Originally posted on NonProfit Pro Today, June 5, 2017
Hint: They’re typically already in your donor base.
The best monthly donor prospects are donors who currently give you gifts of $100 or less. They are not your big check writers; if they did send you a $100 check, it was probably a stretch gift for them.
Instead, monthly donor prospects are donors who can make small gifts more often. They are often on a fixed income.
So, here’s what I recommend:
- If your donor base system has it, run a Recency, Frequency, Monetary report. Look at your most recent donors who made a gift of $10 or more, preferably multiple times. (This of course also depends on how often you appeal to them. If you only ask twice a year, a donor can only give twice.)
- If your donor base does not offer that report, make a selection of your donors who gave in the past two years. Sort them by last gift amount and last gift date and include the payment type if you can (check, credit card, cash, other). It’s a bonus if you have the number of gifts.
- Select donors who have already given to you by credit card. They will be more comfortable with monthly giving on credit card. It’s an easier “sell.”
- Select those donors who have made more than one gift in the past year ($100 or less).
- For email appeals, if you can segment out your top donors and send an email to all others, that will be most successful. If you can’t segment yet, by all means, offer monthly giving to everybody. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
- Offer monthly giving as a convenient way to give for your donors. You know your donors. You never want to downgrade your donors, which is why we typically use that $100 threshold. If you can convert a $50 donor to give $10 a month, you’ve just more than doubled their annual gift. If someone is able to write a $250 check, they are more likely to write a $500, $1,000 check or even higher. If someone is able to write a $50 or $100 check, they may be more comfortable giving $10 or $25 a month.
But no matter what size gift a donor gave in the past, if someone asks you whether or not he or she can start making a monthly gift, you should allow it. After all, it’s all about ease and convenience for the donor (while, of course, making it even easier, convenient and sustainable for your organization).
