How do I set up recurring donations for my association?

Nothing to install: recurring donations are offered automatically, alongside the one-time donation, on your payment link and on your donation QR codes as soon as your association has connected Stripe. The donor chooses the frequency and the amount themselves, and can cancel their donation at any time from their account. Your association does not store any bank card details: Stripe, the payment provider, keeps the information and takes the payment from the donor at each due date.

This article explains how to enable or disable this option, what the donor experiences, the limits to be aware of depending on your payment method, and how to track or cancel a recurring donation.

Enabling or disabling recurring donations

From the home page of your dashboard, open the Your payment link card, then click Edit. In the Options section, the Recurring donations setting is enabled by default: it allows your donors to subscribe. You can disable it if you only want to offer one-time donations. On your donation QR codes, the option is also active by default, with no separate setting to switch on.

What the donor can choose

On your donation page, the donor first chooses One-time donation or Recurring. If they choose a recurring donation, three frequencies are offered: Monthly, selected by default, Weekly or Yearly. They then enter the amount of their choice, starting from £1, and can tick the "Cover the fees" option so that your association receives the full amount of the donation. As with a one-time donation, they can also leave a message and choose to donate anonymously to your association.

Recurring donations are paid by bank card

There is an important difference between a one-time donation and a recurring donation: only payment by bank card is offered for a subscription. Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and the other payment methods are not available for a recurring donation. This limit does not depend on your settings: it applies as soon as the donor chooses the recurring frequency, whichever association they are donating to.

Good to know: your donation page itself reminds the donor of this rule: "For a regular donation, pay by card."

The limits to be aware of

Two situations prevent you from offering a recurring donation:

• If your association has only connected PayPal, without Stripe, the choice between a one-time donation and a recurring donation does not appear at all on your page: only the one-time donation is offered. PayPal does not currently offer any recurring donations on Donoor.
• A crowdfunding campaign only collects one-time donations, with no recurring option, whichever payment method is connected. If your project needs regular support, prefer your payment link or a donation QR code.

Important: to offer recurring donations to your donors, connect Stripe. See how to connect Stripe or PayPal.

Tracking and cancelling a recurring donation

From your dashboard, open Fundraising › Donations and filter by type Recurring to find all your subscribed donors. Click on a row to see the details of a Recurring donation, then on Cancel the subscription if needed: the donor will no longer be charged, with no refund of payments already made, and they are informed by email. If the donation was processed through Stripe, the subscription remains active until the end of the period already paid: the last payment is not cancelled part-way through.

The donor can also cancel their own donation, independently, from their account: under My donations, the Active subscriptions tab lists their recurring donations, with a Cancel subscription button on each. Questions from the donor's side are covered in how to make, change or cancel a monthly donation.

Tax receipts for a recurring donation

If your association is authorised to issue tax receipts, a receipt is generated and sent automatically to the donor after each payment, exactly as for a one-time donation: there is no single receipt summarising the whole year, but one receipt per payment, without any action required from you. To understand everything about activating and the content of these receipts, read how tax receipts work.

Key takeaways

• Recurring donations are offered by default on your payment link and your donation QR codes, with nothing to install.
• The donor chooses the frequency (monthly by default, weekly or yearly) and can cover the fees.
• A recurring donation can only be paid by bank card, never by Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal.
• Without Stripe connected, or for a crowdfunding campaign, recurring donations are not offered.
• You can cancel a subscription from Fundraising › Donations, and the donor can do the same from their account.