Did you know that Americans who include monetary charitable giving in their annual budget gave nearly seven times, on average, than those who do not budget at all? That’s the outcome of the online survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Vanguard Charitable, a nonprofit that administers donor-advised funds (DAFs). This study reminded me of two things: Recurring giving is extremely convenient for those...

Whether you want to call it social proof, a testimonial — it doesn’t really matter. Donor’s love hearing from other donors. It helps give them that “extra” little push or nudge if you will. This works in major gift fundraising. This works in general fundraising. It especially works with recurring giving. If someone tells why they’re giving monthly, that will help motivate others. It will also help you as the fundraiser in developing...

At a recent list serve, someone asked about how best to track initial and subsequent recurring gifts. There are two ways to do this. Note that your finance/accounting/bookkeeping folks may have a different approach, so it’s important to involve them in any decisions you make about this. As recurring gifts have no end date, so this is not like your typical major gift pledge where you get big amounts over a limited period. Recurring gifts are...

Over the years, I’ve worked with nonprofits of all sizes — small, midsize, large — when it comes to monthly donors. A few of those smaller organizations started out earlier this year with 15 monthly donors. Now, a few months later, they are at 65 by introducing just a few additional ways to generate new monthly donors. An extra button and a small match made all the difference for one. A few emails and a message in the nonprofit’s newsletter...

What’s the first nonprofit you think of with a huge sustainer program? Did you guess your local public broadcasting station? Probably not. But yet, most public TV and radio stations are leading the pact when it comes to sustainer giving. They started asking for monthly gifts many years ago. If you look at the most recent Blackbaud Luminate online Benchmarks Report 2020, public broadcasting stations receive 52.6% of their online revenue from...

Last week, my husband and I took a trip, ultimately leading to visit our kids and grandkids. We flew to Norfolk, Virginia, and then drove down to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to visit the Wright Brothers National Memorial. My husband is a private general aviation pilot, so this national park was high on his bucket list, and it did not disappoint. The park ranger did a great job telling the Wright brothers’ story and the evolution of their...

I’m an avid supporter and reader of SOFII, as it has some tremendous free stuff, like fundraising examples, articles and case studies from all over the world. I especially like the articles on retention, loyalty and, of course, recurring giving. Over my almost 30 years of fundraising, I’ve always been impressed by the many studies, especially those on donor loyalty, the donor experience and donor retention, done in the U.K. I recommend this...

I’m an avid scanner of mail samples. I’m particularly intrigued by how organizations approach the monthly gift option on their reply forms. If you’re at all interested in growing your number of monthly donors, planting the monthly giving seeds on your appeals has become a best practice. Granted, you’re not going to get oodles and oodles of new monthly donors, but it’s a start at no extra cost. Recently I came across this example. I’ve blanked...

Recently, Cause Vox launched the 2021 Pledge Now, Pay Later Study. It was based upon an online survey amongst 400 American individuals, across a wide range of demographics, including age, education level and income. As you know, I love studies and statistics, especially pertaining to recurring gifts, so I was intrigued. Insight No. 1 of the study confirms why I am passionate about recurring gifts: “Donation installments would lead to increased...

When an international fundraising legend like Ken Burnett writes a book, I stand up and listen. And having met Ken personally at numerous international conferences, I’m proud to have a signed copy! This new book, “The Essence of Campaigning Fundraising” was published by the White Lion Press in June. It includes a cool-looking USB drive that includes the 52 exhibits and 199 web links to which the book refers. Proceeds will go to SOFII, a...

I must admit I didn’t totally come up with this line on my own. It’s based on an email from Chewy, the company that delivers my cat’s litter and food to my front door. No more carrying heavy bags home from the pet store. I love it. The subject line said: “Reorders so easy your pet could do it.” Our cat, Mientje, jumps on my computer table all the time. Maybe with a bit more training, he could definitely do it! And it made me think about monthly...

A fundraiser asked me this question: “Do you need to send monthly receipts to monthly donors?” My answer is: Ideally, no. There is no need to send monthly receipts to monthly donors. The ideal situation is that you send some other updates to them instead. That way it’s much less about the transaction and the value of the gift, but much more about how the monthly donor’s gifts are making a difference. I recommend sending one very clear thank-you...

I love fundraising book recommendations and, as you probably know by now, I love reading (and writing) fundraising books. So here is a review of the book “Green Green,” published by Civil Sector Press, written by Canadian David Love, who has been raising funds for more than 51 years. Incredible! Congratulations! If you’ve been fundraising for a while, you may have come across David’s name or perhaps his daughter Jen Love of Agents...

Every nonprofit wants to attract younger donors. That’s why it’s very exciting that monthly giving is so appealing to these younger donors. Why? Because they can support those organizations, they care about in a very easy way with a small amount that absolutely fits their budget. Easy and small are the key words here. Easy because they can make a gift from their credit card, their bank account, and more and more from their digital wallet like...

I love Next After and its tremendous research and experiments. Focused on online giving, donation pages and emails, Next After provides a lot to learn. If you know that the typical number of people who finish a gift is only 21%, that means 79% do not give, even though they go to your organization’s page to donate. Yet, you can do something about it, or, should I say, prevent that outcome. Recently, Next After — in collaboration with Fundraise...

If you look at the most recent statistics on donor retention, the year 2020 was not great. One reason was that many organizations put a hold on asking for contributions in the first half of the year because they worried about donors not giving. Many continued to be reluctant well into the second half. Hence, many donors who gave in 2019, never gave in 2020. If you’re a nonprofit that lost donors due to a decrease in outreach, you now need...

You probably have seen me quote Seth Godin before. His blogs inspire some of mine. It’s a short one so I’ll share his full post on “The Order of Operations” because it’s so important when it comes to monthly giving: “If you put the jelly on before the peanut butter, the sandwich will fail. “And if you try to spread the peanut butter on the plate and then add the bread, it will fail even worse. “Like so many things, the...

I’m very excited. Our 13-year-old grandson Kenan is coming to visit for a week. My husband has flown out to Charlotte, North Carolina, to pick him up and accompany him home next week — just to be safe. You probably know by now that I’m an avid planner and preparing for this coming week was no different. We sat down and mapped out plan A and B if something happened with the flights. Then we planned out what Kenan would be doing every day. My...

You’ve probably heard some consultants say: “It’s not about the next shiny new thing. Rather, it’s about the basics of fundraising and building relationships with donors. It’s about following the best practices first. Only after that’s done — and only then — can you start looking at some of those ‘shiny new things.’” And I totally agree, I’m one of those consultants echoing those sentiments and advice. But it’s important to realize that...

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been able to do some traveling again — in-person client visits, family visits, fun. Sitting on airplanes and in airports means time to read. I never leave home without a fundraising book to enjoy (along with other books, of course). Recently, I read “The Post-Pandemic Nonprofit: 12 Disruptive Trends Your Nonprofit Must Master” by Jeremy Reis. It’s a great and easy read in some 170 pages. It took me...

by  Jim Eskin I have to start with a confession: I am a monthly giving convert. As a practitioner, I heard a lot about it at the Association for Fundraising Professionals (AFP) and other professional conferences, and my ears perked up. But when I returned to my development shop, I discussed it with the team and, regrettably, didn’t demonstrate the needed leadership to make a robust and serious commitment to make things happen as they should...

As you may know, I’ve been scanning and tracking examples of monthly giving approaches and follow ups for years. There are so many wonderful ways nonprofits ask for monthly donors. So many tremendous examples of saying thank you in the most grateful of ways. There’s so much that goes right with monthly giving and the results are showing! But every now and then, I see some goofs. I’m not going to name names, but you probably know who you are...

Last week, I heard some very shocking news. Geoff Biddle, CEO of Payment Solutions, 66, was found shot in his own home. I had known Geoff for many years. We always used to run into each other at fundraising conferences. I still remember Beverly Kempf introducing him to me as the person who was going to take over as she was getting ready to retire. Geoff was the kindest, pleasant, and most knowledgeable man. I had the opportunity to work with...

Today I wanted to start your week off with a little music. It’s been a very loooooong year, and as many of you are about to wrap up your fiscal year, you might need some encouragement to keep pushing. Let me share with you one of my all-time favorite songs with you: “Wake Up Everybody.” I found it by accident. A few years ago, my husband and I attended a big local charity event. It was the No. 1 event to be seen at, held just before...

I was looking back at some questions posed in a webinar I presented recently, and this was one of them: “What’s the most common mistake you see is made when it comes to monthly giving?” Of course, I’d love to say that most of you are not making any mistakes, but that’s not totally true. After all, we learn from mistakes, and we can make it better. That’s what we must do every day. The biggest mistake I’ve seen when it comes to monthly giving...

As I’m sure you can imagine, I receive questions about how best to grow monthly donor programs all the time. One of the first things I do is look at the organization’s website. How easy is it to find the monthly giving option? How easy is it to find the donation page to begin with? Some website designs have these little horizontal lines (I call them ‘hoobies’). Here is one example: Yes, it looks cool and modern, and you may know that this is...

Whenever I take a trip by plane, I love the view from high up above. You can see the city, the mountains, the lakes, the rivers. You see the colors of it all. And everything is so tiny. It all looks so organized (mostly). You see the roads, the traffic down below, and it doesn’t really matter if there’s a lot or very little of it. You can see the big picture. You can see what’s on the horizon. Being above it all is very different from when...

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 of monthly or regular giving, as they call it in other countries. Much has changed since Harvey McKinnon wrote the book “Hidden Gold”...

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 the key findings based on a survey of 1,222 nonprofit employees and an analysis of donation...

Sometimes, fundraisers ask me: “What’s the cost per sustainer?” Let me explain a few different types of cost. 1. What should you expect to spend to acquire a new monthly donor? The answer is: It depends. And it’s all over the map because it depends on the channels you’re using or the combination thereof. Let’s take a look at three examples. Credit: Erica Waasdorp The email example above assumes that the cost for the email program is all put...