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. If you're an organization like a 501(c)4 or a 501(c)3 and you're interested in setting up weekly recurring, feel free to reach out to our team at support@actblue.com. Let us know which contribution forms you'd like to have it turned on for, and we'll get it enabled.
When setting up a weekly recurring ask via email, the parameters are fairly straightforward, you’ll just need to swap out &recurring=true for &recur_weekly=true. Here's an example link for a $10 weekly contribution:
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.
In the “Recurring settings” tab, you’ll also find the option to write a custom recurring pitch for your contribution form. You can learn more about that tool here.
Additional Reading
Creating & Customizing Contribution Forms
In this article: 1. Your default contribution form 2. Getting around the form editor 3. Customizing your contribution form 4. Creating a new contribution form 5. Additional resources Your…
Download Recurring Data
After you spend the time building a strong recurring program to sustain your work, you can access all of your important recurring data as downloadable CSV files. It only…
Smart Recurring
We have two Smart Recurring tools that base the recurring ask amount on the donor’s one-time donation amount: Smart Suggestion and Smart Options. The Smart Suggestion tool will present…
Pop-up Recurring
Our pop-up recurring features allow you to ask donors to make a recurring donation after they’ve made a one-time contribution. Their one-time contribution will already have been recorded, so…
Building Your Recurring Donor Program
In this article: 1. Getting to know your recurring settings 2. Customizing your recurring ask 3. Sending your ask to supporters 4. Analyzing your recurring contributions 5. Supporting donors…
Why You Should Ask For Recurring Donations
We strongly recommend that you start a recurring fundraising program. Here are a few reasons why: Recurring contributions = more money. Period. That’s because donors can chip in a…