By Erica Waasdorp, Monthly Giving Motivator
These past few months, I did a lot of organizing, tossing, scanning, and archiving. I still had books and binders with research and sessions from the late 1990s and the early 2000s. (Yes, it’s hard to believe I’ve been involved in monthly giving for 32 years and for 10 more years of direct mail before that, and I kept a lot of stuff).
Can you imagine that in those days, when you attended a conference, you’d receive a book with hard copy presentations all presentations?
The Bridge conference started in 2005, and the DMA Nonprofit Federation (now part of ANA) had their own conferences before that. Why conference books, you may ask? Because there was no alternative. It was before web sites, online giving, smartphones, and conference apps were a thing.
Looking back through those conference books, focusing on sustainers alone, you can clearly see those organizations that have been monthly giving evangelists for an extraordinarily long time. Greenpeace. ASPCA. Humane Society of the US (now Humane World for Animals). Habitat for Humanity. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Save the Children, Food for the Poor, World Vision, Plan International, NPR and PBS, to name just a few.
Most of these organizations had an international background or international offices, so they knew that in Australia, Canada, the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands monthly giving was much more prevalent.
With fewer donors and thus smaller ponds to fish in, finding ways for donors to help on an ongoing basis was key to success. And of course, the banking systems made it a lot easier!
Even organizations like charity: water that started focusing on monthly giving later when online giving was more prevalent have been doing so for some 10+ years.
Trend analyses have been around for an exceptionally long time as well. For example, Blackbaud’s donorcentrics™ benchmarking has been around since 1989 with more focus on recurring giving in 2005. M&R benchmarks has only been around since 2013! If you’re interested in checking out some trends, here is a link to their archive.
So, with all this, thumbing through those conference books and trends, let me look at some of the things that have changed over the past twenty or so years.
- Online giving has made it much easier to make a recurring gift.
- More subscriptions.
- Fewer checks but more emphasis on Electronic Funds Transfer. It’s now possible to offer this online. It doesn’t get much easier than that.
- Many more payment options and more payment providers. Again, the donor can pay in their most preferred way.
- More communication channels (emails, social media, video, text). Donors are everywhere so consistent messaging and repetition are key (and totally okay!).
- Smartphones and artificial Intelligence. Easy to reach your donors, but make sure you’re authentically you.
- Remote work (especially since the pandemic).
What has not changed when it comes to monthly giving?
- Silos and overthinking. Remote work does not really help with internal communication, nor does it help streamline communication with donors or improve those critical relationships Blackbaud already mentioned in 2008! And with the many channels and approaches, there are many more cooks in the kitchen and overthinking has exploded!
- Lack of focus on sustainers, i.e., fear of long-term thinking and long-term evaluation. This is why I have gray hair. Changing focus is hard yet, there are many examples of organizations who have made that mindset change and are reaping the benefits from it. The longer you wait, the more you get behind.
- Donation forms are (still) not truly clear. It can be confusing for the donor to see what is monthly and what isn’t. Donors don’t necessarily know what the distinct colors mean in a toggle form. And too many options on donation forms makes it even harder for donors to decide how and how much to give. Test your forms and ask some folks to test them too.
- Lack of focus on bringing lapsed or declined card folks back. Retention is the new acquisition. This is the single biggest area where nonprofits can gain a lot of traction at minimal investment. One charity calculated it recently: To keep a monthly donor costs 1/eighth of the investment in a new one (across all channels).
- Lack of stewardship and lack of personalization, even with all the many communication options and with the many tools now available. And with laser printing and vendor partners who specialize in handwritten fonts, personalization has much easier. The biggest challenge is finding the time. If everybody agrees that these relationships are critical, hopefully some time can be found somewhere.
Online monthly giving is still growing. That trend has been around for a while.
Just a few highlights of some trends in 2017 from Blackbaud:
“Expanding relationships with existing supporters was the name of the game this year as we saw 20.4% growth in sustainer revenue. In that same year, organizations grew online revenue by 10.2%. “
Nonprofits inspired 15% of their email list to donate, but even in those days, open and click rates went down!
Average monthly gift only inches forward:
According to M&R benchmarks in 2014: online revenue increased 14% in 2013.
The average one-time online gift at the time was $104 and the average online monthly gift was $23.
Now, 12 years later, the average online one time gift is $126, and the average online monthly gift is $24, tiny movements. I think that the main reason for this is that so many nonprofits are not (yet) asking for upgrades from their current monthly donors.
Also, from M&R strategic 2014: Monthly giving revenue grew 25% in 2013 and accounted for 16% of total online giving. To compare, in 2025, 12 years later, average online revenue increased by 2% in 2024, following a 1% decline in 2023 and Revenue from monthly giving increased by 5% and accounted for 31% of all online revenue. One-time revenue was flat year-over-year.
What does all this mean for monthly giving?
Donors have many more choices and can receive many more opportunities to give, through multiple channels. And as a fundraiser it’s harder to balance it all.
It should be much easier to invite a donor to consider a monthly gift, and the cost to do so should be much lower than before (when it was just mail and phone).
The statistics are showing the impact of growth. The donor relationships will flourish. Donor retention will improve (at least for that group of donors).
Don’t overthink it and pick one channel and one tactic. Then add and expand as you grow. But you do have to want to grow it, that’s where it all starts.
And if you haven’t had enough in just these little tidbits of statistics, check out these posts from the Agitator in 2017, that’s now 8 years ago!