Disclaimer: ActBlue user roles and permissions dictate what users can do on our platform. If the tools or features mentioned in this article are unavailable to you, please speak to your Dashboard Admin(s) about updating your permissions.
In this article:
Setting up weekly recurring
Weekly recurring allows donors to pledge a donation each week leading up to Election Day or a special occasion for your organization!
In the weeks before Election Day or another important deadline, asking supporters for a monthly donation doesn’t make much sense. However, it’s a great time to launch a weekly recurring program.
Our team can turn on the weekly recurring feature for candidates and campaigns ten weeks before an election, and we can enable weekly for 501(c)(4) or 501(c)(3) organizations up to ten weeks before an important deadline or event. Contact our team to get set up.
Once we enable the weekly recurring option for you, you’ll need to turn it on in the contribution form editor. To do so, go to the form editor and select “Recurring settings” from the left menu.
Select “Weekly” from the “Recurring frequency” dropdown and select the date of your event or election from the “Weekly recurring sunset date” dropdown. Weekly contributions will automatically end at the selected sunset date unless rollover to monthly is enabled below.
You will see the weekly recurring ask on your contribution form preview. If you have your recurring display set to Toggle, it will appear like this:
If your recurring display is set to Checkbox, it will appear like this:
Donations process on the same day of the week as the initial contribution, so focus on Monday and Tuesday asks if you’re fundraising for a candidate.
Enabling weekly recurring too far out from big moments might discourage donors from making recurring commitments, which is why we only enable this feature for limited time frames. It will turn off seven days before your weekly recurring program end date 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. Weekly donations will automatically cease or convert to monthly donations after Election Day or your special event.
ActBlue policy requires groups using pre-set recurring forms to explicitly ask donors for recurring contributions immediately before the donor clicks the link to give. In addition, any pre-set dollar amounts in the recurring links must reflect what is in the ask. If a group doesn’t adhere to the policy, ActBlue will remove permission to use pre-set recurring forms. Read the full policy.
Weekly recurring upsells
Once we turn on the weekly recurring feature for your group, you can use the recurring upsells that live in the “Post-donation upsells” tab of the form editor. A recurring upsell is a pop-up that donors will see after they process a one-time contribution. The pop-up will suggest that the donor increase their impact and sustain your work by converting their donation to a recurring contribution. If you activate a recurring upsell for a form set to weekly recurring, all the language in the pop-up will automatically update to reflect that the contribution will recur on a weekly basis. Learn more about recurring upsells here.
Weekly-to-monthly rollover
If you have weekly recurring enabled on a contribution form, you can add a weekly-to-monthly rollover disclaimer. This disclaimer tells donors that their weekly recurring donation will automatically convert to monthly one month after the election or special event.
To add the disclaimer, head to the "Recurring settings" tab of the form editor. And make sure you have a weekly option selected for that form.
Check the box next to “Rollover weekly recurring to monthly after sunset date.”
Now, when a donor chooses to make a weekly contribution, they will see a disclaimer telling them that their donation will roll over into a monthly contribution after the event date. This information is also included in their email receipt and on the Thanks page.
The amount of support that the ActBlue Customer Service Team can provide is dependent on the permissions that you have. Check with your entity Admin about your assigned role.
If you have any questions, please contact our support team using the email address you use to access your ActBlue account.