A recurring contribution is a donor's ongoing giving commitment. It represents a scheduled gift that repeats on a set cadence, such as weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually.
Donor and payment relationship.
Amount and fund.
Frequency and schedule.
Start date and current status.
Related contributions created from the recurring gift.
Monthly donor programs.
Sponsorship or pledge-style giving.
Automatic CoolPay gifts.
Reporting on active recurring support.
A recurring contribution includes a "Sponsored Person/Soft Credit" field. Use it to recognize someone other than the donor of record, such as an individual advisor behind a donor-advised fund gift, without changing who the recorded donor is. This field also appears on contributions, pledges, and in-kind gifts. See Donors and Contributions for more detail.
Each contribution generated from a recurring gift shows a read-only Covers Period field on the contribution's detail view, such as "May 2026". This tells you which billing period the charge is for, which is especially useful when a charge is collected later than its usual date (for example, a held payment that finally succeeds a few days into the next month) so it doesn't look like a duplicate gift for the new period. See Donors and Contributions for more detail.
Keep donor contact and payment details current.
Use clear fund assignments so gifts are reported correctly.
Review inactive or failed recurring gifts regularly.
Use reports to monitor recurring giving trends instead of checking each donor manually.
Recurring giving can include financial information. Only staff with the right role should view or manage payment-related details.
