Happy Fourth of July week!
This is a really important myth to debunk as soon as possible. The number one reason why many organizations are now so interested in generating monthly donors is, because they stay with you for years and years and years.
I’ve seen research from organizations that have been offering monthly giving programs for over 20 years and they actually have identified donors who are still giving monthly to this very day!
Now, if you’re in charge of the monthly giving program, it’s really important that you track the incoming payments every month, so that you can see which donors have stopped giving and you can get back to them right away to ask them why (and reactivate them).
In most cases, you’ll find that the reason the monthly payments stopped, is because the donor’s credit card expired and the donor did not realize it. A simple phone call, email or letter can often do the trick to get the updated information. I have seen that with these systems in place, you can keep at least 40 to 50% of monthly donors with expiring cards.
But that’s of course not ideal. That is why there is great news!!There is a way to prevent expiring cards from happening altogether!
Account Updater/Recycling to the Rescue
It’s a relatively new development, called Account Updater/Recycling. This is set up in conjunction with your back-end credit card processing system and it helps you prevent expiring cards. In simple terms, the account updater vendor takes the expired cards and runs them through a little process, updating the relevant card number or expiration date.
Right now, account updater includes Visa, Master Card and Discover and American Express is expected to be added later this year.
The process is virtually seamless and the company will handle the details for you and will typically work with your systems and your payment processor to set it up. They’ll do the ‘techie’ stuff for you and the donor does not even know it’s there! You’ll have to find the vendor company that works best for you and works with your volume and processes.
Right now, I’m aware of these Account Updater Vendor Partners, but please let me know if you know of any others by sending me an email.
And what’s even more important, everything they do is totally PCI-compliant, the information is totally encrypted and tokenized, so you’ll never have to worry about that information getting into the wrong hands!
If you’re currently outsourcing the overall process of charging the cards or outsourcing the whole process of monthly giving, check with them to see if they have the account updater/recycling option set up.
Some of the Account Updater Vendor Partners may be able to help you with your overall credit card donation processing as well.
If you’re serious about your monthly giving program and you’re projecting to grow your program in the near future, you should definitely consider adding the Account Updater/Recycling option to your back-end process. It will truly help you in improving your credit card monthly donor’s retention rates.
And, if you do lose monthly donors because of reasons unknown, make sure you set up a program to reach out to them and ask them to rejoin as soon as possible. In some cases, they may be able to do this at a lower level monthly gift or with a different bank account or credit card. You won’t know until you ask.
Don’t give up on them, because you don’t want them to give up on you!
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