A regular gift is a card payment that repeats on its own. The card details behind it are held by a payments company called Stripe. Stripe can make a copy of those saved cards and give the copy to us, so the gifts can carry on here without your donors doing anything.

Two things have to be true for this to work. Your current fundraising platform has to be willing to let Stripe hand the cards over, and you have to tell your donors before it happens. Everything else is ours to do.

There are six steps. Four of them are ours to do. The slowest one belongs to the platform you are leaving, so start with that one.

1. Find out whether your current platform will hand the cards over

Anywhere from one to six weeks, and the timing is up to them. Some platforms do this as soon as you ask. Some charge a one off fee for it. Some will not do it at all. The table further down shows what each platform says publicly, so you can check yours before you promise your donors anything.

2. Email your donors

This one is required. Nothing gets switched on until it is done. Your donors originally agreed to give to you through a different company, and both their bank statement and their receipt are about to change. So they should hear it from you first, in your own words, with an easy way to say no. We give you a ready made email further down. We will not switch on a single gift until you confirm you have sent it.

3. Ask Stripe to copy the cards

About ten minutes of your time. Log in to your Stripe account, open Customers, choose Copy customers, and enter our Stripe account number, which is acct_0000000000000000. Only the person who owns the Stripe account can start this, so if your old platform owns the account rather than you, they have to start it instead.

Ask us and we will write the request email for you to send them.

4. We approve the request and Stripe does the copying

Up to three days, and nothing is needed from you. Stripe copies the saved cards and tells us which new card belongs to which of your donors. Some things are not part of the copy. Stripe does not copy the repeating gifts themselves, and it does not copy any record of past payments. That is why there is a step 5.

5. We set the gifts up again

One to two working days. You send us one file listing each donor, how much they give, in which currency, how often, and the last date they were charged. We check every single line before anything is created, and we send you the result for each one so you can see what passed and what needs fixing. If a date works out as being in the past, we refuse the line rather than charging anyone.

6. You stop the old gifts, then we start the new ones

You decide when, gift by gift. We need two confirmations from you in writing. First, that the donor email has gone out. Second, that the repeating gifts on your old platform have been cancelled. Then we start the new gifts one at a time, and any of them can be switched back off again.

Stripe can only copy the saved cards. It cannot move them, and it cannot delete anything from your old platform.

So until you cancel the repeating gifts on your old platform, a donor has two live gifts and will be charged twice.

Cancelling them is your job, not ours, and it is exactly why we wait for your confirmation before starting anything here.

Copy (and edit of you wish) the email below, replace anything in curly brackets with your own details, and importantly, make sure you send it before step 6.

Subject line: Your regular gift to {Organization} is moving to a new platform

Hi {First name},

Your {frequency} gift of {amount} to {Organization} is moving to a platform called Better Giving on {date}. You do not need to do anything. The amount stays the same, the date stays the same, and you will not be asked to enter your card details again.

Two things will look a little different. Your bank statement will say Better Giving instead of {current platform}. Your receipt will come from Better Giving Inc., a registered US charity, given on behalf of {Organization}.

If you would rather not move with us, just reply to this email and we will cancel your gift instead of moving it.

Thank you for your support,

{Your name}

{Organization}

Here is what each platform says publicly about handing over saved cards, and what it charges to do it. Any fee here is charged by them, not by us. If your platform is not on the list, ask us and we will find out for you.

Nothing from us. We do not charge a fee to move your donors, there is no minimum number of gifts, and we do not take a platform fee from the gifts afterwards. The only money involved is any exit fee your old platform charges, and the table above shows which ones do.

One honest note about the maths. A donor who agreed to give $50.00 a month is charged exactly $50.00 here, because that is the amount they agreed to and we will not charge anyone more than they agreed. Your organisation receives that amount less the card processing cost, which is charged by the payment companies rather than by us. If your donors used to add a little extra at checkout to cover fees, expect to receive slightly less per donor until they choose to do that here too.

Email support@better.giving and tell us which platform you are leaving. We will tell you what is involved for that platform and what we need from you.

One last thing, because it matters. If you ever decide to leave us, your regular donors leave with you, gifts and data included. We call that the recurring donor portability guarantee, and helping you move in is the other half of it.