscription.
   • Expired — the card on file has expired, independent of whether any charge has ever failed.

4. When a charge fails, wait. DonorCARE retries automatically over the following days before giving up. There’s nothing to action while the failed-count is climbing — a “Card expiring” badge is worth a nudge to the donor before it becomes a failure at all. If retries run out, the subscription moves to Paused on its own; reach out to the donor about updating their card, or point them to their own recurring-giving page to fix it themselves.

5. To cancel, select the cancel action on an Active or Paused row and confirm. This stops all future charges immediately and cannot be undone — there’s no way to un-cancel a subscription from here.

If something goes wrong

What you see	What it means	What to do
Failed count is rising	The gateway is retrying automatically	Wait — no action needed unless it moves to Paused
Status moves to Paused on its own	Retries ran out without a successful charge	Contact the donor about their card, or ask them to update it themselves
“Card expiring” badge	The card on file is due to expire soon	Nudge the donor to update their card before the next charge is due
Status shows Expired	The stored card has already expired	The donor needs to set up a new card to keep giving

Related

• Manage your recurring giving
• My recurring charge failed
• Recurring health
• Find a donation