Can Monthly Giving Through Direct Withdrawals Work?
I was born and raised in the Netherlands where electronic bank payments, or direct withdrawals, were a way of life. Believe it or not, even credit cards there were required to be paid off every month, automatically, from your bank account. Things have changed there, but also here in the U.S. Now, the question, “can […]
3 Crucial Steps to Converting Rage Donors to Long-Term Supporters (and 3 Bonus Steps)
You’ve probably heard about the latest trend in donors, called rage donors. In a way, these have been around for years, but they used to be called “disaster donors.” Donors were often called “episodic” donors. Donors who only give at the moment of disaster, at the moment of “rage,” when something is really “hot” in […]
Should You Ask Your Monthly Donors to Create an Account or Login?
As you may know by now, when it comes to monthly giving, I’m all about making things easy and simple for both monthly donors and the organizations. So when I start working with an organization on growing their number of monthly donors, we first look at the online donation forms to see what’s already in […]
Are You a Monthly Donor Yet?
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 […]
That Dreaded Credit Card Fraud Alert
There it was: a text and an email message from my credit card company. Someone was trying to use my card in a different state! I had traveled there the week before and stopped at one of those travel plazas to fill up my car. Maybe that’s where it happened. How on earth somebody got […]
When Monthly Donors Want More…
Donors are fascinating people; and monthly donors, at times, even more so. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that one of my recommendations is to invite your monthly donors to events. Some may wish to attend, and, even if they don’t come, it will make them feel special. But at times, […]
Can You Ask College Alumni to Become Monthly Donors?
It’s graduation time! It makes me think back of our boys graduating from college, who are now college alumni. Our youngest son went to Cape Cod Community College for the first two years and then graduated from Belmont University in Nashville. It’s a great campus, a terrific school and a great city to live in […]
2018 M&R Study: Monthly Giving Revenue Up 40 Percent
I may have mentioned before that there really are not that many trend statistics tracking monthly giving revenue. For individual organizations, there are some wonderful analytics companies to look at trends and compare against their other clients, but that information is not publicly available. The only available stats I know of are: For small organizations (raising […]
What’s Your Measuring Stick for Monthly Donor Success?
I’m currently working on the analysis for a big national organization’s sustainer direct mail campaigns. One of the things we needed to settle on first was what they thought was important in measuring their monthly donor success. As you know, monthly gifts are typically small. So, if you only look at the first monthly gifts […]
Do You Support Monthly Giving?
You may know I’m a huge promoter of monthly giving. Why? Because it’s a great way to engage your small annual fund donors and increase your donor retention rates. And as a recent statistic showed, sustainer giving is indeed growing, especially online. Last year, 20% of online giving came from monthly donors (aka sustainers, recurring […]
