How do you manage automatic upgrades for Sustainers?

Debra Holcomb · October 2017

Hey There Smart and Thoughful RE 7 Users,

We want to implement something new for our sustainers and I'd love to hear if you've done something like this.

Yosemite Conservancy is fortunate to have a robust and thriving sustainer program. We want to roll out a program where we offer our donors the option to automatically upgrade their monthly gift by $1, $2, $5 or what ever amount they choose each year. Of course, we all know, nothing is truly automatic in RE 7.93 so I'm trying to figure out how this could be done on the back end.

I don't see a way to globally ammend a recurring gift with the increased gift amount. We have a teeny staff for the number of gifts we process so making these adjustments manually is out of the question. Has anyone figured out how to do this? Is there a plugin that could help? Is there something obvious I have missed? What do we need to do logistically to make this possible?

I'd love all your words of wisdom. Thank you in advance for sharing your knowledge.

Debra

Yosemite Conservancy

Dale Anania · October 2017

This is exactly what we want to do as well. Earthjustice does this, so please explain how this was done!

Debra Holcomb · October 2017

Dale Anania:

This is exactly what we want to do as well. Earthjustice does this, so please explain how this was done!

I'm fairly certain Earthjustice doesn't use RE 7, and I'd like to know how to manage the program technologically. We can only role the program out to donors if we know we can support it on the backend. I'm not sure RE 7 provides us with the tools to do it. Are there any RE 7 users out there doing this?

John Heizer · October 2017

Debra Holcomb:

Hey There Smart and Thoughful RE 7 Users,

We want to implement something new for our sustainers and I'd love to hear if you've done something like this.

Yosemite Conservancy is fortunate to have a robust and thriving sustainer program. We want to roll out a program where we offer our donors the option to automatically upgrade their monthly gift by $1, $2, $5 or what ever amount they choose each year. Of course, we all know, nothing is truly automatic in RE 7.93 so I'm trying to figure out how this could be done on the back end.

I don't see a way to globally ammend a recurring gift with the increased gift amount. We have a teeny staff for the number of gifts we process so making these adjustments manually is out of the question. Has anyone figured out how to do this? Is there a plugin that could help? Is there something obvious I have missed? What do we need to do logistically to make this possible?

I'd love all your words of wisdom. Thank you in advance for sharing your knowledge.

Debra

Yosemite Conservancy

I'm assuming you'd increase the amounts monthly.

First you'd need identifying information about which gifts to increase, by how much, and when. Gift Attributes would do this for you (may need separate Attributes for month and amount). You'll need a separate Query for each increase amount. Use those Queries as the source for a Global Gift Change > Gifts > Amount > Increase/Decrease > Modify by: Amount > $amount.

I think that will do what you need. Not "automatic" but at least you don't have to manually change each record.

Debra Holcomb · October 2017

Thanks, John. Yes, if the donor increased their recurring gift by $3, their recurring charge would increase by $3 from that point going forward. So, if they were giving $25/mo previously, the new gift amount would be $28/mo until they upgrade again.

I hadn't considered a global change to increase the gift amount in the way you suggest so thank you. We're going to give it a try on our test database and see how it works! If we can make your suggestion work, it will be as 'automatic' as we need.

Debra Holcomb · October 2017

Debra Holcomb:

I hadn't considered a global change to increase the gift amount in the way you suggest so thank you. We're going to give it a try on our test database and see how it works!

We tested it out and discovered that gifts that have been amended cannot be globally changed. So, it will work for some of our gifts, but not all of our gifts as we track upgrades and downgrades with amendments. We've asked Blackbaud about this and are still awaiting an answer. We are now thinking we'll have to do a gift import/export import, but given that those introduce a greater opportunity for errors, it doesn't seem like the best solution. Any other suggestions?

JoAnn Strommen · October 2017

Just wondering - sometimes changes/edits are not allowed because an amendment/adjustment is not posted. Could this be the case?

Debra Holcomb · October 2017

Good idea. We looked into that, too. Adjustments and amendments are handled differently by RE. Adjustments can be posted (and yes, an adjustment has to be posted to make any changes to the gift). Amendments do not get posted and there is no option to post them.

Michelle Tribe · October 2017

I'm interested to see if anyone has a solution for this too! My org is growing its sustainer donors (currently at just under 10,000) and our solution is making use of volunteers. We have some trained RE volunteers, and weekly they will do the gift adjustments. Not ideal or automated, but helps us get the amendments in ASAP without staff having to invest a lot of time.

Debra Holcomb · January 2018

Just to close the loop on this for anyone who might be looking for a solution.

We looked into and tested several different ideas. What we decided to do is to create a gift attribute to record the annual increase amount. With that information, we will create an import file to create a gift adjustment. We will have to manually calculate the new gift amount for the adjustment import file (add the current gift amount plus the attribute amount), but then we can make the 'automatic' upgrades possible.

Thank you everyone for your thoughtful replies that helped us find a viable solution.

How do you manage automatic upgrades for Sustainers?

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