Why did my recurring gifts drop in Blackbaud?
The Blackbaud help pages give 4 common reasons. The first to rule out: When a donor's card expires or a payment is softly declined, the recurring gift can be paused, so its payments stop until someone acts.
Is it broken, or just quiet?
A number can fall because fewer people came, or because something stopped counting them. Below are the causes the Blackbaud help pages give, and how to check each one yourself.
What causes it?
When a donor's card expires or a payment is softly declined, the recurring gift can be paused, so its payments stop until someone acts.
In the Blackbaud help:
The recurring gift payments are temporarily paused due to a soft rejection, such as the donor's credit card expiring.
Recurring Gift Status, read 2026-11-12.Payments missed during a pause do not come back by themselves. They only count if your team retries them.
In the Blackbaud help:
Payments missed while the gift is on hold are never processed unless you manually retry them.
Recurring Gift Status, read 2026-11-12.A recurring gift with an end date stops after that date, so gifts from it end even though nothing failed.
In the Blackbaud help:
When you or a donor adds an end date to a recurring gift, payments automatically stop processing after the selected date.
Recurring Gift Status, read 2026-11-12.A payment that went through still needs its batch approved before it becomes a gift record, so batches still waiting can make recurring gifts read low.
In the Blackbaud help:
Payments that succeed are placed in unapproved batches, and you must approve them to create their gift records.
Get Started with Payment Processing, read 2026-11-12.
How do I check it myself?
Check the status of your recurring gifts. A gift that is on hold or ended does not process payments on its schedule.
In the Blackbaud help:
The status of a recurring gift controls whether payments process according to their schedule.
Recurring Gift Status, read 2026-11-12.Look at failed payments. Payments declined outright are not retried on their own schedule, but your team can retry them by hand.
In the Blackbaud help:
Payments that fail due to a hard rejection can be manually retried from the failed payment record.
Get Started with Payment Processing, read 2026-11-12.
How would I know the day it starts?
- Feder reads the gifts received in Blackbaud each day and compares each day with your own history.
- It tells you when gifts received go quiet or move outside their usual range.
Some numbers are too quiet to judge daily, such as a form filled in a few times a week. Until there is enough of your own history to judge a change, Feder says it is still learning and scores nothing, rather than guessing.
See what Feder reads from Blackbaud, which feeds Wins. Feder only reads. It never changes anything in Blackbaud.
What else goes wrong with these numbers?
- Why did my gifts received drop in Blackbaud?Blackbaud
- Why did my gifts received suddenly jump in Blackbaud?Blackbaud
- Why did Google Analytics stop collecting data?Google Analytics
- Why aren't my key events showing in Google Analytics?Google Analytics
- Why does Google Analytics show (not set)?Google Analytics
See every question.
Where do these answers come from?
Every cause and check on this page comes from the Blackbaud help pages, quoted above with the date we read them. Last reviewed 2026-11-12. We read them again by 2027-11-12. If one changes, this page changes or comes down.