Pledges & recurring
Hold the promise, including when it breaks
Recurring revenue is the most valuable thing a nonprofit builds and the least well handled by fundraising software. A failed card is not an error message — it is a relationship at risk with a two-week window.
Fulfilled to date
$3,000
Pledge created
$6,000 over 8 quarters
Installment 3 paid
ACH · $750
Installment 4 failed
Insufficient funds · retry scheduled
Recovered
Card on file · donor notified
Amendment
Remaining 4 → monthly, approved by finance
- Jan 15$500Paid
- Feb 15$500Paid
- Mar 15$500Card declined
- Mar 22$500Recovered after retry
- Apr 15$500Scheduled
- May 15$500Scheduled
A decline is a state on the commitment, not a lost gift: the balance, the schedule and the donor's receipt all stay correct.
What the system holds
The objects behind the workflow
A workflow is only as reliable as the records underneath it. These are the objects this pillar owns.
Recurring plan
Amount, frequency, next run date, payment method, designation and lifecycle state, with the whole change history attached.
Pledge
A total commitment with a schedule of installments, a fulfillment state and an amendment history.
Installment
Expected date, expected amount, applied gifts and variance, so partial fulfillment is visible rather than rounded away.
Failure
The decline reason, the retry attempts, the donor contact made and the outcome — a work item, not a log line.
How the work runs
Four steps, in order
Read left to right on a wide screen, top to bottom on a phone. The order is the order the record moves in.
- 01 · Step 1
Create the commitment
Set up a recurring plan or a pledge with its schedule, designation and any restriction, in a panel over whatever you were doing.
- 02 · Step 2
Apply gifts automatically
Arriving gifts are applied to the open installment, with over- and under-payment held as variance rather than silently absorbed.
- 03 · Step 3
Recover failures
Declines enter a recovery queue with the reason, a retry schedule and a suggested donor message that a person sends.
- 04 · Step 4
Amend honestly
Reductions, pauses and write-offs are approved amendments with a reason and an audit record — the original commitment stays visible.
Safeguards
What stops it going wrong
Each safeguard is server-enforced, not a UI warning.
- Safeguard
No silent write-offs
Changing a pledge total requires an amendment with a reason. Historic totals are never rewritten in place.
- Safeguard
Retries respect the donor
Retry cadence is bounded and the donor's own contact preferences apply to recovery messaging.
- Safeguard
Variance is surfaced
An installment paid short stays visibly short so pledge fulfillment reporting stays true.
The boundary
What was promised, what has arrived, and what is quietly failing?
Recurring revenue is the most valuable thing a nonprofit builds and the least well handled by fundraising software. A failed card is not an error message — it is a relationship at risk with a two-week window.
Recurring revenue is the most valuable thing a nonprofit builds and the least well handled by fundraising software. A failed card is not an error message — it is a relationship at risk with a two-week window.
Scope honesty
What this is not
Naming the boundary is more useful than implying there isn't one.
- We do not model multi-year grant compliance obligations; that is grantmaker territory.
- We do not automate donor outreach without a person approving the message.
Questions
Pledges & recurring, answered directly
Design-partner program
Shape pledges & recurring with us
We are working with a small number of US and Canadian nonprofits who feel the reconciliation and donor-data pain most acutely. Partners shape the sequence, see the honest status of every module, and are never charged for a capability that is still a prototype.