How Watoto Restored Collections and Automated Donor Reminders with Blackthorn, SMS Magic and Salesforce

The Challenge: When the Payment Gateway Becomes the Biggest Risk to Giving

Watoto takes regular and one-off gifts from a large donor base. For an organisation like this, reliable payment collection is the main source of income, which means anything that disrupts it is a direct risk to the mission.

Over time, four problems built up:

What Needed to Be Fixed:

• A Payment Gateway That Had Become a Blocker: The package linking Salesforce to Stripe had grown complex to maintain and gave staff little visibility into what was happening. Payments were not updating reliably, and collection was at risk.
• No SMS Channel: Watoto could not text its clients and donors from Salesforce, so every reminder depended on email alone.
• Reminders Done by Hand: Staff chased overdue payments and expiring cards manually. When a donor's card expired, they often lapsed without anyone noticing.
• Tax Receipting as a Yearly Scramble: Annual and consolidated tax statements took repeated manual effort every financial year.

The Solution: Reliable Collection, Automated Reminders and Receipting on Salesforce

Watoto already ran Salesforce NPSP, so Zenyus built the solution around the platform the team knew rather than adding another disconnected tool. The design followed five principles: configuration over code, bulk-safe at high donor volumes, consent first, self-service for donors, and an audit trail for every contact.

1. Blackthorn Payments Replaces the Legacy Integration

Blackthorn Payments was installed and configured against Stripe, and is now the source of truth for payments. Automation connects Watoto's Salesforce giving model to Blackthorn:

• Creating a donation automatically creates the related payment transaction.
• Transaction results update the donation stage automatically: completed payments move to Closed Won, failed payments to Closed Lost, and new scheduled payments to Pledged.
• When a donation is deleted, usually because a recurring gift was closed, the still-scheduled transactions are removed so donors are never charged for a schedule that no longer exists.
• A new default payment method notifies staff and updates the linked recurring donation.
• Donor portal users are set up with the right access automatically.

Donors can also add or replace a card themselves from their portal through a simple "New Payment Method" screen. A refund design was added too: when Stripe refunds a donation, the donation moves to Closed Lost and NPSP rollups recalculate without manual correction.

2. SMS Magic Opens a New Channel to Donors

SMS Magic was installed and configured, including sender IDs, templates, automation keys and the Converse app. Watoto can now text clients and donors directly from Salesforce, using standard, supported SMS Magic automation.

3. Automated Due-Payment and Card-Expiry Reminders

A scheduled job runs every morning and checks every default card payment method and active credit-card payment source. Each card's expiry date is compared against reminder rules that Watoto's admins control.

• Staged Sequences Without Code: Each rule sets the timing (before, on the day, or after expiry), the number of days, the email template, the SMS template and an optional internal follow-up task. A sequence such as 30 days before, on the day, and 7 days after can be set up and changed by admins without a deployment.
• Self-Service Card Updates: Every email and SMS carries a secure Blackthorn payment link, so a donor can update their card in a couple of taps and staff do not have to chase.
• Consent First: Donor communication preferences are respected on every send. Donors who allow both channels get email and SMS, donors who have opted out of one get the other, and donors who have opted out of both get nothing.
• Fully Auditable: Every reminder leaves a completed task on the donor's record.
• Safe to Go Live: A single-contact test mode let the team trial the job on one donor in production before opening it to everyone.
• On-Demand Payment Links: A "Generate Payment Link" flow lets staff send a Blackthorn payment link by email, SMS or both whenever they need to.

4. Annual Tax Receipts, Generated in Bulk

A "Generate Annual Statement" flow runs for any chosen financial year (July to June) and handles both individual and organisation donors, one at a time or in bulk.

• Closed Won gifts for the year are totalled automatically, and donors with no gifts are skipped.
• A PDF statement is produced with the donor's name, address, period and total.
• Each statement is saved as a record with a statement number and status.
• Statements are emailed in bulk using each donor's receipt email preference.

5. Built to Last

Scheduled flows were replaced with batch processing so the jobs keep working as donor volumes grow. Test classes cover the reminder jobs and the statement service, changes were designed in writing before build, and everything is source-controlled in a Salesforce DX project.

The Outcome: Giving Protected, Donors Supported, Staff Freed Up

The engagement restored reliable payment collection and gave Watoto an automated way to protect its recurring income.

• Collection Restored: Donor payments now run on Blackthorn and Stripe, a platform native to Salesforce, so Watoto no longer depends on a hard-to-diagnose integration.
• Expiring Cards No Longer Slip Through: Failed and expiring cards are chased automatically by SMS and email, and donors fix them in moments through a secure link.
• Accurate Revenue Reporting: Refunds flow through to donations automatically, so revenue figures stay accurate without manual correction.
• Tax Receipting Made Simple: Annual statements are generated in bulk for the chosen financial year instead of being rebuilt by hand.
• Respectful by Default: Consent checks keep the program compliant and protect donor trust.
• Owned by Watoto: Admins control the reminder schedule and templates themselves, and can tune the cadence as they learn what works, without developer help.

For Zenyus, this engagement shows what the right payments and messaging stack can do for a nonprofit on Salesforce: giving protected, donors treated with respect, and a team freed from chasing payments by hand.

Looking Ahead

Watoto and Zenyus are exploring partial refund handling, reconciliation of NPSP payment records after refunds, and two-way SMS journeys such as thank-you messages and lapsed-donor win-back.

Talk to Us

If your nonprofit is struggling with failed payments, lapsing recurring donors or manual receipting on Salesforce, please reach out to us at hello@zenyus.ai. We would be happy to share more detail on how we delivered this solution.