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Recurring donations are subscription-based gifts on a schedule the donor picks. They run on Stripe Subscriptions on your organization’s connected Stripe account — Haven never holds donor money or takes a cut. Each cycle’s charge generates its own receipt with a sequential per-org receipt number.

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Donor experience

When you’ve enabled recurring donations under Donations → Form, the public /donate page shows a Make this a recurring donation toggle below the amount picker. Toggling it on reveals a frequency dropdown filtered to the frequencies you’ve enabled (monthly, quarterly, every 6 months, annually). After the donor submits, they’re sent through Stripe Checkout in subscription mode. Stripe handles the payment method (card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, link, depending on what’s enabled on your connected account) and saves it for future charges. The donor lands on your /donate/success thank-you page after the first charge clears. Each subsequent cycle, Stripe automatically attempts to charge the saved payment method. On success, Haven creates a new payment_records row linked back to the recurring donation, allocates a sequential receipt number, and emails the donor a receipt for that specific cycle.

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Member self-service

Donors who are signed in as members of your organization manage their own recurring donations from {slug}.gohaven.co/member/donations. The page has two sections:
Lists every active and historical recurring subscription tied to the member. For each, the member can:
  • Pause — suspends future charges without cancelling. Resume anytime.
  • Resume — reactivates a paused subscription on its next normal cycle.
  • Cancel — ends the subscription. Cancelled donations can’t be resumed; the donor would need to start a new one.
Each subscription shows its amount, frequency, designation, next-charge date, last-charged date, and a status badge (Active / Paused / Failed / Cancelled).
Non-member donors don’t have a portal account, so they manage their subscriptions through the receipt emails they receive. Each receipt email links them back to your organization, and they can email your admin to request a pause or cancel.

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Admin oversight

Admins manage all recurring donations from the Recurring tab under Donations in the admin sidebar. The top of the page shows at-a-glance counts:
  • Active — currently charging on schedule
  • Paused — suspended by donor or admin
  • Failed — Stripe gave up after multiple retry attempts (4 by default)
  • Monthly equivalent — sum of every active recurring donation normalized to a monthly figure (annual / 12, quarterly / 3, etc.) so you can quickly see your monthly recurring revenue from giving
Below that is a table of every recurring donation. Each row has the same Pause / Resume / Cancel actions available to members, plus visibility into:
  • Donor name and email (or “Anonymous” if the donor opted out)
  • Designation
  • Amount + frequency
  • Next charge date (when active)
  • Status with descriptive badge
Cancel a donor’s recurring subscription on their behalf if they ask via email. The Stripe subscription is cancelled immediately and they won’t be charged again. They get no further receipts, and the row stays in your Recurring tab with status “Cancelled” for audit history.

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When a payment fails

Stripe automatically retries failed charges on its standard smart-retry schedule (up to 4 attempts spread over a few weeks). On each failure, Haven increments the recurring donation’s failure count. If Stripe gives up after the final attempt, Haven marks the donation as Failed. Failed donations show on the donor’s portal with a clear message asking them to update their payment method. For now, donors update their payment by cancelling the failed subscription and starting a new one with their updated card. A direct “Update payment method” button (via the Stripe Customer Portal) is on the roadmap.
You won’t get an email when a donor’s payment fails. Stripe sends the donor a notification automatically. Watch the Failed count on your Recurring tab — and reach out personally to high-value donors when their subscriptions enter the failed state.

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How recurring donations end

A recurring donation ends in one of three ways:
  1. Donor cancels from their member portal (or admin cancels on their behalf)
  2. Stripe gives up after multiple failed payment attempts (status flips to Failed; donor must start a new subscription with a new payment method)
  3. Donor cancels via Stripe directly (rare — happens if they have access to the Stripe-hosted Customer Portal). Stripe fires a customer.subscription.deleted webhook and Haven mirrors the cancel to the recurring_donations row.
In all three cases, historical donation receipts (already-issued PDFs and emails) remain valid and downloadable. Cancelling future charges does not retroactively undo past gifts.