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 […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: It Doesn’t Take Too Much Time
When I first started working in monthly giving 27 years ago, generating monthly gifts and processing their monthly payments was a long and time-intense process. Now if a donor makes a monthly gift online, completes their information and clicks the button, the gift is processed in seconds, real-time. And the payment processor will continue to […]
A Monthly Giving How-To: It’s Not Expensive
I love hearing from nonprofit organizations that share how they’re doing with their monthly giving campaigns. Earlier this week, a nonprofit shared its socially-distanced monthly giving video interview with me. It launched the video the day before #GivingTuesdayNow, and it already generated 20 new monthly donors. While it took a bit of time to create […]
Monthly Giving: It’s Not Rocket Science
A few months ago, I taught the “Recurring Revolution” training for members of The Fundraisingology Lab, by Moceanic. It was a lot of fun. Several members responded to a question about how best to keep their monthly donors. One of those members was Natalie Lanoville from Jewish Family Services in Vancouver, Canada. I was impressed with her […]
Before the Walls Came Down…
After seven weeks at home, I finally ventured out — mask on, gloves on — to do some groceries. Just like so many of you, I patiently waited six feet apart from the next person and once one person left the store, the next person could go in. It still feels like the twilight zone […]
Monthly Donors Give More Than One-Time Donors
The M+R Benchmarks research has always been one of my favorite studies, and often one of the very few go-to statistics on monthly giving trends. That’s why I’m really excited that the “2020 M+R Benchmarks Study“ is here. It’s very interactive, so you can find the most amazing trends in all things digitally. The M+R Benchmarks studies […]
