Many 401(k) or 529 / education savings accounts provide tools that offer their participants an option to automatically increase their contributions by a percentage or fixed amount each year. Could we give recurring donors an option to automatically increase their recurring gift each year? Donors would choose an annual percent or amount by which to increase their gift and an optional maximum amount.

The recurring plan (scheduled donations) model would need new fields for:

A new background process would need to calculate the appropriate recurring gift amount change and adjust the recurring plan amount at the start of each new year and record the change in the plan’s audit trail.

Triggers for the automatic recurring gift amount increase and for reaching the maximum automatic increase amount would allow nonprofits to notify and celebrate donors who chose this option.