First published on NonProfit Pro Today on June 12, 2017
I just came back from presenting a workshop on monthly donors to a group of nonprofits in Michigan. One of the questions asked was the one on how to best market monthly donor programs to existing donors, especially for small organizations with limited funds and limited time.
If you asked me this question four years ago, I would have answered, “Yikes! That’s a tough proposition.”
But now, it’s so much easier.
Yes, it will absolutely take some time, but the financial investment is much less considerable. Because in 99.5 percent of the cases, you already have your online donation options sitting on your website.
If you look at the “2017 M&R Benchmarks Study”, you’ll see that online monthly giving has grown by 23 percent—16 percent of online revenue is now coming from monthly donors.
The absolute least resource intensive and least invasive is first to add the give monthly option to your one time donation page, second create a monthly giving only page and then use email, facebook, video and google ads to get donors to go there.
Start by making your recurring giving page easy to find. If you can do a pull-down menu from the home page, add a “Monthly Giving” page and a “Donate Now” page that links to a one-time donation page where you’ve added the monthly option).
The more you ask, the more you share, the more you can focus on giving monthly, the quicker you will grow. But do yourself a favor and start with people who are the hottest prospects:
Yourself, your staff, board, volunteers.
Asking them will also help with your internal communication and promotion of the program. Then ask some of them to give you a testimonial and use that on your site and in every approach that you can now expand to your donors.
All it requires is a little focused time to create some of these pieces. So, how about creating your own #MonthlyDonorMonday and devote one or two hours every Monday for the next few weeks. That should do the trick.
