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donorfinch

Recurring gifts

Help a donor update their card

Email a secure link so a recurring donor can enter a new card themselves, and the plan picks up where it left off.

1 min read · Updated October 31, 2026

When a monthly donor's card expires or is replaced, their plan fails and goes past due after our automatic retries. You never need to collect card numbers by phone; send them a link instead.

  1. Open Recurring and find the plan (filter by Past due to see everyone who needs attention).
  2. Click Email card-update link.

The donor gets an email from DonorFinch with a secure, single-purpose link. Clicking it opens a page where they enter a new card (or bank account). The moment it saves:

  • the plan becomes active again,
  • the overdue period is charged once (missed periods are never stacked),
  • future charges continue on the original schedule.

Other ways donors can do it themselves

  • From the failure email DonorFinch already sent them, which includes an "Update your payment method" link.
  • From their donor portal at app.donorfinch.com/account: sign in with the email they gave with, open the plan, and choose Update card.

If the donor wants to change something else

From the same Recurring plan page you can Pause (optionally until a date), Resume, Skip next charge, Change amount, Change schedule or fund, Charge now, or Cancel plan. Each change emails the donor a confirmation. Donors can do all of these themselves in the portal too.

Why not just take the card over the phone?

Card numbers never touch DonorFinch; Stripe handles them in the donor's own browser. That's what keeps your organization out of card-security (PCI) scope. The update link is the safe equivalent of "read me your new card number."

See When a recurring payment fails for the retry schedule and what each status means.

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