There can be a variety of reasons why a donation might decline or receive an error. By looking up the error that the payment processor provided, you can determine what is preventing your donor from completing their donation, and provide specific advice to assist your donor in successfully submitting their donation..

When a Donation is not completed, your organization may see several different error statuses, including Abandoned, Declined, Gateway Error, and Pending. If you would like to learn more about the different statuses in GivingFuel, click here.

Look up Why Your Donation Was Declined

From the Pages screen, click the Donations tab in the top menu bar
Click the eye icon next the declined donation that you want to look up
Scroll down to the Transaction Details section
Click the Show Gateway Details button

In this dropdown, check the Gateway Message - this will show you why the donation was declined

Recurring Donation Schedule

When a card is declined on a recurring donation, our system will attempt to run the card again two more times every other day. After a card is declined, our system sends an email to the donor with instructions with a link inviting them to update their credit card details.This link expires in 72 hours.

After the credit card is declined a total of three times, the system will then attempt to run the card again next month. It will repeat the same pattern, attempting to run the card every other day for another three attempts. If the donor still does not update their card by the time the 6th attempt is made, the recurring donation will be permanently disabled. A new recurring donation would then have to be established through the donation page at this point.

Example: Assume that a donor has a recurring donation that processes on the 5th of the month. If the donation is declined on January 5th, our system will attempt to re-process the donation on January 7th. If the donation is declined on January 7th, our system will attempt to re-process the donation on January 9th.

If the donation declines on January 9th, our system will attempt to process the donation next month on February 5th. If the donation is declined on Feburary 5th, it will repeat the same schedule as the previous month, attempting to re-process the donation on February 7th and February 9th respectively.

Once the donation fails a sixth time in a row on February 9th, the recurring donation then will be automatically disabled. If the donor wants to continue giving, they will need to set up a new recurring donation at that point.