Recurring Gifts and Sustaining Donors

A recurring gift records a donor's promise to give on a schedule: $100 to the Music Boosters every year, or $25 a month to the general fund. Anyone with an active recurring gift is a sustaining donor. GoodBooks tracks each renewal, sends friendly reminder emails before it comes due, and checks off the renewal when the gift arrives.

Where: left menu, Donations → Sustaining Donors, and the Recurring Gift tab on any contact. Availability: Foundation, Core and Pro plans.

A recurring gift never touches your books by itself. It's a plan, not money. Only the actual donations post, the same way every other gift does, so nothing ever sits in your ledger as a pledge receivable.

Set up the program

Go to Settings → Recurring Gift Settings:

• Program name is what donors see in emails ("Your Music Boosters Membership gift renews on November 1"). If you leave it blank, it's "Sustaining Gift".
• Default campaign is pre-selected for new recurring gifts and imports. Gifts to this campaign are the ones that count toward a renewal.
• Send renewal reminder emails turns the reminders on or off.
• Grace period (days) sets how long a renewal can be overdue before the gift is marked Lapsed (30 days unless you change it).
• Days to wait for a mailed check is how long an online "I'll mail a check" sign-up stays on the list before it is dropped (60 days unless you change it).
• Reminder Email Wording adds your own message to the reminder emails: one for the upcoming reminders and one for the past-due note. It appears right after the greeting, above the gift summary. Leave a box blank to send the standard wording only.

Once a default campaign is chosen, the page shows your online sign-up link (see below).

The same page holds your giving levels. See Giving Levels and the Recognition List.

Add a recurring gift

Open the donor's contact record → Recurring Gift tab → Set Up Recurring Gift (or use Set Up Recurring Gift on the Sustaining Donors page). Choose the campaign, the amount, how often (monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual), and the date the first gift is due. That date becomes the gift's anniversary.

If the donor has just given, set up the recurring gift and then use Apply to renewal on the same tab to count that gift (see below).

Let donors sign up online

Your organization has a sign-up page at https://yourorg.goodbooks.app/sustain (the exact link is shown at the top of Settings → Recurring Gift Settings). Put it on your website or in an email. The page shows your giving levels in a table; the donor picks a level or enters another amount, fills in their details, and pays by card or bank account, just like your donation page.

When the payment completes:

• the gift is recorded as an online donation to your default campaign and receipted as usual;
• a recurring gift is created for the donor, with today as the anniversary and this year's renewal already checked off, so next year's reminders go out automatically;
• a donor who already has a recurring gift to that campaign renews it instead, even if the renewal wasn't due yet.

No card is saved. The donor gets the normal reminders next year and gives again through the same page (the Give online button in the reminder opens it with their amount filled in). A bank (ACH) sign-up counts once the payment clears.

Donors who would rather mail a check

Under Pay With, the sign-up page also offers I'll Mail a Check. The donor picks a level, fills in their details and clicks Sign Me Up. They see (and are emailed) who to make the check out to, your mailing address from Organization Settings, and what to write on the memo line. Nothing is charged and no donation is recorded.

• The donor appears on Sustaining Donors with an Awaiting check badge, and a note at the top of the page counts how many are waiting. Use the Awaiting check filter to see them.
• When the check arrives, enter it the usual way (single gift or Batch Gift Entry) to the same campaign. GoodBooks finds the sign-up, counts the check as the first gift, sets the anniversary to the check's date and marks the donor Active.
• Until then the donor is not a sustaining donor: no reminders, no Sustaining badge, and no place on the Recognition List.
• If no check arrives within Days to wait for a mailed check (60 unless you change it on Recurring Gift Settings), the sign-up is quietly cancelled with a note. No email goes out. Reactivate on the donor's Recurring Gift tab puts them back to waiting if the check turns up later.

The page needs a default campaign and works best with giving levels set up; without a default campaign the link simply opens your donation page.

How gifts are matched to renewals

When a gift comes in from a sustaining donor to the recurring gift's campaign, GoodBooks checks off the current renewal automatically. That works for gifts entered one at a time, gifts entered through Batch Gift Entry, and online gifts. An online bank (ACH) gift counts once the payment clears.

• A gift counts if it arrives up to 60 days before the due date, or any time after it. The amount doesn't have to match; GoodBooks records what the donor actually gave.
• A gift made long before the due date, or a second gift after this year's renewal is already checked off, is just an extra gift. It doesn't count toward next year. To count it anyway, open the Recurring Gift tab, pick the gift under Apply to renewal, and click Apply to open renewal.
• Every renewal is listed under Renewal History on the tab, with the amount received, the date, the payment method and a link to the donation.

Applied a gift by mistake? Open the donation. It shows Applied to … renewal; click Unapply, and the renewal opens again with its old due date.

Refunds and voids take care of themselves. If a gift that renewed a recurring gift is fully refunded or voided, the renewal opens again. A partial refund keeps the renewal checked off at the reduced amount.

Anniversaries, overdue and lapsed

• Active: the next renewal isn't due yet.
• Overdue: the due date has passed and the grace period hasn't. A gift paid during the grace period keeps its anniversary: a gift due November 1 and paid November 20 is next due the following November 1.
• Lapsed: past the grace period. The donor's next gift restarts the schedule from the date of that gift.
• Cancelled: the donor has stopped giving. No more reminders are sent, and past history is kept. Reactivate brings a cancelled or lapsed gift back.

Reminder emails

With reminders on, each sustaining donor gets:

• an email 30 days and 14 days before the due date ("Your … gift renews on …"),
• one 7 days before ("A reminder: your … gift renews next week"),
• and, if the date passes unpaid, a single "We'd love to have you back" note.

Monthly gifts get only the 7-day reminder, and quarterly gifts get the 14- and 7-day ones. Each email shows the donor's giving level, the amount and date of their last gift, a Give online button that opens your donation page with the campaign and amount filled in, and your mailing address for checks.

No donor ever gets the same reminder twice. Donors marked Do not email on their Donor tab, unsubscribed addresses, and contacts without an email are skipped.

Import your existing roster

If your donors have already given for this year (for example, last fall's booster memberships), bring them in all at once: Sustaining Donors → Import.

1. Download the template, or use your own spreadsheet with a header row: First Name / Last Name (or Organization), Amount, and optionally Gift Date, Payment Type, Hide From Recognition (Yes/No), Interval (months: 1, 3, 6 or 12), Email, Phone and address columns. A household can go in one row, e.g. First Name "Neal & Jean", Last Name "Glawe".
2. Choose the campaign, and the date to use for rows with no Gift Date.
3. Click Preview Import. Nothing is saved yet. The preview shows every row, whether it matches an existing contact or adds a new donor, the giving level, and the next due date. Rows already past due or coming due soon are flagged. Any row with a problem is shown in red; fix the spreadsheet and upload it again.
4. Click Import to save everything at once.

Because this money is already in your books, the import creates no donations and no ledger entries, and sends no email. Each donor's current year shows as received, and their next renewal is one interval after their gift date. A renewal that was already due before the import never gets an overdue email. It's listed under Due now so you can reach out personally.

Good to know

• The Sustaining Donors page shows counts by status and can filter by status, level, or who is due in the next 7–90 days. Export CSV downloads the list.
• The Contacts list marks sustaining donors with a Sustaining badge and has a Sustaining donors filter.
• Reports → Renewals Due lists gifts not yet renewed, overdue first, with lapsed donors below. You can print it or export it.
• Running an import twice doesn't create duplicates. Donors who already have a recurring gift for the campaign are flagged in the preview.
• A donor can have more than one recurring gift, for example to two different campaigns.
• Recurring gifts that started on the sign-up page show "Signed up on the online giving page" in their notes.