Recurring Subscriptions for Nonprofit Clubs

Running nonprofit clubs like student associations and community groups requires both passion and sustainability. For club admins, the major challenge lies in the latter i.e. sustainability. To keep the donations coming in and members engaged, admins often have to handle a lot of behind-the-scenes work.

This includes trying to hold payment cycles together, contacting members manually to give them donation reminders, and updating records. But what if nonprofit clubs could have self-running donation cycles that were easy to manage? That’s exactly the magic that subscription management software brings to the table.

It automates workflows so that nonprofits can stay financially steady, and focused on building a healthy community.

The Struggles of Nonprofit Clubs

There are three main challenges that nonprofit clubs have to deal with:

Keeping funding stable

Irregular funding makes donations unstable as well, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing in volume. Funding becomes irregular when there is either no recurring donation option, or when recurring donations aren’t managed the right way.

In the latter case, donors might commit themselves to recurring donations, but may forget donating on time or miss some donation cycles altogether. This can be the result of inefficient communication, as nonprofits might not be able to timely reach all of their members for fresh donations.

Renewing members and updating records

Secondly, when a member makes a recurring donation, the nonprofit club has to renew their membership status. It needs to update the member’s donation record, and advance them to the next donation cycle.

But as you can guess, it can be very time-consuming, especially when handling a good number of donors. Manual practices in this case can also lead to errors in the member record. For example, admins might forget to update some members’ donation amounts which can lead to confusion and mistrust.

Retaining members long-term

Active recurring donations are the key to keep the donors retained for long time periods. The donation experience needs to be as seamless as possible, so that donors don’t have to put in any extra effort.

But if admins need to manually contact donors every month for paying, or give them payment forms to be filled every time, that erodes the quality of the donor experience, making them more likely to leave after only a few cycles.

You have done your part.
Let SubscriptionFlow take it from here!

Let us help your business grow with our powerful
subscription management software.

What Automatic Recurring Subscriptions Mean for Nonprofits

By bringing automation to the mix, there’s a lot that nonprofit clubs can streamline. If donations follow the automatic recurring subscriptions model, this is what the nonprofits and their donors stand to gain:

Predictable revenue stream

When automated, irregular donations turn into a stable revenue stream. When members commit to a recurring donation plan, they don’t have to remember their payment dates and amounts. Donation collection becomes entirely automated so that members don’t miss payments due to forgetfulness.

Organizations can use this to their advantage and establish predictable donation flows to strengthen their funding campaigns, and invest in their growth.

Flexible plans

Recurring donations are set up with the help of subscription management software. With this software as the nonprofit’s backbone, the donation experience can be made more flexible and attractive for the members.

Offering multiple donation plans is one way to do that. Nonprofits can create different plans by amount (such $50, $70 or $100 per month) or by duration (monthly, quarterly and yearly donations). They can also establish family plans where different members of the family donate under the same account.

Convenient payments

Donors are given access to easy modes of payment. They are presented multiple payment methods to choose from such as PayPal, direct bank transfer, Venmo, mobile payment, credit card, and so on. More payment options often mean more donations as payment method scarcity can prevent willing donors from contributing. This is especially true for nonprofits inviting donors from all over the globe for support.

More Pros of Automated Donation Cycles

Using subscription management software to automate donation cycles gives nonprofit clubs all these advantages:

Smooth collection and renewals

There’s no need to chase after payments. Donations flow into the nonprofit’s account automatically. This means that organizations don’t need to reach out to each member individually to remind them to pay, or to chase down overdue donations.

Nor do they have to update the members’ donation status themselves. Because once a donation is successfully processed, the subscription management software renews the member’s plan and transitions them into the next cycle automatically.

Automatic invoices and receipts

Invoices are generated effortlessly, without any manual input and sent to the members. In case of automatic donations, members may receive their invoices after the payment, like receipts. The software makes sure that no invoice is missed so that members can keep a transparent and consistent record of all their donations.

Automatic communication

All the donation confirmation messages, receipts, event notifications, donation updates, and thank you messages can be set up and triggered automatically. This way, there are no communication delays on the nonprofit’s end, and no information gaps are created.

No paperwork

Donation records and invoices are all digitalized so that there’s no need for paper-based operations. Paperwork is slow and inefficient, takes up a lot of space, can get misplaced, and isn’t readily accessible. Subscription management software shifts nonprofits to digital workflows for maximum productivity.

SubscriptionFlow for Building Stronger Recurring Funding Channels

SubscriptionFlow is your trusted solution for creating smooth and scalable recurring donation streams. Nonprofit clubs can leverage the software to:

Easily set up membership plans

Different types of membership plans can be set up effortlessly. Nonprofits can offer both standard donation plans (such as fixed $50 per month) and custom plans. In custom plans, donors can set up customized donation amounts that match their budgets better (such as $7, $15, or any other random amount per month).

Thus, both user segments benefit from this: users ready to commit to a standard plan, and users wanting to donate the amounts of their choice. They can change these amounts for future cycles at will.

Automate reminders, upgrades and downgrades

An appropriate time prior the donation date, the software triggers a donation reminder for the concerned member. This reminder helps the member donate more actively, as passive payment deductions can catch members off guard.

Moreover, your members can also increase or reduce their donation amounts by switching between higher and lower plans. This helps them donate according to their budget so that they can donate more comfortably, without feeling pressured.

In the upgrade/downgrade cases, SubscriptionFlow facilitates easy transitions and updates donation amounts in real-time.

Integrate various payment gateways

Nonprofits can process donations using a number of payment gateways: PayPal, Authorize.Net, GoCardless, Stripe and so on. Since SubscriptionFlow is already connected with a variety of gateways, you don’t have to go through complicated integration processes. Gateway variety also means more payment method variety for your donors.

Track funding and member activity

You can keep all your members’ data updated, and easily accessible through your dashboard. SubscriptionFlow updates each member’s donation record as the payments are collected. So you can track funding in real-time and also predict your revenue at any point in time.

In addition, nonprofit clubs also have access to their member activity for determining areas to improve. This means access to analytics like growth rate (average number of members joining per month), churn rate, most used payment methods, most utilized donation plans, and so on.

Activate retries to keep donations uninterrupted

When a donation fails because of uncontrollable factors like card expiration and gateway failure, the revenue stream is disrupted. This can result in critical issues like involuntary member churn. SubscriptionFlow offers dunning tools to combat donation failures.

It allows nonprofits to retry payments at optimal intervals so that the due funds can be collected faster, and donations can continue smoothly once again.

Looking to strengthen your funding channels? Partner with SubscriptionFlow to build healthy donation cycles that run themselves.