If you receive a past due notification for a supporter who was thought to have an online recurring payment set up, but the donation has not been recurring; or, if you set up a sponsorship for a supporter, but you do not see it in the Recurring Donations table – it is likely the recurring donation process was not fully initiated.

This can happen if a supporter thought they had set up an automatic monthly donation but hadn’t, or if an admin set up the payment by clicking the +Donation button instead of setting up the recurring through the Sponsorship record. The donation will not charge to the card the next month, and the system will flag them as Past Due.

To review how to correctly set up a sponsorship for a supporter, see Starting a Sponsorship.

A good way to verify that a sponsorship has been set up correctly is to look for the View Recurring Donation and Edit Recurring Donation links on the Sponsorship Supporter record (as shown below).  If you do not see the menu options as shown below, a Recurring Donation is not set up. You can also check the Recurring Donations table in the Supporter’s donation history.

To fix a sponsorship donation that is not set up correctly, you will need to take the supporter’s sponsorship offline and then back online to initiate the recurring donation process.

Here’s how:

• Open the Supporter’s record
• Click the Sponsorship name to open the Sponsorship-Supporter record
• Find the Donations list at the bottom of the page
• From the Donation Actions button, click Convert to Offline

• Once that is complete, return to the Donation Actions menu and select Convert to Automatic Credit/Debit Card

• Check that the cart is correct and then click Checkout
• Follow the process to set up the recurring donation, make sure to select the date you want the recurring sponsorship to start (generally this will be the monthly date from the original donation).
• Select the correct Frequency and any other options
• Click Create
• On the next page, click the green button to Use Account on File

Once the recurring donation has been set up correctly, you will need to decide if you are going to collect any past due amount or Mark as Current.