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1-844-PUSHPAY Comparing donor retention tools for recurring giving and dunning
See how GoFundMe Pro (formerly Classy), Givebutter, and Donorbox compare with Pushpay on failed-gift recovery, donor follow-up, and fees.
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project tracked 15,102 nonprofits and 7.8 million donors through 2025 and found that 43.3% of the previous year’s donors gave again. The rate edged up from 43.1% a year earlier, while the number of donors fell 3.6%, the fifth straight year of declining givers.
Recurring givers, however, stick around longer.
M+R’s Benchmarks 2026 report, built on data from 180 nonprofits, found 71% of monthly sustainers still active after 12 months and 54% of monthly gifts still active after two years. One-time online donors in the same report came back at 48%.
This data is not church-specific, but it is helpful as a benchmark for giving trends in general.
Start a retention review with the recurring gifts that stopped because a charge was declined, before you look at thank-you notes or pastoral follow-up. GoFundMe Pro’s recurring donations guide says that when a plan fails, “oftentimes, their card simply expired and they forgot to update the information.” Those givers didn’t decide to leave, but who knows how long it’ll be before they notice that they’re no longer giving?
This comparison puts Pushpay next to three general nonprofit platforms: GoFundMe Pro (the name GoFundMe announced for Classy in May 2025), Givebutter, and Donorbox.
The comparison at a glance
| Pushpay | GoFundMe Pro | Givebutter | Donorbox | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring schedules | Giver sets amount, frequency, and fund | Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual | Monthly, quarterly, and annual (no weekly) | Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, 1st and 15th, monthly, quarterly, and annual |
| Failed-payment handling | Failed Payment Recovery flags failing recurring gifts and offers a catch-up gift; Assured® Payments queues gifts during gateway outages | Attempts the next three scheduled gifts, then suspends the plan; optional smart retries on monthly plans | Three reattempts at 48-hour intervals, then the plan pauses | Retries 2 and 4 days after the failed charge, then stops; giver has 10 days to update the card |
| Failure notices | Prompts the giver to update the payment method | Email to the giver (editable, can be turned off) | Email to the giver and the admin | "Unsuccessful Recurring Donation" email to the giver |
| Expiring or replaced cards | Expiring Card Notifications prompt givers before the card expires | No card updater described in the recurring guide | Email before expiration; Stripe updates replaced cards where the card network supports it | Stripe keeps most expired saved cards working; giver is emailed if the card number changes |
| Giver self-service | Giver controls amount, frequency, and fund, and manages payment details from their account | Update payment details or cancel from the member profile | Change amount, update card, or pause; admins can't edit payment details | Pause, change amount or interval, and update payment details |
| Automated follow-up | Donor development flags at-risk and lapsed givers; giving workflows; optional Recurring Suggestion prompt | Targeted donor lists and personalized upgrade links (added August 2026); merge-tag emails | Plus workflows triggered by recurring events, with email, text, and task actions | Donorbox CRM dynamic lists and email series; recurring upsell at checkout on Pro |
| Church management (ChMS) and CRM connections | Native ChMS with giving on the member profile; Rock RMS, Planning Center, Ministry Platform, and others at no added fee | Native Salesforce (paid add-on); Blackbaud, Bloomerang, and Virtuous through connectors; no ChMS listed | Built-in CRM; no ChMS listed; native Bloomerang and Raiser's Edge NXT | Planning Center sync ($50/month, one-way); Salesforce, HubSpot, and others |
| Pricing | Quote-based Core, Advanced, and Complete tiers; 1- to 3-year contracts; no setup or integration fees | Custom quote: annual subscription plus a per-donation fee | Free with optional donor tips (3% platform fee with tips off); Plus from $29/month | Standard is free at a 2.95% platform fee; Pro is $150/month at 1.75%; processing billed separately |
When a recurring gift fails
Dunning (the sequence of retries and notices that follows a failed payment) decides whether a declined card turns into a short gap or a lapsed recurring gift.
Retries, notices, and card updates
Givebutter reattempts a failed charge three times at 48-hour intervals and emails both the giver and your admin. If the charge still fails, the plan pauses, and it stays paused until the giver updates the payment method.
A Donorbox giver has 10 days from the first failed charge to update the card and be charged automatically. Update it after that and the gift waits for the next month’s donation date. In the meantime, Donorbox retries two days after the failed charge and again two days after that, then stops trying.
On GoFundMe Pro, a monthly plan can miss three gifts before it stops. Each scheduled donation is attempted, and after three failures in a row the plan moves to Suspended status.
GoFundMe Pro also lets nonprofits turn on smart retries, which re-attempt failed monthly gifts up to four more times on the 1st, the 15th, and the Fridays between. In an August 2026 announcement, GoFundMe said smart retries succeeded more than 30% of the time among early adopters, based on its internal data.
When Pushpay prompts a giver whose recurring gift failed, 80% agree to make up the missed gift, according to our data. The prompt comes from Failed Payment Recovery, part of Pushpay’s Everygift® tools. It can spot failing recurring gifts and offer the giver a way to update the payment method and catch up. A separate feature, Assured Payments, detects when a payment gateway is down and queues the gifts that would otherwise fail.
Expired cards are the easier failure to prevent. Givebutter and Donorbox both process through Stripe, which can update saved card details when a bank reissues a card. Donorbox says most saved cards keep working past their expiration date for that reason.
Givebutter also emails givers when the card on file will expire before the next charge, and Everygift’s Expiring Card Notifications can prompt Pushpay givers ahead of the expiration date. GoFundMe Pro’s recurring guide doesn’t describe a card updater, so ask its sales team how expired cards are handled before you move a recurring file there.
Pull every recurring gift that failed last quarter from your giving platform and sort the plans into restarted and still inactive. If the still-inactive group is larger, your current sequence loses more gifts than it saves, and the retry and card-update rules above are the first questions to put to any vendor.
Follow-up once the gift is back
Payment recovery and stewardship run on different triggers. Recovery starts with a declined charge and ends when the card works again. Stewardship starts with a person’s giving pattern, such as a first gift, a recurring anniversary, or a cancellation. Automating the response to each one puts it on a schedule the system keeps, without anyone on staff tracking the date.
A giver who cancels on purpose is out of reach of any retry schedule.
Givebutter publishes its workflow triggers in detail. On a Givebutter Plus plan, a workflow can start when someone becomes a recurring donor, reaches a recurring plan anniversary, or cancels a recurring plan. From there it can send an email or text, create a task for a staff member, or tag the contact. The published trigger list doesn’t include a failed recurring payment. And imported contacts and transactions don’t trigger workflows, which matters if you move a recurring file over from another platform.
Pushpay’s donor development tools sort givers by stage, including at-risk and lapsed groups, and let you build workflows that move each group toward a next step in giving. In Pushpay’s church management system (ChMS), staff can view giving history on the same member profile that holds attendance and group involvement. Decide which staff roles should see individual giving before that view goes live.
A waitlist currently stands in front of Donorbox CRM: its product page asks new users to join one, and its pricing isn’t on the Donorbox plans page. Once you’re in, the CRM builds dynamic lists that update on criteria you set and can send automated email series.
GoFundMe Pro’s newest follow-up tools arrived in August 2026. Personalized upgrade links let an existing recurring giver raise the amount, and targeted donor lists flag supporters most likely to start a recurring gift.
Self-service for givers
Every platform here gives recurring givers a login to manage their own gifts. Givebutter’s donor portal lets givers change the amount, update the card, or pause the gift, but admins and editors can’t change payment details, amount, or frequency on a giver’s behalf. If your office staff handle those requests by phone, Givebutter sends each one back to the giver.
Donorbox’s portal covers pausing, changing the amount or interval, and updating payment details. GoFundMe Pro givers manage payment details from their member profile, and a suspended plan can be reactivated by updating the card or billing address.
Platform by platform
GoFundMe Pro, formerly Classy
GoFundMe bought Classy in 2022 and announced in May 2025 that the Classy name would be retired in favor of GoFundMe Pro.
GoFundMe Pro is a general nonprofit fundraising platform, and its range shows in the scheduling options: seven recurring intervals from daily to annual. It also runs peer-to-peer fundraising for supporters who raise money on a ministry’s behalf. The integrations page lists no church management system.
Givebutter
A church can run Givebutter without paying a platform fee or card processing, as long as it leaves donor tips on. Givers see an optional tip to Givebutter at checkout.
Some churches will be comfortable with a tip prompt next to a tithe. Others won’t want a third party’s request on their giving page, and that’s a decision for your leadership before it’s a pricing question.
The free plan includes unlimited contacts, users, and email blasts, with a built-in CRM that records each gift on a donor profile. Givebutter Plus starts at $29 a month and adds workflows, texting, and the QuickBooks Online integration.
Givebutter’s integrations page lists no church management system, and its guide for churches suggests pairing Givebutter with Planning Center, ChurchTrac, or Breeze.
Recurring giving runs monthly, quarterly, or annually, so a giver who wants to give weekly or every other week won’t find a matching schedule.
Donorbox
Of the three general nonprofit platforms here, Donorbox is the one that publishes a Planning Center integration. It’s a $50-a-month add-on that sends Donorbox supporters to Planning Center People, donations to Planning Center Giving, and campaigns to Funds. Data moves one way, from Donorbox to Planning Center.
Its recurring schedules include weekly, bi-weekly, and the 1st and 15th, which fits givers who time their gifts to a paycheck.
Pushpay
Pushpay is the only platform in this comparison built specifically for churches. Churches that keep a separate ChMS can connect Rock RMS, Planning Center, or Ministry Platform, among others. For Rock, Pushpay’s integrations page says “every donation lands in the right fund, the right batch, and the right person’s record in Rock.” Integrations carry no added fee.
Where the giving data goes
From gift to member record
Giving data has to land somewhere your staff already work. Givebutter, Donorbox CRM, and GoFundMe Pro’s donor dashboard keep donor records inside the giving tool, and a ChMS, if you run one, receives data through an integration. Pushpay can hold giving and people records in one system or pass giving into a separate ChMS.
The integration details decide how much reconciliation your team does. Donorbox’s Planning Center sync runs in real time but only one way, so a correction made in Planning Center doesn’t flow back to Donorbox. GoFundMe Pro connects natively to Salesforce and through Omatic to Blackbaud CRM and Raiser’s Edge NXT, which suits a ministry whose donor records already live in one of them. Givebutter’s native CRM connections are Bloomerang and Raiser’s Edge NXT.
Fees and contracts
Every platform charges some mix of a subscription, a platform fee on each gift, and card processing. The vendors publish those costs to very different degrees.
Donorbox publishes all of them. Standard is free with a 2.95% platform fee on donation forms. Pro costs $150 a month and drops that fee to 1.75%. Card processing through Stripe runs 2.2% + 30¢ at the nonprofit rate listed on the Donorbox pricing page, and ACH runs 0.8%, capped at $5.
The 1.2-point fee difference between Standard and Pro equals Pro’s $1,800 annual cost at $150,000 a year in donation-form volume. A church above that figure pays less on Pro at the monthly price. Add $50 a month each for the Planning Center or QuickBooks integration.
With Givebutter’s tips turned off, a gift pays a 3% platform fee plus 2.9% + 30¢ in card processing.
GoFundMe Pro and Pushpay price by quote. GoFundMe Pro combines an annual upfront subscription with a per-donation fee, and its Salesforce integration costs extra. Pushpay has no setup fees and unlimited users, and check scanning and remote deposit start at $0.29 per check.
To compare the four on equal terms, take last year’s online giving total and gift count from your giving reports. For each platform, multiply the total by the platform fee and the card processing percentage, multiply the gift count by the per-gift charge, and add the annual subscription and any add-ons. For GoFundMe Pro and Pushpay, ask for those same figures in writing so the totals line up. The lowest total at your volume is the cost baseline to weigh against the retention features above.
Church finance details
Funds and batches are where a giving platform meets the general ledger. Pushpay connects to QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, and Aplos. Givebutter’s native QuickBooks Online integration requires Plus, with Sage Intacct and Xero available through Zapier. Donorbox’s native QuickBooks integration is a $50-a-month add-on. GoFundMe Pro reaches QuickBooks Online through Zapier and Sage Intacct through Venn Technology.
Which platform fits which church?
An all-in-one system makes the most sense when your staff spend their time moving data between giving and people records. If your church runs a ChMS it plans to keep, a giving platform with a tested integration into that ChMS is the smaller change.
- Choose GoFundMe Pro if: your ministry runs campaign or peer-to-peer fundraising alongside recurring giving and keeps donor records in Salesforce or Blackbaud.
- Choose Givebutter if: you want a free starting point with a built-in CRM, unlimited users, and email blasts, and you’ll add Plus when you need workflows.
- Choose Donorbox if: you run Planning Center and want published, pay-as-you-go pricing with weekly, bi-weekly, and 1st-and-15th schedules.
- Choose Pushpay if: you want giving history on the member profile, failed-gift recovery that offers givers a catch-up payment, and ChMS integrations included in the price.
Questions church teams ask before choosing
What should a dunning workflow include?
Each of these pieces, documented clearly enough that you could explain it to a giver:
- Retries on a published schedule: the number of attempts and the spacing before a plan pauses or suspends.
- A failure notice: an email to the giver with a direct link to update the payment method.
- Expiration handling: a warning before the card on file expires, plus processor-level card updating where available.
- A staff alert: a notice to someone at the church when a plan pauses or suspends.
- A catch-up option: a way for the giver to cover the missed gift once the card works.
How can a team tell payment recovery from stewardship?
Look at what ended the gift. A plan that paused or suspended after declined charges is a payment problem, and it belongs to the dunning sequence. A plan the giver canceled, or a recurring giver who stopped with a working card on file, calls for a personal conversation.
Which integrations should a church verify?
Your church management system and your accounting software, since every gift touches both. Ask each vendor to run a test gift in a demo account and show you where it lands, including the person record, the fund, and the batch. Then ask what happens in the second system when that gift is refunded in the first, and whether the integration carries a monthly fee. If a vendor can’t show the refund case, budget staff time for correcting gifts by hand in both systems.
Before the first demo
Bring last quarter’s failed recurring gifts, sorted into restarted and still inactive, to your first vendor demo. Ask the vendor to walk through what its system would have done with each still-inactive gift, starting with the first retry.
