Monthly Checks from Donor - Recurring Gift?

Crystal Chouinard · October 2018

Hello!

I am wondering how others handle the gift entry for donors that send in checks on a monthly basis. Do you create a recurring gift for them or do you treat it as a new donation each month? There is some push back on entering a recurring gift but we need an easy way to manage our thank you letters, stewardship plan, and communication with these donors. It is hard because they haven't informed us that they are going to send a check every month but they do.

We currently do not offer direct debit to our donors either and I am wondering if anyone has pros and cons of using that feature in batch/bbms. We do run recurring credit cards through batch/bbms so I don't think the direct debit would be that big of an issue if we decide to use it. Thoughts?

I hope everyone is having a great week so far.

Thanks in advance,

Crystal

JoAnn Strommen · October 2018

IMO if you have no agreement/indication from the donor of an intent to make a monthly gift it's not a recurring gift. We would consider this a new gift.

Is using direct debit a separate question? We offer this option to our donors. Works well for us. Have you read up on using direct debit? Here's link a knowledgebase article on it: How to set up The Raisers Edge for charging credit cards and processing direct debits.

KaLeigh Lee · October 2018

I agree with JoAnn Strommen‍. This may be a good opportunity to make an ask, though! You can convert them to an official recurring gift donor. We've starting doing this recently, and it is basically an improved stewardship action. Our donors feel recognized and appreciated, and they love that they have the opportunity to help.

Crystal Chouinard · October 2018

Thank you both!

I like the idea of calling them. We currently don't have a dedicated staff member to recurring but should be able to manage this. Right now we are thinking about calling them after receiving a gift in the third month in a row. then we could get clarification on the donor intent, steward the donor, and make an ask.

The direct debit was a separate question. We currently process recurring gifts but not direct debit. It sounds like we did years ago but finance requested that we stop because they got tired of us requesting payments to donors to cover their NSF when that happened. I never thought of that being an issue. I might ask about revisiting this though.

Hope you have a great weekend and thanks again.

Crystal

Monthly Checks from Donor - Recurring Gift?

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