Recurring Donations are sustaining-donor commitments — "Jane gives $50 monthly," "Acme Corp gives $10k quarterly." Foundational to nonprofit revenue strategy because sustaining donors have 5-10x the lifetime value of one-time donors. NPSP (legacy) and Nonprofit Cloud (modern) both have Recurring Donation objects with similar shapes.
- Confirm NPSP or Nonprofit Cloud is licensed
Without one, the Recurring Donation object isn't there. NPSP uses npe03__Recurring_Donation__c (custom object); Nonprofit Cloud uses RecurringDonation (standard object).
- Open the Recurring Donations tab (or from a Contact / Account → related list)
App Launcher → Recurring Donations.
- Click New
Top-right.
- Set the Donor (Contact or Account)
Contact for individual donors; Account for organizations / households.
- Set Amount and Installment Period
Amount per installment + frequency (Monthly / Quarterly / Annually). Drives cash flow projections.
- Set Date Established and Status
Date Established: when the commitment began. Status: Active is the default. Lapsed / Closed represent failed or ended commitments.
- (Optional) set End Date
Some donors commit for a fixed term ("$50/mo for 12 months"). End Date stops auto-creation of installments past that date.
- Set Payment Method
Credit Card, ACH, Check. Drives which payment processor automation handles the installments.
- Save
Recurring Donation is created. The recurring-donations engine creates the next installment record at the appropriate cadence and runs it through payment processing.
Required.
Required.
Required.
Required.
Required. Active by default.
- NPSP and Nonprofit Cloud have different Recurring Donation objects with similar shape. Migrating between them is a significant project — Salesforce provides tooling but it's one-way and time-consuming.
- Lapsed status fires when payments fail. The recurring engine auto-flips to Lapsed after N consecutive failed installments — N is configurable. Pair with donor-care automation to attempt recovery.
- Pausing isn't a built-in status; orgs typically use a custom field or extend status options. Without a pause concept, temporarily-suspended donors get marked Lapsed which conflates with payment failures.