Recurring donation migration

Smoothly transition your existing recurring donations over to GoFundMe Pro via our managed recurring donation migration process. Completing a recurring donor migration allows for a seamless experience for your donors, while the email receipt may appear slightly different, their recurring donation remains unimpacted and uninterrupted. 

Recurring donation migration | 50+ recurring donors

GoFundMe Pro will help move your active recurring donations from your current platform, both credit cards and ACH. A Professional Services representative will be assigned to your organization for the entirety of the migration process, guiding you through the process from start to finish. GoFundMe Pro is PCI-Level 1 compliant because maintaining the security and privacy of your recurring donors and their payment data is our top priority.   

This managed migration service is available to all customers who wish to migrate at least 50 recurring donors. Please reach out to your Account Representative for guidance on requesting more information and pricing on recurring donation migrations.

Manual migration | 50 or less recurring donors

The Recurring Donation Migration is an intricate process where you work with your legacy processor to export recurring donor payment details. Given the time investment required, we encourage you to manually migrate any recurring donors to GoFundMe Pro if there are less than 50 on your legacy platform.

To manually migrate recurring donors, you will need to cancel recurring donations in the legacy platform and ask donors to set up a new recurring donation in GoFundMe Pro. Providing customers a link to your Main Donate Button will help them create a new recurring giving plan.

Supporters can easily set up a new recurring giving plan by submitting a new recurring donation on your GoFundMe Pro donation page. We've found that this also opens opportunities to engage both active and inactive recurring donors.

Frequently asked questions

Can GoFundMe Pro import expired credit cards?

If you are doing a Recurring Donation Migration, you may include expired credit cards. GoFundMe Pro’s payment processor subscribes to a CAU (Card Automatic Updater) database, which could potentially update the credit card information on expired cards.

Should all recurring donation data be extracted from the legacy processor for the migration?

No, typically we recommend that customers request extraction of active recurring donations for two reasons: (1) some credit card data holders charge for the extraction by credit card volume, thereby, extracting all the data versus the active data could cost more money and (2) inactive data - such as expired credit cards, invalid or canceled donations - provided to GoFundMe Pro could cause unnecessary credit card errors during import.

Does the migration process affect the number of processing failures?

The standard industry soft decline rate is 8-11%, and GoFundMe Pro sees similar results. This will vary from bank to bank and it is not dependent on the payment processor. Soft declines are transactions that have been previously authorized by the cardholder’s bank but are later declined. Common reasons include insufficient funds, card limit exceeded, expired cards, and bank fraud checks. Soft declines are temporary and can be retried once the card information is updated.

What happens when a recurring donation fails?

When a recurring donation fails, GoFundMe Pro automatically sends the donor an email with a link to update their payment information prior to their next scheduled recurring transaction. We will attempt to charge the recurring donation up to three times before the recurring plan switches to suspended status.

Can a GoFundMe Pro Admin change a recurring profile from suspended to Active?

No, the donor will need to update the payment information in order to change the status back to active.

Will recurring donations all recur on the same day?

Your recurring donations will process on the date(s) you designate during the migration process; whether they process on the same day or all different days is entirely up to you and your organization. Any donations set to recur on the 31st day of the month will be charged on the 30th day during months without 31 days. For February, donations set for the 29th, 30th or 31st will be processed on the 28th.

What is PGP?

PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy. At its core, it is an internet standard (called OpenPGP) used for data encryption and digital signatures. PGP makes use of public-key encryption. One key (a public key) is used to encrypt the data and a separate key (the private key) is used to decrypt it. GoFundMe Pro will provide a PGP key that the legacy token holder will use to encrypt their token file. GoFundMe Pro payment processor will use the other key to un-encrypt the file and generate new tokens.

What is SFTP?

SFTP is a secure file transfer protocol that secures files being transferred through data-in-motion encryption and secure authentication methods. The SFTP protocol runs on a secure channel - no clear text passwords or file data are transferred.

Will migrated donors receive an email when their donation is migrated?

No, the “recurring donation creation” email will be temporarily turned off during the migration at the campaign level; that way, your existing recurring donors do not receive an email thanking them for becoming a recurring donor of your organization.

However, your donors will receive an automatically generated email receipt when their regular recurring donation is processed, thanking them for their donation - an email they are likely accustomed to receiving.

What happens if an organization chooses not to migrate their recurring donations to GoFundMe Pro?

If an organization chooses not to migrate their recurring donors, those recurring donations will still run through the legacy processor, but going forward, the client will not be able to manage them in GoFundMe Pro.

Is there a fee to migrate my recurring donors?

No, the service is included with a GoFundMe Pro subscription for qualified organizations migrating at least 50 recurring donors. But some processors can charge an extraction fee that we do not control.

For more information, please consult with your Account Representative.

I use the Salesforce integration. When will the recurring plans show in my Salesforce org?

With the Salesforce integration set up, recurring plans will sync to Salesforce as Classy Recurring Donor records after the first successful transaction in the plan has synced. If the plan does not appear in Salesforce, be sure to check the status of the transactions in the plan. Additionally, if you use NPSP Recurring Donation records and want the recurring plans from GoFundMe Pro to sync to these NPSP records, be sure to install the NPSP package and activate the "Create & Update NPSP Recurring Donations" setting in the Control Panel settings.