For monthly giving programs, sustainer circles and workplace payroll campaigns
Monthly donor receipts: one statement, not twelve letters — and what the IRS actually requires for recurring gifts
A $25-a-month donor gives you $300 a year, but to the IRS they made twelve separate $25 contributions, none of which crosses the $250 line, so no single charge ever needs an acknowledgment letter. What they need instead is a record of each gift — and what they expect is one January statement that lists all twelve, totals them and thanks them. Below: the welcome letter that sets that expectation when a monthly gift starts, the year-end statement that covers every charge (including $250+ charges, which Pub 1771 lets one annual summary substantiate), a payroll-deduction pledge card with the sentence the IRS requires, and an expiring-card notice that is honest about not being a receipt.
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What each kind of recurring donor needs
| Donor | IRS requirement | What to send |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly card or bank gift under $250 per charge | Bank record or written communication from you for each charge (§170(f)(17)); no §170(f)(8) acknowledgment needed for any single charge | Welcome letter at sign-up; one year-end statement listing every charge, with the goods-or-services sentence |
| Monthly gift of $250 or more per charge | Written acknowledgment for every charge; one annual summary listing each gift may cover all of them (Pub 1771) | Year-end statement listing each charge, date, amount, total and the required statement — before the donor files |
| Payroll deduction | Pay stub / W-2 + pledge card from you; pledge card must carry the no-goods sentence if any paycheck deduction is $250+ (Reg. §1.170A-13(f)(11)) | Pledge card with the sentence on it; optional year-end thank-you (not needed as a receipt) |
| Workplace campaign via United Way, Benevity, America's Charities | The intermediary documents the donor's gift | Thank-you if you learn the donor's name; not described as a tax receipt |
| Recurring gift through Facebook / PayPal Giving Fund | PayPal Giving Fund is the donee and issues the receipt | Thank-you only — see the platform gifts page |
| Monthly donor who also gave once (Giving Tuesday, memorial, auction) | Each gift stands on its own; a $250+ one-off needs an acknowledgment; quid pro quo over $75 needs a disclosure | One statement listing everything, with the goods value shown on the event line |
Before you run the statements
- Export successful charges only, with the charge date (not payout date) and the gross amount (not net of fees). Every major processor's recurring export is one row per charge, which is the shape you want.
- Drop refunds, reversals, failed and pending rows, or leave them in and let the generator reject them with a line number.
- Check the year boundary. A December 31 schedule that ran on January 2 is next year's gift.
- Decide about premiums once. Stickers and pins are ignored; a tote or mug is fine under the 2026 token limits if the donor's payment qualifies; anything bigger gets a fair market value on the statement.
- Make the donor name consistent across rows ("Maria Alvarez" and "M. Alvarez" become two donors). The generator groups by name.
Welcome letter for a new monthly donor
Sent once when the recurring gift starts: confirms the first charge, says what the gift does, explains that one statement will arrive each January (so the donor does not expect twelve letters), tells them how to change or stop, and carries the no-goods statement so it doubles as the receipt for the first gift.
[Organization name] [Mailing address] EIN [00-0000000] [Date] Dear [Donor first name], Welcome to [the Sustainers Circle / our monthly giving family]. Your first monthly gift of $[amount] was received on [date], and we will charge the same amount to your [card ending in 1234 / bank account] on or about the [5th] of each month until you tell us to stop. What your monthly gift does: [one sentence — "$25 a month feeds a shelter dog for the entire year" / "keeps the reading room open one Saturday a month"]. How your tax records will work: every January we will send you one statement listing each gift from the previous year with its date and amount, plus the statement the IRS requires about goods or services. Your card or bank statement also counts as a record for each individual gift. You will not receive a separate letter for every charge unless you ask for one. To change the amount, update your card or pause your gift, [reply to this email / call (000) 000-0000 / visit url]. There is never a penalty for stopping. No goods or services were provided in exchange for your contribution. [Organization name] is a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (EIN [00-0000000]). With real gratitude, [Signer name] [Title] (This letter confirms your first gift of $[amount] on [date]. Your full-year statement will follow in January.)
Year-end statement for a monthly donor
The document that does the legal work: every charge with its date and amount, the total, the goods-or-services statement (with an optional premium disclosure), your 501(c)(3) status and EIN. Satisfies the acknowledgment rule for each $250+ charge and the record rule for the rest.
[Organization name] [Mailing address] EIN [00-0000000] [Date] Dear [Donor name], Thank you for being a monthly supporter of [Organization name] throughout [year]. This statement lists every gift we received from you during the year: [01/05/year] $[25.00] monthly gift [02/05/year] $[25.00] monthly gift [03/05/year] $[25.00] monthly gift [...] [12/05/year] $[25.00] monthly gift [11/20/year] $[100.00] Giving Tuesday gift Total contributions in [year]: $[400.00] No goods or services were provided in exchange for any of these contributions. [Optional, if you gave a premium: In appreciation of your support you received a [Sustainer tote bag], which we estimate in good faith to have a fair market value of $[12]; the amount of your contributions that is deductible is therefore limited to $[388.00].] [Organization name] is a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (EIN [00-0000000]). Please keep this statement with your tax records; it serves as your written acknowledgment for each gift listed above. [One sentence about what this year's monthly gifts accomplished.] With gratitude, [Signer name] [Title]
Payroll deduction pledge card
For workplace giving run through the employer's payroll: the authorization, and the sentence the IRS requires on the charity's document — that no goods or services are provided for payroll-deduction contributions — so the card plus the donor's pay stub or W-2 substantiates every deduction, including any single one of $250 or more.
[Organization name] — Payroll Deduction Pledge [Mailing address] · EIN [00-0000000] · [website] Employee name: ______________________________ Employer: ______________________________ Home address (for your year-end statement): _________________________________________________ Email: ______________________________ I authorize my employer to deduct $________ from each paycheck, beginning ____/____/______, and to pay it to [Organization name]. [ ] Continue until I cancel in writing [ ] Stop after ______ pay periods Signature: ______________________________ Date: ____/____/______ Tax information (please keep this card): [Organization name] is a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (EIN [00-0000000]). [Organization name] does not provide any goods or services in whole or partial consideration for contributions made to it by payroll deduction. Under IRS rules, this card together with your pay stub, Form W-2 or other employer document showing the amount withheld is your record of each contribution, including any single paycheck deduction of $250 or more. Each paycheck deduction is treated as a separate contribution. Keep this card with your tax records for the years your deductions continue.
Expiring-card notice
The most common reason monthly gifts stop is a replaced card. A short, warm service notice with the update link, an easy way to pause, one result the gifts achieved — and a line making clear it is not a tax receipt.
Subject: Your monthly gift to [Organization name] — card ending in [1234] is about to expire Dear [Donor first name], A quick, practical note: the card you use for your $[amount] monthly gift to [Organization name] expires at the end of [month/year]. If we do not have the new details by then, your [date] gift will not go through. You can update your card in under a minute at [secure update url], or call [name] at [phone] and we will take the details over the phone. If your situation has changed and you would like to pause or lower your gift, just reply to this message — no explanation needed. Your [eleven] gifts so far this year have [one concrete result]. Thank you for making that possible every single month. Warmly, [Signer name] [Title] (This is a service notice about your payment method, not a tax receipt. Your statement listing every [year] gift will be sent in January.)
Monthly donors in the generator
Paste the processor export as it comes — one row per charge — and choose Year-end statements with the tax year. Every donor gets one statement listing each charge with its date and amount, the total, and the required goods-or-services sentence; refunds, reversals and rows from other years are left out and reported by line number; $250+ charges are flagged as needing the acknowledgment the statement provides. In per-gift mode, a donor who appears three or more times gets a hint to switch, so twelve $25 letters never go out by accident.
Recurring giving questions
Does a monthly donor need a letter for every gift?
No. Each monthly charge is a separate contribution, and the IRS applies the $250 acknowledgment threshold to each one on its own — Publication 1771 says plainly that separate contributions of less than $250 are not aggregated, and gives weekly church offerings as the example. A $25 or $100 monthly donor therefore never needs a §170(f)(8) acknowledgment for any individual charge. What they do need, for every charge, is a bank record or a written communication from you showing your name, the date and the amount (§170(f)(17)); a credit card or bank statement satisfies that, and so does the processor's automated email. The standard practice is one statement in January listing every gift, which covers both requirements at once and is what donors expect.
Our monthly donor gives $250 or more each month. What changes?
Each of those charges is a contribution of $250 or more, so each one needs a contemporaneous written acknowledgment with the no-goods-or-services statement. You do not have to send twelve letters: Pub 1771 allows one acknowledgment, such as an annual summary, to substantiate several single contributions of $250 or more, as long as it lists each gift with its date and amount and shows the total. The statement must reach the donor before they file, so send it in January. The generator's year-end mode produces exactly this document and flags the $250 gifts.
Is the processor's automatic email receipt (Stripe, PayPal, Donorbox, Givebutter, Zeffy) good enough?
For gifts under $250, usually yes — it is a written communication from you (the processor sends it on your behalf) showing name, date and amount. For gifts of $250 or more it is good enough only if it contains everything a written acknowledgment must: your organization's name, the amount, the date, and the statement that no goods or services were provided (or a description and good-faith value of what was). Some platforms include that sentence by default, some only if you turn it on in settings, and some not at all. Check one of your own receipts; if the sentence is missing, add it in the platform's receipt template and send a year-end statement that has it.
What is the gift date for a recurring card charge?
The date the charge is made to the donor's card, not the date the money settles into your bank account, and not the date of the pledge or sign-up. For gifts by credit card the IRS treats the contribution as made when the charge is posted (Pub 526; Rev. Rul. 78-38), even if the donor pays the card bill the following year. For ACH bank debits it is the date the funds are withdrawn. This matters at year-end: a monthly gift scheduled for December 31 that the processor runs on January 2 is a next-year gift and belongs on next year's statement. Use the processor's charge date column, not the payout or deposit date.
A monthly gift failed, was retried, or was refunded. How does that affect the statement?
Only successful charges are contributions. A declined charge that the processor retried three days later is one gift on the date it finally succeeded. A refunded gift is not a contribution at all: remove it from the statement, or if the refund happened in a later year, note it on that later year's statement so the donor can adjust. A chargeback the donor won is treated the same way as a refund. The generator rejects rows with a negative amount or a status of refund, reversal, failed or pending and tells you which line it skipped.
The donor ticked 'cover the processing fee'. Which amount goes on the statement?
The gross amount the donor paid. If someone gives $25 and adds $1.05 to cover the fee, their contribution is $26.05; the fee is your expense, not a reduction of their gift. Platform exports often show gross, fee and net in separate columns — map the gross or 'amount' column, never the net. The same is true of ordinary gifts where you simply absorb the fee: the donor's contribution is what left their account.
We give monthly donors a tote bag, a sticker, a 'Sustainer' pin. Do we have to value it?
A sticker, a pin, a window decal or a name on the donor wall is an insubstantial benefit you can ignore. A tote bag or mug is a token item that is disregarded if it costs you no more than $13.90 (2026) and the payment is at least $69.50 — but the token-item safe harbor tests the payment, and a $10 monthly charge on its own is below $69.50. The conservative approach is to send the premium after the donor has given at least $69.50 in the year, or to give only items costing under $13.90 to donors whose annual total will exceed that, or simply to disclose the item's fair market value on the year-end statement as the template does. A premium worth more than the token limits — a book, a T-shirt that cost you $18, event tickets — must be described and valued, and the deductible total reduced.
What about donors who give through payroll deduction at work?
Their records are different and simpler for you. A payroll-deduction donor substantiates each gift with two things: a pay stub, W-2 or other employer document showing the amount withheld, and a pledge card or other document from your organization. If any single paycheck deduction is $250 or more, the pledge card must also state that you provide no goods or services in exchange for contributions made by payroll deduction (Treas. Reg. §1.170A-13(f)(11); Notice 2006-110). Each paycheck is a separate contribution for the $250 test. So: put the no-goods sentence on every pledge card as the template above does, and the donor is covered whatever the amount. If the money reaches you through a workplace campaign intermediary (United Way, Benevity, America's Charities), the intermediary issues the donor's documentation and you may not even know who gave — send a thank-you if you learn the names, but do not call it a tax receipt.
The processor already sends a year-end summary. Do we need to send our own?
Not if it has everything: your name, each gift with date and amount, the total, and the goods-or-services statement. Many platform summaries have all of that; some omit the statement or your EIN, and some are only available if the donor logs in. Most small nonprofits send their own statement anyway, because it is the one moment in the year to thank a monthly donor personally and report what the gifts did. Two documents saying the same thing do no harm. The one thing to avoid is two documents that disagree, so build yours from the processor's export rather than from memory.
A donor started in October. Do they still get a year-end statement for three gifts?
Yes — every donor who gave anything during the year should get a statement, or at least a written record of each gift, and a new monthly donor is the one you most want to retain. Three gifts totalling $75 fit on one short statement. The welcome letter above sets the expectation that the January statement is coming.
How do we lay out the spreadsheet for monthly donors?
One row per successful charge: donor name, charge date, gross amount, and a Notes column (optional, 'monthly gift' or the campaign name). That is exactly how Stripe, PayPal, Donorbox, Givebutter and Zeffy export recurring plans, so you rarely need to reshape anything. Choose Year-end statements, set the tax year, and the generator groups the rows by donor, lists each charge with its date and amount, prints the total, excludes refunds and rows dated in other years, and adds the required statement. If you run it in per-gift mode by mistake, it notices a donor appearing three or more times and suggests switching.
Should the year-end statement list every charge or just the total?
List every charge. Publication 17 tells donors who made more than one $250+ gift that a single acknowledgment must list each contribution with its date and show the total, and for sub-$250 donors the per-gift list is what lets them match the statement to their card records. A total alone is not wrong for small donors, but a statement with dates and amounts is more useful and costs nothing extra to produce.
General information based on Internal Revenue Code §§170(f)(8), 170(f)(17) and 6115, Treas. Reg. §1.170A-13(f) including paragraph (f)(11) on payroll deductions, IRS Notice 2006-110, Rev. Rul. 78-38, Rev. Proc. 90-12 as adjusted by Rev. Proc. 2025-32 (2026 figures), and IRS Publications 17, 526 and 1771. Not legal, tax or accounting advice.