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This purely speculative idea has been floated in my direction.
When making an web based donation, the donor can choose to automatically be charged for a renewal at the end of the membership year. It’s been suggested that automatic renewal be the default selection, and the donor would need to click it off if that was not his/her intent. If not checked off, the donor will be charged another renewal in a year’s time.
Is anyone doing this now? And what are your opinions about the efficacy of this idea?
If it was an option to turn ON the "automatically renew me, please" option, that would be great. To have to opt out risks people being annoyed with you in the very act of giving you money. One might see how this would detract/limit the hopefully "warm fuzzy feelings" that people have upon donating. And no, we aren't doing it now, for the reasons above.
I agree with Erin, and would be very wary of setting it as a default. People don't pay as much attention to these things as they should, and are justifiably upset when they see a charge on their credit card statement that they don't remember authorizing.
I do think automatic renewal is a great option to offer, though. We have just started such a program in the past year, and have enrolled quite of few of these "perpetual donors" through mail and telefundraising (enrollment forms are also available on our website, but we aren't equipped to do that via opt-in checkbox at this point). Most are giving in monthly or quarterly installments set to continue indefinitely, which is a beautiful thing!