A sustainer is a donor giving on a recurring schedule via a Stripe subscription — monthly, quarterly, twice a year, or yearly. Sustainers are set up from the public donate page; staff manage them from the admin list, and donors can manage their own from their profile.
Before you start
Venue Admin with canViewDonors, or Super Admin, for the admin list. Cancelling a sustainer specifically requires canRefund.
The sustainers list
Go to AdminVenuesFundraisingSustainers.
Summary cards at the top show Active sustainers, Monthly recurring (normalized total), and Past due. The table lists Donor, Amount, Fund, Started, Last payment, Next charge, and Status, filterable by the Active / Past due / Canceled / All tabs.
Click Change amount to update a sustainer's gift amount (between $1 and $10,000). Noctern creates a new Stripe price and updates the subscription — the new amount takes effect on the next charge, with no proration for the current period.
Click the cancel icon and confirm Cancel this recurring gift? to end a sustainer's subscription.
Donor self-service
Donors manage their own recurring gifts at Profile → My giving (/profile/giving), under Recurring gifts. Each card shows the amount, interval, fund, and either the next charge date, a past-due warning, or a canceled state, plus the masked card on file.
Donors can Update card (a Stripe SetupIntent flow — no re-entering the subscription), Change amount, or Cancel their own gift from there.
Watch out
Use "Twice a year" when talking about the half_year interval — that's the label donors and staff actually see. "Semi-annual" doesn't appear anywhere in the product.
A Stripe subscription cancellation — including one caused by repeated failed payments — is only recorded once Stripe's webhook confirms it. Stripe, not the admin list, is the source of truth for whether a sustainer is still active.
- Open the demo venue's Sustainers list and find the active sustainer's Next charge date.
- Open Profile → My giving as a donor account and compare what the donor sees to what staff see in the admin list.