Donors are fascinating people; and monthly donors, at times, even more so. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that one of my recommendations is to invite your monthly donors to events. Some may wish to attend, and, even if they don’t come, it will make them feel special. But at times, you give a donor a finger, and they’ll want your whole hand. Here’s an example based upon a recent question during one of my monthly donor...

It’s graduation time! It makes me think back of our boys graduating from college, who are now college alumni. Our youngest son went to Cape Cod Community College for the first two years and then graduated from Belmont University in Nashville. It’s a great campus, a terrific school and a great city to live in and visit. While he’s been on his own for a few years, he’s moving around a fair bit, and we receive his Belmont mail here at the house....

I may have mentioned before that there really are not that many trend statistics tracking monthly giving revenue. For individual organizations, there are some wonderful analytics companies to look at trends and compare against their other clients, but that information is not publicly available. The only available stats I know of are: For small organizations (raising $2 million or less): the “Individual Donor Benchmarking Study,” but...

I’m currently working on the analysis for a big national organization’s sustainer direct mail campaigns. One of the things we needed to settle on first was what they thought was important in measuring their monthly donor success. As you know, monthly gifts are typically small. So, if you only look at the first monthly gifts and possible one-time donations that came in from those donors who are not yet ready to give monthly, you’re not doing...

You may know I’m a huge promoter of monthly giving. Why? Because it’s a great way to engage your small annual fund donors and increase your donor retention rates. And as a recent statistic showed, sustainer giving is indeed growing, especially online. Last year, 20% of online giving came from monthly donors (aka sustainers, recurring donors; source – Blackbaud 2017 Luminate Benchmarks). Needless to say, the interest in monthly giving has...

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines Commitment as follows: a promise to do or give something. A promise to be loyal to someone or something. The attitude of someone who works very hard to do or support something. Wow, that’s something isn’t it? Monthly donor commitment isn’t necessarily easy. It’s hard work. There are two different kinds of commitment in monthly giving: organization and donor. The organization must be committed to the...

Nonprofits never cease to amaze me. Sometimes in a good way. Sometimes in a not so good way. This is one of those sad case studies. I spoke to an organization recently, and its executive director told me they wanted to grow their monthly donor program—at least, that’s what he said at first. They have some 500 sustainers who are worth more than $500,000, so they are very high average gifts. Because they’re limiting recruitment by in-person...

If you’ve been following the weather, you may know that it’s been a rough few weeks, especially in New England. In Massachusetts, we were hit by our second Nor’easter within 10 days; and this last one was really bad. Snow was falling at one to two inches an hour, and the many downed trees caused power to be out for 99 percent of our area. Emergency shelters were open for days. Some cellphone services went down as well, so many people had no way...

Monthly giving is a huge untapped revenue source for so many nonprofits. I am still trying to wrap my head around the vast potential monthly donors offer. If you have 300 monthly donors – just how much overall revenue would these 300 lovely people be contributing to your cause each year? Let’s run the numbers: If each of those wonderful donors gave the average amount of the typical monthly gift – they would be giving $24/month. That’s really...

As you know, weve been talking about monthly donors for the past few weeks. And you may have seen my Facebook Live interviews here and here with monthly giving guru Erica Waasdorp. It’s been tremendously fun and exciting to get lots of feedback and questions from attendees. Here is another guest post from Erica – responding to many of the questions we are receiving from our attendees. It’s not too late to join the Monthly Donor Intensive with...

A few weeks ago, Michael Rosen published the post “How to Get Last Year’s Donors to Give More this Year.”  Guest blogger Joe Garecht shared some great advice for increasing giving. However, the post did not specifically address the issue of monthly giving. That led to a reader comment. Larry Little, President of Guardian Angel Basset Rescue, raised some important questions: Our revenues are in the $300k range but approximately 30% of that comes...

I’ve been working with monthly donor programs for more than 25 years now. Wow, so much has changed. Monthly giving has become so incredibly easy to set up and organize. And yet, whenever I teach a webinar or give a presentation, fundraisers tend to glom onto the “hard parts” right away. And that’s where in many cases it stops. Please, do yourself a favor. Simplify your life and that of your donors. Take what you’re already doing now in your...

Monthly giving programs are becoming more and more popular revenue sources. If you want to nail your own monthly giving strategies to ramp up your nonprofit’s revenue, then join our Monthly Giving Intensive with Erica. You’ll get two jam-packed webinars, slides and handouts full of tips and specific strategies for building a robust, profitable monthly giving program. Erica will also give a live Makeover session of monthly giving materials.  You...

This was a tough week for me. I got home from a trip and then got hit by this terrible cold. Boy, I haven’t been this sick in years! I’m finally starting to get over it, and it’s been going around like crazy. What I realized as a sick “donor” was that, because my monthly gifts are coming out of my account automatically, I didn’t have to worry about my mail; but I was still supporting the organization I care about. And you, as the organization,...

Earlier this week, I was talking with a client about their newsletter. It’s mailed to their monthly donors as a cultivation piece, with wonderful stories about how their gift has made a difference. It also goes to their active and major donors. The communications department creates the piece, and, of course, it looks absolutely amazing! But it is probably also going to mail a week or more late. The review process involves numerous people inside...

A colleague consultant asked me this question last week, and I was discussing this very same thing with another organization myself. Great timing! A nonprofit in the process of launching its monthly donor program has its annual gala coming up this spring. It’s a fancy event—heavy hors d’oeuvres, silent and live auction, including a “fund-a-need” focused on something they need for their program. Donors typically pay $100 to $150 for a...

Last week, NonProfit PRO organized a webinar called “Effectively Managing a Monthly Giving Program that Exceeds the Thousand-Sustainer Mark,” sponsored by CharityEngine. The organization featured was the Wounded Warrior Project, and the focus was on how they acquired sustainers and then managed those sustainers (the back-end). It was exciting to hear from such a big organization, and it brought me back to my days of managing a large sustainer...

Hard to believe, but it’s been almost 25 years since I became a fundraiser, working for a large nonprofit, managing its monthly donor program. At the time, the development department consisted of someone responsible for donor appeals, another for acquisition of new donors and someone for major donors. Everybody was responsible to raise a certain amount a year. In those days, monthly donors “touched” the other departments, as we were only...

Now you’re in the middle of evaluating your appeal results, it’s up to you to make sure that the donor feels good about their giving experience—no matter what the amount. I recommend pulling in some extra people, volunteers and board members to make thank-you phone calls. Put some extra effort into sending out the thank-you letters pronto. And make sure you’re ready to send out tax letters well before the end of the month. If you’ve been...

As a fundraiser and donor relations professional, you work hard every day to make sure your donors feel important. You know like no other that all donors need to feel appreciated, no matter how much they give or how often they donate to your organization. That’s why I’m still amazed at how difficult this seems to be, especially as organizations grow. Especially if there are multiple “cooks in the kitchen.” Often decisions are made...

A few weeks ago, I shared how I made 20 online donations on Black Friday. For some, this was a repeat donation; for others, it was my first. Of course, all organizations sent me an auto-responder message and a “thank you” email message. So far, so good. But, I’m very disappointed in what came after that. Why? In 65 percent of the organizations, there was a big nothing. As of Saturday’s mail (16 days later), I have only received five “thank you”...

P I just came back from the International Fundraising Congress, which was held last week in Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands. It’s always a great time to visit my family who live near the German and Belgian border in the south. I was able to attend a great session on donor love with Jen Love of Agents of Good and Simon Scriver. I’d heard of them, but now I actually got to meet them—pretty neat! The session includes lots of great tips and examples...

F I typically write posts that are aimed at any-sized organization. Today’s piece is initially more aimed at large organizations. Let me share this story with you. When I worked at a big animal welfare organization with a huge donor base, we had several wonderful people in our “systems support/technology/IT” department. As manager of monthly giving, I had to have regular meetings with these great “techies.” (Note: I absolutely mean this in the...

I’m touching down in Amsterdam to attend the International Fundraising Congress in Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands. One of this year’s speakers is Richard Radcliffe. He’s not only a funny, energetic and entertaining presenter, but he’s also one of the most admired experts when it comes to legacy fundraising. In the U.K., because of the way wills are recorded, they’re able to do a ton of legacy fundraising research. When I asked him how monthly...

Previously posted by NonProfitPRO Today on August 14 At the recent Bridge Conference, I enjoyed several wonderful sustainer sessions. During one of those, someone asked about the automatic sustainer upgrade process some nonprofits are apparently using. My hair immediately started standing up straight! What happened to being donor-centric? Automatic sustainer upgrades are really all about the nonprofit, but frankly, if you’re offering this,...

Originally posted by NonProfitPRO today on August 21, 2017 Over the past few months, I hope I showed you how monthly giving has become so much easier for nonprofits to organize and then actually start. That’s because so many payment processors and donor bases now have built-in tools to create giving pages, add the recurring/monthly option and capture new monthly donors without a lot of jumping through hoops. Having said this, if you’re still...

First posted by NonProfitPRO Today on July 31 While online giving is growing, it’s our assumption that donors are comfortable filling out their personal information into an online donation form and hitting the submit button. Then, where does that information go? For donors, that can be unnerving. They’re worried that their credit card information can get stolen. After all, the credit card abuse, even with chip, is still rampant. The first thing...

First appeared on NonProfitPRO Today on August 7, 2017 My first experience with a hurricane came in August of 1991, when “Bob” hit Cape Cod. I was actually still in the Netherlands, but I watched video of my then future in-laws wade through chest-high water near their beach house. Power was out for many days. Life came to a screeching halt. Other hurricanes followed later:  Andrew, Katrina, Sandy just to name a few. As a Red Cross PR volunteer,...

This article was written for Nonprofit Pro and was first published in the April Nonprofit Pro Magazine and later on Nonprofit Pro Today. I’m a total convert on the topic of monthly donors. I’ve seen its power and how it has kept an organization going after a major disaster. I’ve seen how it generates 50 percent of an organization’s revenue. I’ve seen that even small tweaks to organizations’ communications can make a difference. The good news is...

This post was written for and published at Nonprofit Pro. Some of the most successful (and perhaps even leading) nonprofits that are converting members to monthly donors (often called sustainers or sustaining partners) are public television and public radio stations, all over the country. They realized several years ago that moving regular members to monthly donors had several major advantages: • Members who give automatically through their...