Book Review: ‘Donor CARE’ by the late John Haydon
What a tremendous legacy John Haydon left us with his book, “Donor CARE: How to Keep Donors Coming Back After the First Gift.” Sadly, Haydon passed away earlier this year. While I never had a chance to meet him in person, we did talk by phone a few times. He had an amazing following with thousands of […]
How to Improve Your Online & Monthly Giving Donation Processes
I just bought my 2021-day runner filler. Yes, I’m still one of the ‘old fashioned’ people who uses a paper planner. It just helps me get organized during chaos and writing things down helps me remember! I sure hope that next year will bring some more travel again. Because that’s what I love the most. […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Update Your Monthly Receipt Emails
If you have a monthly giving program, chances are your processor sends a gift confirmation email every month. What happens when, what the receipt looks like and how much you can control depends on the system. In some cases, the monthly email looks like a receipt. In other cases, you can customize it and add […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Test Your Forms
As a fundraising consultant, I’m always learning and researching. I do this by working with clients, vendor partners, databases, payment processors and so much more. I have many answers, but not all. That’s why I enjoy the research and experiments NextAfter does, especially when it comes to donation forms and emails. Even a small change can make […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Take the Next Step
Seth Godin’s blog always gives me inspiration. Recently, he wrote about the words I hear so much when it comes to monthly giving: “That’s a great idea!” Seth says: “…after every good idea, there are at least 100 steps of iteration, learning, adjustment, innovation and effort. But not committing to the 100 steps is a waste […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Finding the Right Tools
This past week, I received several questions from nonprofit organizations about the best tools to use to process monthly gifts. In that same week, I received three emails from vendor partners offering me the latest and greatest on monthly gift payment processing tools. Here’s a breakdown of what I’ve learned so far: Some say they […]
Will There Be A New Normal For Subscription Donors?
A quick introduction: Sustainers are a big part of today’s subscription economy and we’ve seen tremendous growth in the past few years, as this chart from the DonorCentrics™ Sustainer Benchmarking Study shows. We’re still not at the level I think we should be at, but I guarantee that those organizations focused on growing their sustainers over […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Annualize the Value
What a difference a simple calculation can make. When I ask the question, “How many monthly donors do you have?” fundraisers typically know that number. But then when I ask how much they’re worth, fundraisers sometimes struggle to answer. Or they only look at the monthly gifts, so it doesn’t seem that powerful. That’s why […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: The Drip-by-Drip Approach
I am an avid coffee drinker — five cups a day at a minimum and one decaf at night. We have a big coffeemaker with a timer, so our coffee is ready when we wake up in the morning. It’s one of those old fashioned multi-cup machines. The slow drip-by-drip process makes it so worthwhile, […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: Make It a Thing
The expression, “Make monthly giving a thing,” came from Cara Schwalbach of One Tail at a Time in Chicago. She and I were scheduled to co-present on monthly giving at an upcoming animal welfare conference, but that was canceled. Cara was going to share her amazing story of how she grew from 200 to 1,600 […]
