The decision to add monthly giving to your annual fundraising plan is probably one of the most important ones you’ll ever make. It’s probably also one of the best you’ll ever make.
Now if it were two decades ago, it would have been a costly one. But now, with the internet, email marketing, social media and the numerous ways giving has been made easy, adding monthly giving has become a ‘no brainer’.
Adding monthly giving to your fundraising plan starts with the right mindset.
Monthly giving is a good thing. It’s good for the long-term. It’s a great way to sustain your organization.
Monthly giving is good for your donors! It’s donor centric!
- They want to give, and this is an easy and convenient way to do so.
- They’ll be able to make a difference to your mission, no matter the amount they can afford.
- They’ll be more loyal to your organization and can be upgraded to give higher gifts or the ultimate gift: leave you in their will.
Monthly giving is good for your organization!
- You’ll increase your donor retention rate, bringing them from 45% on average to some 90%!
- You’ll raise more money from your donors, more often, ongoing.
- On average, they’re worth 3 to 4 to 5 times the value of single gift donors.
- You know you’ll have funds you can count on so it will help you in your program planning.
- The average monthly gift is some $24 a month and some organizations are seeing even more than that, sometimes as high as between $36 to even $50 a month.
It’s important to realize that monthly giving is not a one-shot deal though. If you want to be successful and really grow your number of monthly donors, you must add it to your fundraising plan wherever you possibly can.
How can any size organization include monthly giving in their fundraising plan right away?
I’m all for keeping things simple. I know how busy nonprofits get. I also know that resources are at a premium sometimes, so here are just 5 things you can do right away to incorporate monthly giving in your fundraising plan.
Remember I talked about the monthly giving mindset. If you’re gung-ho about starting to grow your program, how about setting aside one hour a week? Can you do that?
You can implement so many things that take just a few minutes to create. The first thing is always the hardest but then you’ll be golden, and you can start building on it.
1. Look at your online donation page.
Does it have the recurring option added? What does it say? What information is required for the donor to fill out? Which recurring options are ticked? To keep your life simple, I recommend only offering monthly. If a donor calls you and wants to do quarterly or yearly, you can set that up for them, but the more choices you offer online, the less likely donors are going to want to tick it. The choice here is once or monthly.
2. Create a recurring only page if you don’t have that already.
You’ll need it when you start linking in emails and from the home page. Again, I recommend keeping your life simple and offering monthly only.
If you can offer credit card and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT)/ACH/Direct Debit/eChecking, do so.
3. Create your thank you messaging now, both online and offline and test them all.
This means, your thank you landing pages, your thank you emails and your thank you letter.
Don’t worry too much about offering special ways to recognize them. A name for the program is great, but not essential yet at this stage. The key is the donors want to give monthly.
(By the way, this is a change from some of the ‘older’ monthly donor programs where the name came first. The subscription world has changed that. Now, the key is to get the donor to commit to give monthly comes first and then the recognition/belonging to the club with a name comes second).
And you can recognize them in ‘surprising’ ways later. Surprising being the operative word. Do yourself a favor and keep any ‘monthly donor promises’ doable and affordable. Do tell the donors if they will receive monthly email receipts (depending upon your payment processor) and that you’ll continue to send them updates and possibly special invites. Purposely keep it ‘vague’ but still promising enough.
4. Create your benchmarks.
Download your monthly donor goal setting tool, plug in your numbers and compare where you are now? And be sure to annualize your results (the tool will do this for you).
Just click on the link below to download your version and get started!
Monthly Donor Calculator
For example, if you have 20 monthly donors at $24 a month, that’s a starting point of $5,760 a year. What would you like your goal to be next in numbers and dollars?
5. Look at your current overall fundraising plan. What does it consist of?
- How many donors?
- How many email names?
- Do you have a print newsletter? An online newsletter?
- How many direct mail appeals are you sending a year?
- How many email appeals are you sending a year?
- Do you have a welcome email series in place for new donors and people who subscribe to your email newsletter?
- Do you call your donors?
- Do you send a thank you letter, and does it include a soft ask for an extra gift?
Then add just one thing to each channel. Put it in your plan and make sure to do it.
Add a monthly giving button or a message about monthly giving in the P.S. of your email. Add a monthly giving tick box to an appeal reply form.
See what happens. Then repeat what you just did. Do more of it. Grow.
Every fundraising plan is custom made, totally based upon your organization. and the same goes with incorporating your monthly giving into your overall fundraising plan.
These days, adding monthly giving options doesn’t cost much. Just a little bit of time and a little bit of persistence. The more you keep at it, the more monthly donors you’ll generate, the more sustainable revenue you’ll generate to support your programs and serve your mission.
