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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Offer a Monthly Giving Save Option
While I was doing some research, I came across this interesting study. Brightback’s research is more aimed at the commercial subscription world, but a lot of what happens there can be applied to monthly giving for nonprofits. What I find interesting is the shift to an online/digital model. Take note: Online consumers expect the experience to be […]
How Easy or Hard Should Monthly Gift Cancellations Be?
I just finished going through all of the donations I made last year to prepare for my taxes. I use two credit cards and a banking account for my monthly gifts, so it was a little bit of a process. First, thank you to those organizations who sent me a tax letter! That was helpful. […]
Monthly Giving Is All About Donor Retention
This is always an exciting time of year as donor base providers and analytics groups release their giving trends from the prior year. We are continuing to see so many changes. Not many were prepared for this disaster. And many, especially smaller organizations, almost froze when the shutdown happened. Many assumed that their donors did […]
Find a Way to Address a Monthly Donor’s Hesitation
At this time, many people are looking to find out when they can possibly get vaccinated against COVID-19. I live on Cape Cod, an area with many older residents — many who have been struggling. Many of these older residents do not have access to the internet, so registration online is difficult. They do have […]
