Recurring (sustainer) donations

Recurring gifts are the donor segment with the highest lifetime value. Tormano supports them end-to-end through Stripe.

How a sustainer is created

1. Donor self-signs up through one of your donation forms by checking "Make this a monthly gift" — most common path.
2. Staff enters one for a donor who pledged offline (board member, gala attendee).
3. Imported from another platform during migration.

Frequencies

Monthly, Quarterly, and Annually. Toggle which of these are offered on your forms in the Supported Frequencies section of Recurring Gift Settings (Donations > Recurring Gifts).

Lifecycle

• Active — Stripe charges automatically on schedule. Each successful charge writes a regular donation record linked to the recurring schedule.
• Past due — last attempt failed. Tormano's dunning retries the charge (default 3 attempts, 3 days apart) and can email the donor a "card declined" notice with a self-service update link.
• Cancelled — manual cancel by donor or staff. No more charges.
• Paused — staff can pause, then resume.

The retry count, retry interval, and whether dunning emails are sent are all configurable in the Failed Payment Handling (Dunning) section of Recurring Gift Settings.

Sustainer dashboard

The Recurring Gifts tab (/recurring-gifts) shows a Performance Overview with:

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
• Churn Rate (last 30 days)
• New Active This Month

below which the active recurring subscriptions are listed with their amount, frequency, and status.

Donor self-service

Donors can manage a recurring gift — including cancelling it — from the donor portal (/donor-portal) without contacting you. See "The donor portal" for what donors can do there.