A Monthly Giving How-To: Visualize Your Goal
I recently presented a webinar as part of the two-day virtual summit, Nonprofit Changemakers, organized by Top Nonprofits. Afterward, I received the terrific visual (above) of the presentation. The artist really picked up the highlights of my message, and she did it live. One of the questions I always start with is how many monthly donors […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Let’s Declare September = Sustainer Month
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of presenting about sustainers with Tina Hudgins, who worked at the International Justice Mission at the time. She shared how the organization typically did a monthly donor direct mail and email invite campaign (including upgrades) in the month of September. And they’ve been doing this ever since. […]
How Essential Is a Fundraiser?
A few weeks ago, I gave kudos to the post office, printers, mail houses, etc. But what I failed to do was give kudos to fundraisers. I recently spoke with John Jeffries, the founder of the New Canvassing Experience, a face-to-face fundraising agency focused on helping nonprofits find more monthly donors. We discussed how essential or non-essential fundraising really […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Asking Will Result in More Monthly Donors
Good thing we have an extra day this week. I had a stack of mail more than a foot high, and I just finished scanning the various appeals I would like to save in a folder to use for training or learning. Let me start with some good news: Many organizations have adopted the best […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Upgrading Donors
One of the most successful approaches to generate new monthly donors is to start with the lowest ask possible. For most, this means starting at $5 or $10 a month, typically dependent on the payment processor being used. I’ve even seen it as low as $2 or $3 a month. “Wait a minute,” you may […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Should You Ask for Monthly Gifts at Year-End?
A good friend asked me this question and, as good friends tend to do, I wanted to address this question right away before getting into the busy fundraising season. While I would love to tell you yes — go all out and ask for monthly gifts — the answer really should be: “It depends!” Let me […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Prevent Dropouts
Monthly donor retention is probably the biggest challenge for nonprofits. In my nearly 30 years of monthly giving experience, I’ve seen three big reasons for this: Nobody feels responsible for tracking monthly donor dropouts and attrition (a fancier word for dropout percentage). Believe it or not, while you think this may be more rampant in […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Ask Why
Let’s face it–just because you, as a fundraiser, send emails and/or letters to a donor asking them to give monthly, it may not work right away. It might require several calls and emails. It may require some additional ammunition. If you have at least one monthly donor, you have that ammunition. You have at least […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Join Monthly Donor Programs
Whenever I talk about monthly giving to a group, in person or via webinar, I often ask people how many of them are monthly donors themselves. Sometimes just a few hands go up, or a few indicate it in the poll if it’s on a webinar. Well, how can you ask someone to give monthly […]
On the Road to 1,000 Monthly Donors
An interview with Sami Sheehan, manager of donor engagement of Lollypop Farm, Humane Society of Greater Rochester My favorite part about working with nonprofits is how much we can learn from each other. I learn from their questions every day. I am blown away with how smart people at nonprofits are, and how committed they […]
