Sustaining givers and recurring payment best practices

victoriamiller :

Jessica,

We're working on improving and enhancing this as well . . . would love to have you share what you're learning!

Victoria

As I mentioned before, over the past three months, WWF's been working on a strategy to prevent the loss of recurring donors--due to such things as passed expiration dates, failed bank authorizations, etc. We've learned best practices to prevent churn. We shared information with Convio and have had several discussions on this topic. I'm thrilled to report that Convio and Dave Hart's team are currently planning release of three enhancements to the recurring gift billing processes with the Comanche Peak release (on/around November):

1. All recurring payments will be sent to the processor with the "recurring payments flag." This may have a beneficial effect related to expiration dates (as it notifies the processor that previous authorization for the charge was provided), though its positive impact is not yet tested.

2. Clients will be able to configure failed payments recovery options, including number of tries to resubmit payment during the month and the intervals used to re-submit those payments.

3. Clients will be able to configure options to modify expiration dates and resubmit for payment for expired cards.

In addition, Convio is pressuring PayPal to add the Visa and MC account updater services within its processing program. This would also be a very welcome enhancement as it would allow the back-end to update the donor's account with account changes (related to fraud, bank consolidation, reissued credit cards, etc).

Please feel free to share your thoughts or questions, as we've done a great deal of work on this subject. I'd be happy to hear from you!