Set Up a Recurring Donation
Goal: Convert a one-time donor into a sustaining donor by setting up a recurring schedule that charges a saved payment method on an interval — without manual processing each cycle.
How recurring donations work
A recurring donation in Ayuna is a schedule with:
- A donor and saved payment method (tokenized through Finix)
- An amount and frequency — Daily, Weekly, Monthly (recommended), Quarterly, or Annually
- A start date, optional end date or installment count
- A fund and optional campaign / project / event designation
A scheduled background job runs and processes due charges, creating a Donation record and emailing a receipt for each successful charge. Regular scheduled charges process during normal business hours (9 AM Eastern or later) so donors don't see a midnight transaction. Failed charges enter a retry schedule (see Failed charges below); persistent failures pause the schedule and notify your team.
When recurring fits
- A donor has expressed interest in monthly giving
- A campaign has a "monthly partner" track
- A pledge is structured as monthly installments and you want the charges to be automatic (you can also use a Pledge — see below)
Recurring donation vs. pledge
These overlap and people confuse them. Use these rules of thumb:
- Recurring donation — open-ended, no fixed total, charges automatically. The donor can stop at any time. Best for monthly partners.
- Pledge — fixed total commitment, paid in installments over a defined window. Each payment can be card-on-file or by check. Pledges do not auto-charge — payments are recorded as they come in. Best for capital campaigns or major-gift commitments.
If a donor wants to commit $5,000 over 5 years on autopay, the cleanest setup is actually two records: a Pledge for the $5,000 commitment plus a Recurring Donation that automates the monthly payment toward it.
Creating a recurring donation
From the donor profile, choose Set Up Recurring Donation. Capture:
- Amount and frequency
- Start date and (optionally) end conditions
- Fund / campaign / event designation
- Payment method (saved card or new card; ACH if enabled)
The first charge processes immediately or on the start date you set. From then on, the scheduler picks it up.
What the donor sees
The donor experience under Donor Dashboard → Recurring Donations:
- Current recurring schedules
- Payment history for each schedule — including failed charge attempts — via the History button on each card. Each row shows the amount charged to the card; when the donor covers the processing fee, that is the gift plus the fee, with the fee noted underneath
- Past (cancelled or expired) schedules, listed with their payment history
- Ability to update the saved payment method
- Ability to pause, resume, or cancel a schedule
- Ability to change the amount
Donors can self-manage these without staff involvement.
Failed charges
Ayuna distinguishes two kinds of failure and handles them differently.
Transient charge failures (insufficient funds, network errors)
When a card is declined for funds, a network error trips the gateway, or the bank temporarily refuses the charge — failures that may succeed on a later attempt — the schedule enters a four-attempt dunning retry schedule:
| Attempt | When |
|---|---|
| Retry 1 | 1 day after the initial failure |
| Retry 2 | 3 days after the failure |
| Retry 3 | 8 days after the failure |
| Retry 4 | 19 days after the failure |
After all four retries are exhausted (≈19 days from the first failure), the schedule auto-pauses, the donor receives a "we couldn't process your gift" email asking them to update their card, and your team gets a payment-failed notification. Resolve by reaching out to the donor; once they update their payment method, resume the schedule.
Payment method failures (expired card, wrong address, lost or stolen card, closed account)
When the saved payment method itself is the problem — an expired card, a billing address that fails verification (AVS/risk-rule declines), a card reported lost or stolen, a closed account, or an instrument the donor removed — Ayuna does not enter the retry schedule. Retrying the same payment method cannot succeed, so the schedule is paused immediately and the donor is emailed directly with a link to update their payment method. The schedule resumes once the donor updates it.
Donor-covered fees
When the recurring schedule was set up with the donor opting to cover fees, each processed gift adds the estimated fee on top of the donation amount. The donor sees a slightly higher charge. Your books record everything the donor paid as revenue and the fee as an expense (see Reconcile donations with your accounting system); the fee is an estimate, and the difference from what the processor actually assessed is posted when the settlement closes.
Cancelling
Donors cancel from their dashboard. Staff can cancel from the recurring donation record on the donor's profile, or from the central Monitor and Manage Recurring Donations list. Cancellation stops future processing immediately; past gifts remain on the donor's record.
Monitoring all recurring gifts
To see every recurring schedule across your donors in one place — and spot the ones that are failing or about to lapse — use Fundraising → Recurring Donations. See Monitor and Manage Recurring Donations.