At a workshop last week, I asked the question: “Are you giving monthly to your own organization?”
I was expecting everybody’s hand to go up. But boy, was I unpleasantly surprised! Out of the 52 people in the room, only eight people raised their hand. Fortunately, a few days later at another presentation, it was almost the whole room.
So, my first recommendation if you’re looking to grow your number of monthly donors is to join your own program first—just $5 or $10 a month. How can you invite others if you’re not giving monthly yourself?
You could even be the first monthly donor to give a quote on why you’re giving monthly. You can ask someone to take your smartphone and video you while you’re saying it and create a video testimonial. Then you can post that on your website and social media, and share it in your emails.
Once you’ve joined yourself, start asking your board, your volunteers, your staff to join and generate more testimonials. Use it wherever you can.
And consider choosing a few organizations you really care about and join their program. And choose some you think are doing a great job with giving monthly. A few big ones I “track” myself are:
- ASPCA
- Habitat for Humanity
- St. Jude
- American Red Cross
- International Justice Mission
- Charity:Water
And I’m a monthly donor to a bunch more.
It helps you find out what they’re doing, how you’re being treated and what you like and don’t like. It will give you some great ideas that you can apply in your own organization.
With fundraising, it’s so important to always be learning from each other, but you must start in-house first. Join as a monthly donor yourself, and you’ll grow your program bigger than you’d imagined.
