This post was recently featured in Nonprofit Pro
In one of the webinars I present on monthly giving, one of the polls is: “How often do you ask someone to become a monthly donor?” The answer in some 50 percent of cases is not at all. Twenty percent say once a year and others more often than that—maybe twice or three times.
Well, here’s your number one must-do when it comes to bringing in new monthly donors:
Must-Do No. 1: You must ASK for it
As fundraisers, we know that asking is something we do all the time. But it’s a little bit of a mind shift to ask for a monthly donation instead of a one-time gift. The reality is that the more you ask, the more monthly donors you’ll find. You really don’t have to do anything different except direct donors to your monthly donation page and see what happens.
For some reason, monthly donors tend to be the “black sheep” of fundraising. In all these years working with them and motivating organizations to invest some time and resources into them, I’ve not been able to figure out why that’s the case.
What I do know is that once the mind has shifted and the commitment is there to add asking monthly donors into the overall plan, programs grow and grow some more!
One of my clients, a religious organization in Boston, has 600 monthly donors, and we’ve started to review how they can grow to the first 1,000.
You know what they say about setting goals. If you write them down, you’ll accomplish them. Well, just the simple fact that they’ve made the commitment to grow meant that they’re starting to ask more often, and guess what? They’re growing!
They asked their staff to join. And we’re seeing new monthly donors come in from their emails, their “thank you” letter inserts and their appeals. It’s amazing!
Must-Do No. 2: You must make it EASY for the donor!
There’s no easier way to ask for monthly gifts than by creating a special monthly donor page and directing donors to go there. Click, submit et voila! Make sure it’s easy to find the monthly donor page from your home page and give donors the easiest way to get there.
The good news is that it has also become a lot easier for organizations to generate monthly donors, but it will still require a little work. If you find the focus to create that monthly donor page and a warm and fuzzy “thank you” email and auto-responder, you’ll be ready to make it a lot easier for your constituents to become monthly donors and you’ll be ready to implement “Must-Do No. 1” and grow.
A huge THANK YOU for the Agitator for following up on this… If you’re not yet a subscriber, I highly recommend you sign up right away. It’s worth it!
And here are a few other great resources for you:
- If you’re ready to make your next move, check out Mazarine Treyz Fundraising Career Conference.
- To receive a free video in your inbox with a great story from or about fundraising, check out Movie Mondays
- M&R Strategic is finalizing their wonderful research on trends in online giving, including monthly donor info. Go here to make sure you get it as soon as it arrives! (Don’t worry, I’ll definitely be referring to it).
- Speaking of research, make sure you sign up for your free monthly Nonprofit Pro Magazine. The April issue will include some great new research from the Blackbaud Target Analytics (TM) Sustainer Benchmarking Study 2016!
- Direct mail is far from dead, so I’ll be presenting a webinar on direct mail nuts and bolts, Use coupon code ERICA to get a 20% discount!
- If you’re interested in learning more about sustainable fundraising, check out the Eight Principles, you’ll not be disappointed. I’m one of the Fellows, more to follow!
