Donor advised funds are all the craze lately. Now is the time to motivate those donors who want to optimize their tax deductions this year to consider a gift from their donor advised fund. Or, if they don’t have a donor advised fund set up yet, they may wish to consider it. Did you know that you can already set up a donor advised fund for $5,000 minimum? You don’t have to be a millionaire to start, but it’s a guaranteed tax deduction of $5,000...

  During the recent Virtual Summit for Nonprofit Changemakers , Ashton Rodenhiser did this wonderful visual overview of what I talked about for 45 minutes. Mind you, she had only heard me speak once before with a different monthly giving focus. It’s truly amazing how she can capture the essence of the session.  If nothing else, print out this little graphic and put it on your bulletin board. It’s a quick overview of why and how easy...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Donor data has always been important in raising funds for nonprofits. It’s literally your ‘gold.’ It provides you with everything you need to keep track of your donors and know most of what there is to know about them. Especially when it comes to outreach to potential monthly donors. Why is this helpful for outreach to potential monthly donors? For segmentation purposes, which then leads to personalization in email messaging and direct mail...

Monthly giving is not hard. It doesn’t require much investment at all, and a little bit of time and effort go a long way. I hope this will help you change your mindset, and you’ll find that monthly giving truly is very easy. Why? Because you already have the tools in-house. Because you already have the channels. You are already sending letters, sending emails, using social media and you’re probably also making phone calls. All it takes...

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...

Donor data has always been important in raising funds for nonprofits. It’s literally your ‘gold.’ It provides you with everything you need to keep track of your donors and know most of what there is to know about them. Especially when it comes to outreach to potential monthly donors. Why is this helpful for outreach to potential monthly donors? For segmentation purposes, which then leads to personalization in email messaging and direct mail...

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...

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 retention rates are also up. Let’s take a look at the growth...

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 if you’ve never taken a leadership class, this book gives you, in easy bites, some of the key...

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 practice as a whole. Here is my take: Automatic upgrading is a bad idea, period! There are several reasons: It makes for a...

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This quote by Benjamin Franklin came to mind as I was lucky to get my second vaccine. There’s something amazingly liberating about knowing that you’ve done everything in your power to stay healthy. Not to mention that I’m really excited about traveling some more. When you think about starting or growing your monthly donors, think of it as the best way to prevent your organization from...

Have you noticed? Lately, when you order something through Amazon, you get an email with a picture of the item showing up in front your door. This happens as you’re hearing the delivery truck’s engine rev up to leave. Is that cool or what? I call that instant gratification. Often, until I open the package, I don’t even know what’s inside. There’s the surprise effect, like: “Wow, this came fast! I only ordered it yesterday.” As nonprofits, you...

Based on a colleague’s recommendation, I ordered the book “From the Ground Up: Digital Fundraising for Nonprofits,” written by Brock Warner, CFRE. It’s a great little gem with all the basics anybody and everybody could need for digital fundraising. Online advertising, social media, welcome emails, payment processors, Google Analytics and so much more. Credit: Brock Warner, CFRE In two sittings, I was able to learn all the basics I needed...

When I was reviewing my monthly gifts for the year, I realized that I hadn’t given monthly to several organizations since May. I call this a soft cancel. I didn’t mean to stop giving monthly, and I didn’t take action to stop. I had received a new card at the time, but things were very busy. I simply didn’t take the time to sit down and contact the organizations. Of course, part of me also wanted to see what happened. Sadly, in many cases,...

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. When I was reviewing my gifts, I thought about those organizations I didn’t feel an affinity with any longer. Or I didn’t feel they were making me feel special. Some I...