Giving your recurring donors the ability to update credit card and profile information helps streamlines constituent management and gift processing without having to contact your staff.
The Recurring Donor Portal streamlines management of your key recurring supporters by making it quick and easy for them to directly update their profile without having to contact your staff. Accessible to recurring donors through a unique payment update link, the mobile-responsive portal is fully secure for donors to make the necessary changes to keep their gift processing and to keep you up-to-date with their latest contact details.
The Recurring Donor Portal lets donors:
- Update their credit card information
- Update their recurring gift amount
- Update their address
- Cancel their recurring gift
Activating the Donor Portal
The Donor Portal is automatically available on all Donations module events, and can be made public event-by-event in two steps:
Important: In order to use the Recurring Donor Portal, events with recurring donations must currently be using a payment gateway configured with Hosted Payments.
Sharing the Direct Payment Update Link to a Donor's Portal
A recurring donor's portal is accessible through a Payment Update link sent to the donor. Each donor's link is uniquely generated for them within the event they contributed, and is not reproducible through Admin. Their unique link does not change. The link can be shared by adding the Link - Donor Credit Card Update merge field to relevant email Message Templates.
The Donor Credit Card Update merge field is available in the following messages:
- Notify Donor of Upcoming Annual Transaction
- Notify Donor when a Recurring Donation is Processed
- Notify Donors of a Failed Recurring Transaction
- Thank You Message for Recurring Donors (General)
- Thank You Message for Recurring Donors (In Honour)
- Thank You Message for Recurring Donors (In Memory)
- Send Message to Update Recurring Donation & Credit Card
Sharing the Update Credit Card Link with a Donor Directly
In addition to automated emails sent when a donor completes their transaction or after it fails, administrators also have the power to manually trigger the "Send Message to Update Recurring Donation & Credit Card" email that contains their unique portal link directly to a donor.
This is ideal for one-to-one communication with donors and when organization staff do not wish to handle credit card information by phone; instead, simply send them the payment link in email directly!
To send the "Update Recurring Donation & Credit Card" to a donor, follow these quick steps from the back-end:
- From Manage Users, search for the donor's name
- Click their name to navigate to their user profile
- Under Details, select "Scheduled Transactions & Donation Options"
- Scroll to the bottom of the table illustration their donation history
- Click "Email to Update Donation"
- The current content in your Update Recurring Donation & Credit Card will be sent automatically
Personalizing the "Notify Donor when a Recurring Donation is Cancelled" Message
If donors choose to cancel their recurring donation from their Portal, a notification will be sent to them. The notification they receive is fully customizable using the "Notify Donor when a Recurring Donation is Cancelled" Message Template.
The Notify Donor when a Recurring Donation is Cancelled is a new Message Template introduced as of this feature release in 2023. For efficiency, we recommend updating the Default Template for this Message in General Setup first. Your default template will cascade across all events in your account.
To stay up-to-date on cancelled recurring gifts, you may also choose to BCC staff on this Message.
Customizing Look and Feel of the Donor Portal
The Payment Update page in the Donor Portal is a mobile-responsive page that's customizable on an event-by-event basis from the Website Builder.
The Page can be customized using Sections and Content Blocks, like any other Content Page, and allows updates to the region above the System-Generated Content (i.e. form) where donors update their details.
Use the Payment Update page and vast library of content blocks in the Website Builder as an opportunity to acknowledge a donor's commitment to the organization, provide updates on your work, and communicate a shared passion for furthering your mission together.
The Payment Update page requires a unique link, and should not be dragged into the navigation or linked to from your Website.
How Donors Make Updates
When donors access their portal, they will be greeted with a system-generated message, a system-generated form, along with any content you've added to the page.
Most aspects of the form are system-generated and/or based on settings in the event. Namely, if donors choose update their address information, the Address fields editable to them will be those that you have shown on the Donor User Profile.
Donors may make changes to any of the fields on the form. All standard form validations will apply, including requirements for complete address information to generate a compliant charitable tax receipt.
Here's a short video demonstrating the full experience of editing the card:
Gift Processing & User Updates
After a change is made, the user will modified in the back-end and all updates will be reflected in real-time in your account. The user will also be flagged for re-export to your CRM.
If the donor is updating their card because of a failed transaction, the system will immediately attempt to re-process the last failed transaction. Subsequent transactions will be processed as per the donor's defined schedule.