Sustaining (Recurring) Gifts

A sustaining gift (also referred to as a recurring gift) is a donation with multiple ongoing payments that occur over a defined interval that may or may not have an end date.

To offer this option, a donation form must use one of the following sustaining gift patterns:

• Flexible Sustainer Donation Level enables donors to give a gift of a specific amount over a certain time period that ends on a specific date (or, the Forever Sustainer Donation Level for a gift without an end date)

• Flexible Designated Giving Donation Level enables donors to give a gift of a specific amount over a certain time period that designates a specific entity as the beneficiary of the gift

• Installment Plan Donation Level enables donors to specify a total gift amount and arrange equal payments toward that amount

Edit Sustaining Gifts

Administrators can modify gift details, process a skip payment request, or cancel the gift from the Transaction tab of the donor's constituent profile or from the Sustaining Gift Details tab in Donation Management.

Donors can edit their own sustaining gifts in their online Gift Service Center after the initial payment is processed.

You can:

• Change the donor, which reassigns both the future payments and any past payments made to that donor

• Unassign recurring gifts that were given to support a TeamRaiser participant or team or Personal Fundraising champions and direct them instead to the overall donation campaign

• Change the soft credit recipient, which changes it for all past and future payments

• Refund or cancel a payment within a recurring gift payment series without canceling future payments that remain

  Note: Canceling a gift completely or refunding the first (seed) payment stops all future payments.

To find a recurring gift, search on constituent information (such as name or constituent ID) or gift status (active, postponed, or lapsed).

To find failing gifts, enter the date of (or some time before) the last successful payment. Searching by Constituent ID overrides any information entered in the other search fields.

Refunded gifts do not display in the Transaction tab of the constituent record, but you can find them in the Refund Report in Reports Classic.

Warning: If your Luminate Online instance is synchronized with a CRM, you cannot change the duration of an existing sustaining gift from Forever to Fixed Number of Future Payments or vice versa. To change gift duration, cancel the existing gift and create a new one with the desired duration.