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...

Soon, we’ll celebrate the D-Day invasion, which happened 75 years ago. Next year, we’ll celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. My mom and dad grew up in the Hague, Netherlands, and they were only 4 years old and 6 years old when Rotterdam was bombed and the war became real. My parents suffered through the Hunger Winter 1944/1945, when the Eastern part of the country was liberated after the major battle in Arnhem, but the...

Of course in your organization, nothing ever goes wrong with your monthly donors. But what would you do if something did? Would you hide? Would you stick your head in the sand and let someone else handle it? Or would you consider your donors and confess? The reality is that most of your donors will understand that things go wrong at times. They’re human beings after all. The key is to act right away, fix the problem and prevent it from...

As I’m working on my presentation for the Bridge Conference on “Flip or Flop,” what has worked and what hasn’t worked in monthly giving, I came across a few examples of what not to do. I’m not going to name names, but let me just say that all three examples come from big organizations. All three organizations have big sustainer programs. All three organizations have staff dedicated to their monthly giving programs. I’m a monthly donor to all...

If you have some monthly donors now, congratulations. Please allow me to share some recent statistics with you on why these small recurring donors are so powerful: Average monthly gift between $24 and $36, that’s between $288 and $432 a year! Typical way monthly donors pay: 80% credit card, 10% EFT/ACH, 10% other (PayPal and checks, where the organization sends reminders by mail). So, retention rate is much higher than the typical 45% retention...

When I teach webinars aimed at growing monthly giving programs, I typically do some polls. One of the questions I have asked is, “How often do you ask your donors to give monthly?” The sad reality was that 35% said they never asked. My obvious response is, “How do you expect to grow your program?” Never mind monthly gifts, I still see way too many organizations that are hesitant to ask for money. Too many people worry about reaching out to...

If you’re looking to grow your monthly donor program to the next level, there are many things you can do and it’s easier than you think! Let me give you a quick recap of who monthly donors are. The typical monthly donor is not the big check writer. He or she is often on a fixed income but right now he or she gives between $24 and $36 a month. That’s between $288 and $436 a year! Over the past few years, monthly giving has grown to some 30% of...

Fundraisers sometimes tell me: “I don’t want to convert my donors to monthly giving, because then I can’t ask them to give more!” Well, that’s an absolute myth! The best real-life example of monthly giving came from a story in my son’s university magazine. A donor made a $1,000,000 gift to support campus expansion. Do you know how he started his giving? As an alum, giving $5 a month! Now, I can’t guarantee that this will happen to your monthly...

I’m so excited… Because monthly giving is becoming more and more popular! Systems keep getting easier and easier.  More organizations have seen the ‘monthly donor light!’ But yet, so many organizations are slow to come on board.  With just a little bit of training, you too can start your monthly donor program and grow that sustainable revenue you need to keep your operating budget growing! A few years ago, it was all about systems. That’s not...

A few years ago, I joined 20 organizations as a monthly donor with a credit card that was going to expire one month after joining. I purposely did this to see the actions nonprofits took and how long it would take them to do so. The sad reality was that only two of the organizations called me. They did so within the first month of my card expiring, so that was good. They only tried calling me once, but they did leave a message. I, of course,...

One of those fundraising mantras I’ve heard over the years is: If you ask for advice, you’ll get money. If you ask for money, you’ll get advice. I’ve also heard that sometimes you should take responses to surveys with a grain of salt. What people say and do is different sometimes. Well that may be true, but like anything, it all depends on what the survey is for. Here are a few things to consider: Your monthly donors are already supporting you....

I love Netflix. It helped us do away with cable TV 10+ years ago. Now we live stream our favorite movies on our “older” TV. We still get Netflix DVDs in the mail, and we choose our favorite shows to binge-watch when we’re in that binge-watch mood. We’re in control of what we watch, and there’s always something on. Netflix is just one example of that overall subscription culture that has grown a lot over the past few years. For example, DVDs,...

Last week, I wrote about the coverage ratio for monthly donors and how important it is to start tracking it. If you don’t have a monthly donor retention process in place, you may find that you are not growing at all, no matter how many new monthly donors you bring in. You may just be treading water.  In my many years of working in and with monthly donor programs, the first step is to realize that sustainers may drop out because of credit card...

People ask me this question a lot: “My monthly donors only make up 3 percent (or fill in another percentage) of my donors. Is that good? What’s the percentage I should strive for?” The answer is: “It depends!” Let’s look at a few different scenarios: If you have 100,000 donors who have made a gift in the past year and 3 percent of them are sustainers, it’s not bad. That’s 3,000 donors giving you between $24 and $35 a month—or between $864,000...

It’s tax season. Phew, I just finished mine. It’s such a bear. The good news is that this also means last year’s giving updates are coming in. It is statistics season, and, of course, I’m always on the lookout for the latest statistics when it comes to monthly giving. While there are not that many companies that track sustainers yet, what we can see is amazingly powerful. So, if you or your boss are still hesitant, take a look at the latest...

Face-to-Face Sustainer Asks Are Growing in the United States In the US, Face-to-Face fundraising often means personal asking, as in meeting a donor and asking for a big gift. The Face-to-Face (F2F) I’m discussing today is different (at least for the US market). It’s known as canvassing, street fundraising, or door-to-door fundraising. It’s typically focused on generating monthly donors (sustainers) in well-trafficked areas, street corners,...

Snow. The cold white stuff. It’s been falling steadily for the past few hours, and there’s more to come. It reminds me of the time when my husband and the boys attended a special winter scout camp called The Klondike Derby. It was all about learning to survive in cold weather (and, of course, lots of fun). The worst thing that could happen was to get wet socks or clothes because you would not be able to dry up. You’d have to find ways to use...

Steven Shattuck recently gave us an update on an experiment he did with monthly donors. He made a gift to ten different organizations and then saw if they received any special treatment on Giving Tuesday. Spoiler alert: only one out of the ten did something special. Only one of them addressed Steven as a monthly donor. Only two even asked their monthly donors for a Giving Tuesday gift. How sad is that? Lots of money left on the table. But...

Choices. Opportunities. There are so many ways for donors to give now—it can be overwhelming. Not just for donors, but especially for you as the organization. Text-to-give. Crowdfunding. Facebook. YouTube. Instagram? Donate buttons anyone? You worry that you’re losing out on funds if you don’t offer it all. As I described in my two do-nuts of monthly giving, while it’s certainly important to make it easy for monthly donors to give, you also...

You may have heard that I love positive, uplifting, romantic movies and series! I typically “hang out at night” with something that has received the Hallmark stamp of approval. Recently, I discovered “Little Men.” Written in 1871, it’s a sequel to one of my favorite books of all-time by Louisa May Alcott, “Little Women.” I read it as a little girl, in the Dutch translation of course. Even with all their struggles, it was such a positive book....

Growing a monthly donor program is a drip-by-drip, bit-by-bit approach. That’s why January is such a great month to go for it. But there are two important things to bear in mind. First, I recommend creating a monthly-only page. When you’re trying to drive donors to give monthly, it must be very easy to find and very clear what you’re asking donors to do. If the only option is to give monthly, it must be very clear to the donor what will happen...

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...

My husband Patrick and I got married 13 years ago, just after Thanksgiving. That first year, I started the annual Christmas newsletter tradition. For each month, it’s a simple picture and a few lines of what my husband, his two boys and I did, and I mail it to friends and family. Nothing professional looking, created in good ol’ Publisher. That first year, I worried that people might think it was too much of a “bragging” letter, but then they...

As you’re getting ready for  your year-end campaigns, I hope you’ll make one resolution: include your monthly donors in your thank-you messaging. What does that mean? It means creating a tiny variation of your  email, saying, “Thank you for your monthly gifts. You make a difference!” It means including your monthly donors in your thank-a-thon before the end of the year. It even means including your monthly donors in your special-match messages,...

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...

As you’re growing your number of monthly donors over time, it’s important to consider how you should include your monthly donors in your year-end giving. Of course, every organization is different, but it’s important to remember one thing: Unless you promised your sustainer that they would not hear from you in any way shape or form or if the donor asked you to suppress them from any future communications, these wonderful committed donors will...

I just returned from the International Fundraising Congress held in Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands every October. It’s always a great gathering of some 1,000 individuals from 65+ countries who raise funds in their local countries, and sometimes outside of it as well. An added benefit is that I was able to visit some of my family and stock up on some of my favorite Dutch goodies and foods! I’d like to share my two favorite sessions with you. There...

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...

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...

As you may know, I travel a fair amount.  And when I do, I typically travel light and bring my bag on the plane. But when I fly somewhere to present a workshop, I need my “props,” extra handouts, etc.  So, I check my bag and hope the bag gets to the destination the same time I do. And I must admit, especially with weather delays, I’m waiting nervously at baggage claim, hoping and praying my bag made it! I know that the airlines have been doing...