Managing Your Recurring Donations

Managing Your Recurring Donations

Once you've got recurring donations set up with DonateMate and a subscription app, here's how to manage your subscribers, handle cancellations, and keep everything running smoothly.

Quick reminder: DonateMate handles the donation widget — your subscription app (Recharge, Seal, PayWhirl, etc.) handles the recurring billing. So most management happens in your subscription app's dashboard or in Shopify Admin.

Viewing Your Recurring Donors

You can find recurring donation subscribers in two places:

• Your subscription app's dashboard — this is the best place to see all active subscribers, their donation amounts, frequencies, and next billing dates
• Shopify Admin → Orders — recurring donation orders appear here like any other order, labelled with a subscription indicator

Pausing or Cancelling a Subscription

If a donor wants to pause or cancel their recurring donation:

1. Open your subscription app's dashboard
2. Find the subscriber
3. Use the app's pause or cancel option

Note: Cancelling a subscription doesn't refund previous payments. If a customer needs a refund, process it through Shopify Admin → Orders as you would for any other order.

Customer Self-Management

Donors with a Shopify account can manage their own recurring donations without contacting you:

1. They log into their account on your store
2. Navigate to their subscriptions
3. They can pause, skip a payment, update their payment method, or cancel

This saves you time and gives donors more control — a win-win. Make sure customer accounts are enabled in your Shopify settings for this to work.

Handling Failed Payments

When a recurring donation payment fails (expired card, insufficient funds, etc.):

• Shopify automatically retries the payment after a few days
• The customer receives an email asking them to update their payment details
• If retries fail after a set period, the subscription may be cancelled automatically (depending on your subscription app's settings)

Check your subscription app's dashboard for failed payment details and retry options.

Changing Subscription Plans

If you need to change the frequencies or options available for recurring donations:

1. Open your subscription app's dashboard
2. Edit the selling plan group assigned to your DonateMate product
3. Save your changes

DonateMate will automatically pick up the updated selling plans and display them in the widget — no changes needed on the DonateMate side.

Important: Changes to a plan typically affect new subscribers going forward. Existing subscribers stay on the terms they originally signed up for.

Tracking Recurring Revenue

To see how much you're bringing in from recurring donations:

• Subscription app dashboard — most apps show recurring revenue, active subscriber counts, and churn metrics
• Shopify Admin → Analytics → Reports — filter orders by your donation product to see revenue over time

Questions about managing your recurring donors? Drop us a line — always happy to help. 🔁