Expiration Dates: Should You Pay Attention?

Danielle Johnson

On the Go! eNews

January/February 2014 Edition

 

By Robin Anderson, Go! Production Manager

 

You've got a successful online sustained donor program set up. Everything is running smoothly. Then, without warning, a constituent's credit card expires.

 

What to do?

 

Fortunately, you have some options. You can catch these credit cards before they expire and even allow donors to modify their information.

 

First, determine how many sustained or recurring donors you're managing online. If it's only a handful, then a simple phone call to the donor may suffice. If, however, you anticipate an increase in sustained donors (and let's hope that's the case) you may want to create a Sustaining Gift Attempt Details Report in Report Writer and then run it on a monthly basis. By monitoring this report, you can see ahead of time when a donor’s credit card is set to expire and reach out to them to encourage them to update their information.

 

You can also direct your sustained donors to the Gift Service Center. This is available to all sustaining donors and allows them to update the credit card and gift information themselves.

 

To ensure you have the Gift Service Center configured, navigate to your donation form, click Edit then go to step 3. Design Donor Screens.  In the left column, just below Related Actions, click on Configure Service Center. Here you can add introductory text or additional information, as well as, allow donors to modify their billing and payment information.

 

Just be sure that you’ve included a link to the Gift Service Center in your Autoresponders for sustaining gifts. These links should already exist, but you may want to double check in case you’ve made any modifications that may have overwritten the link. If the link is no longer there, you can simply provide a link using the WYSIWYG. Create your text, highlight it and click the link icon to get started. You’ll then browse links and click on Gift Service Center from the list of options. Insert it and you’re good to go!

With only a little bit of work ahead of time you can avoid being caught off guard by your sustained donors’ expiring credit cards. Your donors will be impressed with the attention and care they receive and you’ll rest easy knowing your donors are happy and still giving to a cause they believe in.

 

P.S. To our BBMS users:  Keep an eye out for an announcement later in February about a new BBMS service that could help with your expired credit cards. More soon…