Crafting A Recurring Donor Welcome Series: A Guide

Recurring giving is a significant source of revenue for nonprofits, as 57% of nonprofit donors are enrolled in a recurring giving program. Recurring donations provide reliable funding every month to keep your organization running. This means your organization should be dedicated to cultivating these donors—and be extra careful to retain them!

As a nonprofit leader, you know that you must motivate donors to give regularly by laying out your fundraising needs, explaining how they can help but more importantly how their recurring gifts are making a difference 

A recurring donor welcome series is the perfect channel for communicating this, which is why we’ve created this guide! We’ll cover everything you need to know about this part of your fundraising stewardship, including:

• What Is a Recurring Donor Welcome Series?
• Why Launch a Welcome Series?
• Steps to Create a Recurring Donor Welcome Series

As you read through this guide, remember that securing continual support requires deep connections with your donors. While your nonprofit should carefully craft its emails to show gratitude to its unique supporter base, let’s go over the basics that every organization can follow.

What Is a Recurring Donor Welcome Series?

A recurring donor welcome series is an automated sequence of emails sent to engage recurring donors. The first email in this series is usually sent after a donor’s first recurring gift, with the series continuing over a short period of time to welcome the supporter into your nonprofit’s recurring donor community and show them the impact of their gifts.

While the content of each email should be tailored to your unique audience, most welcome series include:

• Introduction to your organization
• Thank-you messages
• Impact reports
• Additional involvement opportunities

While this type of welcome series targets recurring donors, you should leverage other segmentation tactics to further personalize these emails. For example, a website visitor who turned into a recurring donor may benefit from an introduction to your nonprofit, while a long-time volunteer who decided to sign up for monthly gifts will already be familiar with your organization and would prefer to just learn about impact and involvement opportunities. 

Why Launch a Welcome Series?

A well-crafted welcome series invites new supporters into your nonprofit’s community and continues engaging them during the beginning stages of their involvement. This enables your nonprofit to accomplish the following:

• Build donor relationships: From the very beginning of their involvement with your nonprofit, donors should feel valued. You can pursue deeper relationships with them by communicating everything they need to know in your welcome series and thanking them for their support.

• Increase ROI: Email marketing in and of itself boasts a high return on investment (ROI) for nonprofits, meaning your welcome series has the capacity to deepen donors’ involvement at little or no cost to your nonprofit. Especially when you share details about your nonprofit’s programs, like in impact reports, new donors will be encouraged to give frequently or they may consider additional ways to give.

• Keep donors engaged: Even if donors have committed to give regularly, there are other ways they can support your nonprofit without increasing their spending. Using your welcome series to introduce volunteer opportunities or to invite donors to spread the word about your organization can increase their engagement and ultimately create a stronger community of support for your mission.

Ultimately, a welcome series is the perfect opportunity to create a positive first impression for donors but especially for those who have just committed to giving regularly. That’s why it’s crucial that your nonprofit crafts impactful emails for this initiative! 

Steps to Create a Recurring Donor Welcome Series

If you’re ready to launch a recurring donor welcome series, follow these steps to get started.

1. Conduct an email append

Check if you have the email addresses for each recurring donor. Since your recurring donor welcome series depends on having accurate contact information for new supporters, you may need to conduct an email append before you can start crafting your series. Submit information from your supporter database to an appending service to ensure you have the correct email addresses for each recurring donor. As an additional bonus, this can help organize your donor data for your other outreach initiatives. 

2. Determine your communications goals

While this type of welcome series is generally meant to engage and retain recurring donors, specific goals for each email can help guide your messaging. For example, if your primary goal is to thank donors for committing to frequent support, make appreciation the focus of your emails. To craft meaningful messages of appreciation, eCardWidget’s guide to donor thank-you emails recommends including the following elements:

• Subject line
• Gift amount
• Donation impact
• Engaging visuals
• Call to action 
• Signature 

Remember to emphasize the impact of their regular gifts throughout the year. Personalizing your gratitude according to donors’ specific gifts shows that you recognize their unique contributions (rather than broadly thanking every donor for the same thing). 

You may also want to invite recurring donors to participate with your organization in other ways as well, like asking them to complete a short survey, inviting them to a fundraising luncheon, or sharing ways they can volunteer with your nonprofit.

3. Choose your email cadence

Aside from what you’ll include in your emails, you’ll also need to plan how frequently they’ll be sent. To engage recurring donors, or encourage them to ask for an extra gift or increase their giving, you’ll need to strategically plan the timing of your messaging. 

Communicate often so recurring donors know they’re top of mind for your nonprofit, but avoid flooding their inboxes. Many audiences benefit from receiving one email per week, but your email cadence will ultimately depend on the action you want recipients to take. 

4. Design and draft emails

Equipped with a plan for your communications and their cadence, you’re ready to start designing your emails! Start by writing out the content. The language you use in your messaging should adhere to your nonprofit’s brand voice and appeal to your audience. 

Remember, memorable communications can deepen donors’ involvement by prompting them to take further action, ultimately retaining them for the long term through diversified support. Aside from writing compelling content, you should also design emails for visual appeal to capture recipients’ attention. 

Free marketing tools like Canva or templates in your email program can help you create eye-catching emails at a low cost to your nonprofit. According to re:Charity’s roundup of marketing tools, you can even access pre-made templates in Canva’s catalog to help revamp your messages. 

And, do consider some special card opportunities for special days during the year, depending upon your organization’s focus. For example, if you’re an environmental nonprofit you can consider something for Earth Day, etc.  There’s no end to special days to show your gratitude. 

Once you’ve designed your emails, create them into your email marketing tool that will automate the sending process using your pre-determined cadence and recurring donor segment. Then, your team can sit back and watch the results of the stewardship or specific campaign unfold. 

As your recurring donor welcome series automatically sends, tracking open rates, click through rates, conversions, and other metrics can help you determine the effectiveness of the emails. Gathering this data is crucial to understanding how your (recurring) donors respond to these messages and will help adjust your emails to better engage them!

Recurring donors have already committed to give frequently to your nonprofit, meaning it is even more essential but can be trickier to engage them more deeply. After all, they’re already engaged with your nonprofit if they’re donating regularly. The key to a recurring donor welcome series is showing your appreciation for their current support and prompting them to continue and step up their relationship with your nonprofit.