A monthly gift runs until you stop it, and you can stop it yourself. A gift already made is a different matter: it has to be reversed by hand, so it begins with a note to us.
Cancelling a monthly gift
A monthly gift has no end date. The same amount is charged to the same card each month, indefinitely, until it is cancelled. There is no term to run out and no renewal to decline.
To cancel it:
- Go to /donate/manage.
- Enter the email address you gave with and ask for a link. We use that address to find the gift.
- Open the email we send to that address and follow the link. The link expires 45 minutes after it is sent.
- Choose “Cancel this monthly gift,” then confirm. The page tells you when it has gone through.
This is not instant self-service, and we would rather say so plainly than let you find out at the wrong moment: the link is emailed, so you need to be able to open that mailbox. We do it this way because knowing an email address should not be enough to cancel someone else’s gift. If the 45 minutes run out, return to the same page and ask for another link.
Cancelling stops all future charges immediately. There is no notice period and no last charge on the way out. If you are charged after cancelling, contact us — that would be our error, and we will put it right.
Gifts already made
Cancelling a monthly gift does not refund the months already given, and no gift is refunded automatically. A gift already made is reversed only if you ask us to reverse it.
To ask, contact the Foundation and include the date of the gift, the amount, and the email address you gave with. Those three things are enough for us to find it. Questions about donations and monthly gifts are answered first, because they are usually the ones with a clock on them.
Gifts are processed by Stripe, which handles the card details directly — they never reach the Foundation’s own servers. A refund therefore travels back the same way: through Stripe, to the card that was charged. How soon it appears on your statement is set by your bank rather than by us.
One thing to know about the receipt. The acknowledgment we email after a gift is a tax document, and it is sent when the gift is made. Refunding the gift does not withdraw that email — nothing withdraws an email — so we send a second one that corrects it. What the second one says depends on how much came back.
If the whole gift is refunded, the correction withdraws the acknowledgment. Nothing was ultimately contributed, so the receipt no longer describes a contribution you made, and it should not be claimed as a charitable deduction. Set it aside and keep the correction with it.
If only part of the gift is refunded, the rest is still a contribution, and it still needs a receipt. So the correction is itself a receipt — a corrected acknowledgment showing what was given, what came back, and what remains. Keep that one and set the first aside. Refunding a single payment of a monthly gift works the same way, and it changes nothing else: a refund does not cancel the gift, and the amount charged each month stays as it was.
Either correction goes to the address the original receipt went to, and it is sent once the refund has actually settled — usually within minutes, but a refund can sit for longer before the money moves, and we would rather correct your records late than wrongly. If a refund reaches your statement and no correction reaches your inbox, write to us and we will send one by hand. If you have already filed a return that included the gift, speak to whoever prepares your return.
If you can no longer reach that email address
The manage link is sent to the address on the gift and nowhere else, so if that mailbox is closed or out of reach, the self-service route will not work for you. Contact the Foundation instead — tell us the name on the card, the amount, and roughly when the gift began, and we will cancel it by hand.
Gifts directed to a particular fund
Choosing a specific fund — anything other than No preference — Where Needed Most — makes your gift a restricted one. Leaving the default in place does not: that gift is undesignated, and the Foundation applies it where it is needed. A restriction does not create a right of return either way. A designated gift is subject to the same terms as any other, and cancelling a monthly gift to a fund does not recall what that fund has already received.
The Board of Directors may in defined circumstances redirect what remains of a designated gift to the most closely related charitable purpose. That is a redirection, not a refund. Rather than summarise the conditions and risk narrowing them, here is the designation policy in full — the same text that appears beneath the fund menu on the donate page:
The Columbus Legacy Foundation has exclusive legal control over all contributions. Gifts designated for a particular fund will be used to advance that fund’s charitable purposes, including reasonable direct and administrative costs associated with those purposes. If a designated project or program is completed, fully funded, discontinued, impracticable, or no longer consistent with the Foundation’s charitable mission, the Board of Directors may redirect remaining funds to the most closely related charitable purpose.
If you want different terms for a particular gift — a named fund, or a written gift agreement — contact the Foundation before you give, while the terms are still open to discussion.
Reaching a person
A person at the Foundation reads what arrives, and you do not need to have donated to write. Use the contact form for anything on this page. Note that the form is handled by FormSubmit, an outside service that receives your message and forwards it to us; if you would rather not send it through them, email or post reaches us just as well.
Email j@columbuslegacyfoundation.org
The Columbus Legacy Foundation 1035 Canyon Drive, Spanish Fork, Utah 84660
Last updated 29 July 2026.