Should you need to deactivate your WinRed account, this guide walks you through what to do.
Deactivating vs. Pausing
There are two ways to stop fundraising on your account: Deactivation and Pausing.
Generally, you will want to deactivate your account if your candidate is fully shutting down or lost an election. Deactivation can be undone by talking to our team, so it is not permanent.
Pausing, on the other hand, is better for short term periods where you cannot take in funds, such as a legislative session.
If you need to pause fundraising instead of deactivating, click the button below for instructions.
90-Day Minimum Shutdown Period
When you deactivate your account, there is a minimum 90 day shutdown period that follows where your committee or organization is responsible for any negative balance. We cannot fully close your account for a minimum of 90 days in order to account for any disputes that credit card networks and banks send your way. For accounts with larger volume and higher dispute rates we may require a longer than 90 day shutdown period.
While WinRed reminds donors that their donations are final, we cannot deny all refund requests. Donors who do not receive timely refunds typically dispute charges with their card provider. When consumers initiate the dispute process, the funds are refunded to the donor by the bank and automatically withdrawn from the merchant. The interceding bank or network attempts to collect evidence from both the consumer and the merchant to mediate and decide whether the charge should be reversed or stand. In many cases, we are unable to win these disputes despite our efforts to educate donors, credit card networks, and banks.
Elevated dispute rates can result in punitive action from the card networks and supporting banks. On the extreme end of the spectrum, disputes can be subject to massive fines and penalties. For these reasons, it is important we facilitate donor refund requests for a minimum of 90 days.
WinRed will deduct refunds and chargebacks from your payouts as usual unless your account goes negative. In that case, we will automatically trigger a reverse transfer from your attached bank account.
Budgeting for Post-Election
To budget for the post-election period, we recommend you look at your average refund and dispute rate for the last few months and keep an appropriate reserve for when fundraising subsides.
For most organizations, the recommended reserve is about 2-4% of the gross raised. Committees that used more aggressive tactics, like money pledges and subscriptions, may need a higher reserve.
Initiate Account Deactivation
There are three different options: Removal from Conduiting, Cancel All Subscriptions, and Archive All Pages. In order to deactivate your account, all three settings must be enabled. The 90 day period doesn't start until this is done.
Once a date is selected for any of the Account Deactivation settings, the removal will take place on that date at 12:00 a.m. EST. The date cannot be set more than 30 days in advance. Our team can reactivate your pages, but recurring charges cannot be reactivated and we cannot add you to slates once you remove yourself.
Removal from All Conduiting
If you click Yes, this will remove your organization from all Conduit Pages and Upsells. You will be prompted to select a date for the removal to start.
Cancel Active Subscriptions and Pledges
By clicking Yes, this will cancel all Recurring Donations and pending Money Pledges for your organization on the selected date.
Archive All Pages
Enabling this toggle Yes will archive all of your pages on the selected date. After archival, any traffic to the pages will be directed to a message that can be customized.
There is an option to add a Custom Button. If you toggle Yes, you'll see the option to Add Button Text and a Website URL.
This is so that you can add a button that redirects visitors to another site when they visit your archived page URL.
Questions?
If you have questions or are unsure about any of these steps, please contact our support team by clicking the red chat box at the bottom right corner of your screen.