Recurring donor migration

Recurring donors are one of the most valuable cohorts that an organization can build. When an organization starts working with Engaging Networks, ensuring your recurring donors move into the platform smoothly is a top priority.

The process requires coordination between an organization’s existing payment gateway, the new payment gateway and Engaging Networks. All parties should be engaged at the start of the process to ensure a seamless migration. The basic process below can be followed in order to migrate recurring donors. Engaging Networks provides guidance on migrating donors from every payment provider.

Migration Process Overview

Identify recurring donors from your database of record and extract the donation details for their transactions from your existing payment gateway
Request that your existing payment gateway send the tokenized transaction data to your new payment gateway
Your new payment gateway will provide updated tokenized transaction data
You securely provide that tokenized transaction data to Engaging Networks in a set format that we will supply to you
Engaging Networks imports them to begin processing in Engaging Networks

If you are not changing your payment gateway as part of your migration to Engaging Networks, you can skip steps 2 and 3 related to re-tokenizing the data with a new payment gateway.

This migration is typically done as part of onboarding and is facilitated by the Engaging Networks Account Success Manager leading the project as well as the Client Support Specialist serving as the technical lead. Please contact your Account Success Manager or Engaging Networks Support for more detailed information and to start the process.

Key Terms

Merchant processor	This is the entity that manages the schedule for the recurring donations. They pass the token to the payment gateway, who process the donation and relay a response which is recorded by the merchant processor. Engaging Networks is the merchant processor.
Payment gateway	Also called the payment processor, this is the entity that actually processes the donation and indicates if the transaction was successful or not. Examples of payment gateways are Stripe, Vantiv Worldpay, and iATS and a full list of supported gateways can be found here.
Token	This is encrypted credit card or bank data that can be used to process a donation. The format of a token varies by payment gateway but it is typically a numeric or alphanumeric string.

FAQs

Is there a cost for migrating recurring donors into Engaging Networks?

No, there is no additional cost for migrating recurring donors into Engaging Networks

What are the advantages to migrating recurring donors into Engaging Networks?

Migrating your recurring donors into Engaging Networks can allow for all transactions, both new and existing, to process in a single system.
Users can manage all recurring donations within Engaging Networks.
Supporters with recurring transactions processing in Engaging Networks can use the Supporter Hub to manage their own donations. They can update things such as donation amount, day of charge and also update the associated credit card. The Supporter Hub can also be used to upsell recurring donors.
Engaging Networks offers Marketing Automations to automatically notify supporters if the associated credit card processing their recurring transactions is due to expire, as well as when their donation fails.
Engaging Networks profile and query builder tools can be used to target recurring donors in email or SMS broadcast campaigns and also to show them conditional content on Engaging Networks pages.
Migrating can reduce the number of payment gateways your organization utilizes.

Does Engaging Networks have a limit for the number of donations that can be migrated?

There is not an upper limit for the number of donations that can be migrated, but due to the effort required to migrate donations, the minimum number that can migrated is 25.

There is also an available REST API endpoint that is available to all clients at no charge that can be used to migrate recurring transactions.

What if my organization has fewer than 25 recurring donations to migrate?

Our recommendation is to reach out to donors individually and have them resubmit their payment details on an Engaging Networks page. It is typically good donor stewardship opportunity or opportunity for a recurring upsell campaign.

Will any recurring donations not be processed in the midst of a migration?

If our best practices and outlined timelines are followed, no. Please ensure you discuss timelines with your Account Success Manager assigned to onboarding to ensure the timing is such that no transactions will be missed as part of the migration.

What payment gateways and payment types are supported?

Stripe, Vantiv Worldpay, iATS, Paypal express checkout, Paypal payments pro, Payflow Pro, and Paysafe gateways are all supported gateways for recurring migration. The supported payment types can vary by payment gateway as well as payment gateway settings. Generally credit cards, Bacs Direct Debit and ACH/ EFT transactions are supported. Engaging Networks can provide the supported payment types for each gateway by request.

Can we test some recurring donations before migrating all of them?

Yes, it is required that a small number of recurring donations be migrated as a test before moving the entire file.