Recurring Donations

Recurring donations, once set up, are created during end of day automatically on the date that they are next due. If somebody is supposed to give their next gift today, End-Of-Day Deposit process will create the donation, the payment and queue up the next one.

A Recurring Donation is a series of gifts given repeatedly on an open-ended schedule with no specific commitment from the donor. The fundraising is based on encouraging its donors to donate at least on a monthly basis. The donor can decide to end the arrangement at any time or pay indefinitely.

Gift vs. Pledge vs. Recurring Donation

Although similar in nature, there is a difference between these three common donation types.

• Gift - a one time gift given with no expectation of the donor to give again in the future. These can be paid for:
  • Single payment at time of gift
  • Using post dated payments that spread the payments over a a specified period of time to complete the donation
  • Put on account and paid for later when a check arrives.
• Pledge - a promise to pay a specified amount over a predetermined time period. You may (or may not) wish:
  • to create pledge reminder emails for these -and-
  • use the Pledge Reminder Report to manage these.
• Recurring Donation - a series of gifts given repeatedly on an open-ended schedule.
  • Each gift is created as a separate donation with a separate payment.
  • The gift can be stopped at any time.

• once the gift has been received, there is no expectation of another gift until perhaps another year goes by.
• After the pledge has been fulfilled, the donor has completed their commitment and another pledge or request for donations starts the process with the donor again.
• For a recurring donation with no specific end date, the donor could continue to donate indefinitely.

Setup Available Through Box Office and Online Donations

Recurring donations can be setup both in the Box Office or via an Online Donation initiated by the patron. In both situations, the ability exists to review Recurring Donation Details and alter the information at anytime.

Reporting of Recurring Donation Revenue for Accounting

Recurring donations are treated as earned revenue when they are received - just as if a normal cash donation was received. There are no Accounts Receivable as each gift has a pre-defined payment method that will be used for each occurrence of the gift.

Employee Permissions Set Up

You must enable a permission under the Users & Access->Employee List for each employee in the Data Tab called Manage recurring donations for a patron.

Theatre Manager does not require any additional setup to maintain Recurring Donations within the Donation Campaigns. The existing accounting setup is able to be used.