Weekly Recurring

In this article:

1. Setting up weekly recurring
2. Weekly recurring pop-ups

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Setting Up Weekly Recurring

When you’re in the waning weeks before Election Day, asking supporters for a monthly recurring donation doesn’t make much sense. Instead, it’s a great time for you to start a weekly recurring contribution campaign. Weekly recurring allows donors to pledge a certain amount of money each week leading up to Election Day, or a special occasion for your organization. The donation will be charged on the same day of the week as the initial contribution — so focus on Monday and Tuesday asks if you’re raising for a candidate. Donors will be signing up for a shorter commitment, and you’ll receive an infusion of cash every week when you need it most. It’s a great way to raise money and also to ramp up donor excitement leading up to the big day!

Our team can turn on the weekly recurring feature for candidates and campaigns starting eight weeks prior to an election, and we can also enable weekly for 501(c)(4) or 501(c)(3) organizations preparing for important deadlines or events. Contact our team at support@actblue.com to get set up! 

Weekly recurring lives in the “Recurring settings” tab of the form editor, just like monthly recurring tools. Once the weekly recurring tool is enabled, you’ll find your weekly recurring options in the “Recurring donations” dropdown menu. 

Weekly recurring is a great tool, but it’s also a big commitment for donors. Enabling it too far out from big moments will discourage donors from making a recurring commitment, which is why this feature can only be accessed for limited time frames. The weekly recurring tool will be turned off seven (7) days before your weekly contributions are set to end, to prevent donors from signing up for a weekly contribution that never recurs. Weekly donations set up before the final seven days will recur one final time during those seven days. Once the set weekly period is over, the weekly recurring donations will automatically cease being charged.

Please note: If you have contacted and been approved by ActBlue to use pre-set recurring forms and would like to use them to collect weekly contributions, you must follow ActBlue’s policy and explicitly and clearly ask donors for weekly recurring contributions immediately before the donor clicks the link to give. In addition, any pre-set dollar amounts in the links must reflect what is in the ask. Read the full pre-set recurring forms policy and get helpful language examples here. ActBlue will contact any groups that do not follow the policy and will limit use of the feature until proper adherence with the policy can be achieved. Repeated failure to adhere to the guidelines will result in a group no longer being able to use pre-set recurring forms. If you would like to request the ability to use pre-set recurring forms or have questions, reach out to your ActBlue contact or support@actblue.com!

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Weekly Recurring Pop-ups

Once we turn on the weekly recurring feature for your group, you can give donors more opportunities to become weekly sustainers with our weekly recurring pop-ups that live in the “Recurring settings” tab of the form editor. 

The regular weekly pop-up recurring tool, which asks donors to make a weekly contribution that is the same size as their original one-time donation, will automatically be turned on for any form set to “Weekly” in the “Recurring donations” dropdown.

If you choose “Weekly: Smart Options” in the “Recurring donations” dropdown menu, the Smart Options tool will present one-time donors with a pop-up that suggests multiple lower weekly donation amounts based on their initial one-time gift, as well as the option to set their own amount. 

Like our monthly pop-up recurring tools, you can customize the title, ask, and image for both the weekly pop-up and the weekly Smart Options pop-up! When picking images to use in your fundraising, keep image vetting and consent best practices in mind. Our weekly recurring tools are also compatible with our recurring pitch, recurring incentive, and Spanish translation tools.

Please note: If you enable Smart Boost in the “Post-donation upsells” tab of the form editor, any weekly recurring pop-ups will be disabled, even if you have one selected in the “Recurring settings” tab.