How do I Migrate my Recurring Donors to Virtuous Payments? – RaiseDonors by Virtuous

When migrating to RaiseDonors you'll most likely need to migrate your recurring donors and their associated payment processing details. This article outlines the steps required to complete this process depending on your organization's specific needs.

Note: Organizations must have a minimum of 50 recurring donations to utilize the systematic migration process. For organizations with less than 50 recurring donations, please review the manual migration process outlined further down in this article.

Migrating from Virtuous Giving + Payments or Legacy Raise Donors

Organizations already using Stripe Cost+ as their payment processor will speak with your Customer Success Manager and tell them you're ready to migrate your recurring donors to RaiseDonors. From here, the Virtuous team will manage the full migration process internally.
For Organizations using a different payment processor like WePay, Stax, or a different Stripe account, a token migration is likely required and may call for a bit of participation from your team to complete the process. Speak to your Customer Success Manager for details on the full process that matches your organization's use case.

Migrating from an External Payment Processor

There are two main pathways when migrating from an external payment processor. The details depend on your specific use case. Please reference the instructions below, depending on what your needs are.

Migrating to Virtuous CRM and RaiseDonors

For organizations migrating to both Virtuous CRM and RaiseDonors, then all donor data and recurring schedules will be imported directly into VCRM. Once imported, these schedules will sync back to RaiseDonors.

One pathway is engaging the Virtuous + RaiseDonors team during the onboarding process to complete a full token migration within 60 days of your final migration to VCRM. As noted above, there is a minimum of 50 recurring donations to qualify for the full token migration process.
The second pathway is manually migrating recurring donors to RaiseDonors by having them create a new recurring donation via a RaiseDonors giving form and canceling the previous commitment on your legacy platform.

Organizations Migrating to RaiseDonors as a Standalone Payment Platform

For organizations using RaiseDonors with a different CRM or as a standalone payment platform the two main options are still available, with a few slight differences.

If your organization has more than 50 recurring donations to qualify for the full token migrations process, you can engage the Virtuous + RaiseDonors team to complete this process.
If your organization has less than 50 recurring donations to qualify, please reference the manual migration details provided below.

Manually Migrating Recurring Donors to RaiseDonors

Should your organization have less than the qualifying number of recurring donations or wish to manage the complete manual migration process, you can opt to follow the instructions below.

Plan Your Launch and Communications

For your launch:

Determine your timeline.
Set your priorities - which groups of donors will go first?
- You may consider factors like gift size or level of support.
If you haven't already, create an online donation page for your supporters to complete

For your communications:

Determine and target your messaging. You want to switch donors over to a new system, which requires some of their time, as well. Consider how you frame these conversations, make them feel valued, talk about the system change, and nudge them toward continued support.
Here's a sample email template you could use:

Subject line: Some exciting news – ACTION REQUIRED!
Email copy:

{First Name},

We have some really exciting news to share with you!

{Your Organization Name} has launched a new online giving platform to give you more insights into how you’re making a difference {insert your org’s mission – eg: providing clean water and health care to children in Uganda}.

The new online giving platform will allow you to create a donor account to manage your contact information & preferences, review your recent giving, and manage your recurring gifts. You can create your online account now by going to {donor portal URL}.

These new features do require you to take a few quick, but important steps.

In order to continue {insert org’s mission – eg: providing clean water and healthcare to children in Uganda}, you need to re-establish your recurring gift as soon as possible. To make this as painless as possible, we created this easy-to-use donation page. Just go to {Insert Org URL with Virtuous Giving form}, fill out the form, and make sure you select the “recurring” option. The entire process should only take about 2 minutes to complete.

Thank you so much for your continued support and partnership.

Highly Engaged Recurring Donors

It's recommended to engage with whom you have a strong relationship, or who have demonstrated a high level of engagement in some way (several Contact Notes, email clicks, etc.). They might have supported your organization for quite some time, so as always, thank them for their continued support!

You could frame this as a cool new program they'll be the first ones to know about! Perhaps you offer some sort of incentive to encourage them to switch over and fill out a new form, like exclusive content, branded swag, etc. as a reminder that you greatly value them and all they've done to support you.

Secondary Donor Engagement

Next, start reaching out to your donors you may not know as well.

You may take a similar approach: introduce them to your cool new program and acknowledge the impact of their support.

You could also frame this as an opportunity to get to know them more! Encourage them to fill out a new form and let them know how this new information will be used to better serve them as valuable members of your community.

Important Notes

While this process can take some time to do yourself, it is worth noting that token migration (when the original processor transfers tokens to the new processor) can take 60+ business days to do and may not have a 100% success rate.

As you navigate this process, keep in mind the benefits of:

A new system with more capabilities
Building new relationships (and rebuilding long relationships) with your supporters

Your exact message for this transition is up to you. It is still important to stay true to your brand and your method of making your supporters feel valued while also letting them know the importance of switching over and continuing their support for your mission.

For additional guidance or supplemental details regarding any options outlined here, speak with your Customer Success Manager.