Take a Flight to Help You Refocus
Whenever I take a trip by plane, I love the view from high up above. You can see the city, the mountains, the lakes, the rivers. You see the colors of it all. And everything is so tiny. It all looks so organized (mostly). You see the roads, the traffic down below, and it doesn’t […]
What Writing a Book About Monthly Giving Has Taught Me
You may know that I’ve been working in monthly giving for almost 30 years now. I’ve now written two books on monthly giving. My second book, “Monthly Giving Made Easy,” is due to hit Amazon and e-book outlets any minute. All in all, I believe there are now six books in total on the topic […]
What Smaller Nonprofits Can Do With More Communication and Recurring Gifts
Recently, I shared statistics from large organizations here and here. Now, it’s time to look at what smaller nonprofits are doing when it comes to monthly giving. I was excited to read the “Small Nonprofit Fundraising Benchmark Report,” published by Network for Good and the NextAfter Institute based upon 2019 data and 2020 surveys. This report publishes […]
What’s the Cost Per Sustainer?
Sometimes, fundraisers ask me: “What’s the cost per sustainer?” Let me explain a few different types of cost. 1. What should you expect to spend to acquire a new monthly donor? The answer is: It depends. And it’s all over the map because it depends on the channels you’re using or the combination thereof. Let’s take a […]
More Recurring Gifts From Digital Approaches
Every year, Blackbaud’s donorCentrics Sustainer Benchmarking group meets and evaluates information on recurring gifts. This year was no exception. Face-to-face/door-to-door fundraising, also known as canvassing, came to a screeching halt during COVID-19. For organizations that picked those strategies back up again in late 2020, the good news is the number of sustainers is up and […]
New Monthly Donor Stats From M+R Benchmarks
I always look forward to when M+R Strategic launches its annual benchmarks. It just released this year’s edition, and you can find the full report right here. As you can see, and as I’m sure you expected, it was a great year for digital engagement in general. I, of course, tend to focus on monthly giving […]
Book Review: The Surprising Gift of Doubt
Credit: Concord Leadership Group “The Surprising Gift of Doubt,” written by Marc Pitman of Concord Leadership Group, is a book that’s not just about nonprofit leadership. It can be applied to leaders in any situation, especially if you, as a leader, need some re-grounding or refocus. And who doesn’t need that during this ongoing pandemic? Even […]
Why Automatic Monthly Gift Upgrades Are a Bad Idea
A few weeks ago, The New York Times published an article on automatic upgrades of monthly gifts and the number of upset supporters when that happened. This is scary stuff and could have a very negative impact on other nonprofits looking to grow their monthly donor programs. I’m going to leave politics out and look at that […]
A Monthly Shot of Prevention
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This quote by Benjamin Franklin came to mind as I was lucky to get my second vaccine. There’s something amazingly liberating about knowing that you’ve done everything in your power to stay healthy. Not to mention that I’m really excited about traveling some more. When […]
Subscriptions Are Just Not the Same
I love subscriptions. I have for years. I started out my direct mail and fundraising career working on subscriptions and loyalty programs. Subscriptions are great! And they certainly have and continue to have a huge impact on recurring gifts. They’ve allowed people to become much more comfortable paying for things automatically. They’ve opened up automated giving to […]
