I grew up with and in direct mail. I was fortunate to work at Reader’s Digest (RD) in Amsterdam right after college and it really shaped the rest of my career. I’ve always loved direct mail because you can measure results, but nothing beats seeing the boxes and boxes filled with responses coming back. I was ‘hooked’ on direct mail and all of us direct mail ‘nerds’ at RD loved receiving the latest direct mail samples sent to us from countries...

At the recent Bridge pre-conference sustainer workshop I co-hosted, one of the attendees asked this question: “What is a realistic goal for monthly donor percentage as a percent of active donors?” Let me explain why there’s no one good answer to this other than that the current typical nonprofit has between 5% to 30% of their donors giving monthly. But if your percentage is lower, do not worry. The overarching answer is: “Your goal should be...

Good news! Monthly giving is one of the few groups of small donors that is (still) growing. Not surprisingly, because organizations have started focusing on it over the past few years. That’s why now job postings for monthly donor or sustainer managers, and monthly donor retention specialist positions are starting to pop up, but they’re hard to fill. Sadly, there are not that many training opportunities for this type of job yet. As someone...

Let me start off with wishing you and yours a happy and healthy new year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. I also hope you had some time to relax, in between working with donors and systems to try to optimize the donations coming in by the end of the year. I took a few days to catch up on some movies we had missed and to reflect on what worked well and what didn’t work so well last year. Rather than new resolutions, I resolved to...

I just read this from Seth Godin’s blog: “…years from now, your future self is going to thank you for something you did today, for an asset you began to build, a habit you formed, a seed you planted. Even if you’re not sure of where it will lead, today’s the day to begin.” It made me think so much of monthly giving, I just had to share it with you. But first, let me tell you that I’m so grateful to my military family members and friends for all...

When I talk to younger fundraisers, they often say: “Why would I use the phone? I never answer it.”  Not surprising –  they’re just like our sons, who are now 29 and 31 years old. But herein lies the problem. What you as a (young) person may think to be true may not actually be the case for your donors! And those are the people who should be at the absolute center of all your thinking and doing. Especially now with retention rates being lower...

By now, you’ve all heard of the GDPR. It stands for: The General Data Protection Regulation. GDPR is a regulation law in the European Union (EU) on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). But do you know what started the GDPR process? It was one older donor who committed suicide after she got totally overwhelmed by the many appeals for money—in the mail, by phone, on the streets. You...

Chrissy Davis approached me and asked if she could write a guest post for me, based upon fundraising podcasts.  As someone who has recently been on some podcasts, I think it’s a very good way to feature your organization. Let’s hear from Chrissy why…   If you’re passionate about your cause and you’d like to raise funds for it, it is very noble and points to a truly good person. Fundraising can, however, be very difficult as many...

You probably know by now that I’m a huge planner. Planning is actually part of the fun for me. Every year around this time, my husband and I look at our calendar to see when we can get away in the winter. It’s just a short trip to another part of the country. Typically it’s Arizona, but now that our youngest lives in Las Vegas, it’ll be a Vegas/Arizona combo. We live in Massachusetts, so it’s crucial to get away from the snow and dreary...

You’ve heard me say this before: ”Assign a driver!”—if you’re serious about growing your nonprofit sustainer program.  Just one driver who pulls it all together and who makes sure the car keeps running and is being maintained to keep on running for a very long time.  So, when I mentioned this at a recent conference, an attendee asked me: ”What are the top characteristics someone needs to manage a sustainer program?”  That’s such a great...

One of the key annual fundraising strategies I recommend you add (or rev up) this year is monthly giving. It’s one of the best ways I know to move the needle in improving your mid-level giving program, and to also serve as a pipeline to acquire new donors, upgrade current donors, and influence major and legacy giving. To help you persuade your “powers that be” this is a direction in which you should definitely be headed, I’ve invited Erica...

I just got back from a tremendous few days in the Washington D.C. area, and I learned a lot about monthly sustainer programs. First, I was privileged to attend the Professional Face-to-Face Fundraisers Association meeting, where some 75 people listened to speakers on the latest trends in face-to-face sustainer fundraising and how one nonprofit tweaked its retention to higher levels. Spoiler alert: account updater and credit card processes had a...

I was born and raised in the Netherlands where electronic bank payments, or direct withdrawals, were a way of life. Believe it or not, even credit cards there were required to be paid off every month, automatically, from your bank account. Things have changed there, but also here in the U.S. Now, the question, “can monthly giving via direct withdrawal work here?” has a much more powerful “yes” answer than ever before. While it’s still not quite...

These days, there’s so much interest in new channels and the latest next “new shiny thing,” but did you know that there’s one medium you use everyday that has evolved tremendously over the past few years? That medium (the one that you’re holding in your hand right now or the one that’s very nearby!) is the ultimate key to retaining your donors: it’s your phone! In a session at the 50th Annual NCDC Conference and Exposition, Juddee Millito and...

I still come across many organizations that are actively trying to grow their monthly giving program, but they’re not sure who’s “running the show.” Nobody feels responsible. People wait until someone comes up with the next idea. Some think they only need to be focused on one aspect of monthly giving. Nobody is taking control of the whole process. Until those self-driving cars become a reality, just like with a car, you must have a driver. And...

This problem doesn’t just occur with monthly donors, but with all donors. That last step, finishing the donation is the key. But often, the donor clicks through. They’re ready to make a gift, but for some mysterious reason, they leave. They never finish the donation. What can you do? Should you just let that donor go? I say, not necessarily so. I say, use that opportunity to get feedback from your donor to help you improve future donor giving....

You’ve probably heard about the latest trend in donors, called rage donors. In a way, these have been around for years, but they used to be called “disaster donors.” Donors were often called “episodic” donors. Donors who only give at the moment of disaster, at the moment of “rage,” when something is really “hot” in the media, and people feel totally compelled to do something about it. And if there’s an organization, a group of individuals or...

Now is the time to celebrate your monthly donor wins.  As this is the new fiscal year for many organizations, make sure to celebrate your wins in number of monthly donors over the past year. Of course, this all started with your goals. Goals will be different for different sized organizations. You have wanted to generate your first 25 monthly donors. You may have wanted to break through the first 100. Maybe your goal was to get to the next...

As you may know by now, when it comes to monthly giving, I’m all about making things easy and simple for both monthly donors and the organizations. So when I start working with an organization on growing their number of monthly donors, we first look at the online donation forms to see what’s already in place. And that’s sometimes where the big pause comes… I call it the “stopper,” “the donation preventer” or the...

At a workshop last week, I asked the question: “Are you giving monthly to your own organization?” I was expecting everybody’s hand to go up. But boy, was I unpleasantly surprised! Out of the 52 people in the room, only eight people raised their hand. Fortunately, a few days later at another presentation, it was almost the whole room. So, my first recommendation if you’re looking to grow your number of monthly donors is to join your own program...

There it was: a text and an email message from my credit card company. Someone was trying to use my card in a different state! I had traveled there the week before and stopped at one of those travel plazas to fill up my car. Maybe that’s where it happened. How on earth somebody got ahold of my card information from my wallet and worse—was able to use it—is beyond me. Something must have set off this alert because the credit card was not...

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....

As you may know, Penelope Burk does some tremendous research on donors thinking and behavior. From her 2017 report, I was particularly pleased to see the tremendous move from donors with the focus on monthly giving, especially for younger donors. I reported on this before. As a follow up, Penelope recently wrote a blog about what donors are thinking, especially pertaining to disaster giving. Disaster donors are slightly different from other...

I never think of myself as a pack rat; but when it comes to fundraising, that’s exactly what I had become. So this past week, I took some time to go through old magazines and boxes of direct mail and, in particular, monthly giving samples. Sustainer trends and research; extra appeals and sustainer upgrades; thank you letters; stewardship newsletters; sustainer reminders; conversion packages. I still have a few more to scan in, but if you’re...

The other day, one of my clients mentioned that she has been giving $10 a month to an organization for three years. She signed up on the street, and that was that—no phone call, no thank-you letter, no email, no newsletter, no anything. Well, after this had been going on for three years, she called them up and said: “Enough is enough. While $10 a month is not a big amount, it’s all I can afford right now. I’m going to cancel because, clearly,...

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...

Many organizations are in the process of budgeting for their next fiscal year. Here’s a guest blog from Chrissy Reynolds who wrote a great post on how important it is for both organizations AND donors to budget their donations. That fits nicely with monthly giving, don’t you think? Donations to the non-profit sector for charitable causes grew by an estimated 3.6% in 2017 and is expected to increase to 3.8% this year. Many charities, foundations...

Here’s a guest blog where it’s all about the business focus for nonprofits. Somethings that’s very important when it comes to monthly giving. Once organizations see the power of those small donors, they’ll be more likely to focus on it more. As you know, nonprofit organizations are playing the positive role in the betterment of communities. Non-profit organizations are similar to for-profit organizations because they also need money to achieve...