Renavigating the Road to Monthly Giving Success

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Shawn McClellan. And it is my privilege to introduce Erica Waasdorp, president of a direct solution. I’m gonna let her introduce herself here in just a moment. But a few housekeeping items, we are recording these sessions that will be made available Read More

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Shawn McClellan. And it is my privilege to introduce Erica Waasdorp, president of a direct solution. I’m gonna let her introduce herself here in just a moment. But a few housekeeping items, we are recording these sessions that will be made available to you. After the presentation. There’s a handout or multiple handouts under the details section next to live chat. So feel free to download any of those. If you have any questions that you would like us to address during the q&a, please place those in the q&a tab. And if you want to learn more, there’s going to be a poll under the poll section. And Erica will also have two polls of her own during the presentation. So Erica, introduce yourself and I’m gonna make myself scarce.
Alright, thanks, John. Alright, so really excited to be here. I’m Erica was dope and I love love, love, love, love monthly giving. So I wrote a couple books on it. And I’ve been working with Jordan perfect on their monthly donor marketing kids start a kid possibly retention kit. And again, I absolutely love monthly giving. So today we’re going to talk about re navigating the road to monthly giving success. I mean, this will sash it this whole this whole two weeks, two days, sorry, two weeks are about refreshing, obviously, like, you know, like all of your options, and monthly giving is no different, right? So we’re going to talk about how can you re navigate the road to monthly giving success? So really give you a couple of highlights here like why are we talking about monthly giving? Why is it so important? Why does it continue to grow? How can you commit to it that’s really, really important. And how small gift can quickly become big. And then of course, we’re going to look at your questions. So I love this quote, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now. And that’s really critical if those organizations during when when the pandemic first happened three years ago, if they had more monthly donors, they would have been in a lot better shape. And that’s why this has really taken off even more. And it’s been very, very successful even during the pandemic. But let’s look at a couple of definitions for us like because I like talking about monthly donors. There is other frequencies, you know, so there’s like annual donors, quarterly donors, sometimes even weekly donors biannual donors, but the bulk of monthly giving recurring giving is really comes from monthly donors. That’s where the money comes from. monthly donors give the most amount of money, but use the other terms, regular givers, sustainers, committed givers recurring donors, and then you may have a specific name for your program. So I’d love to have you use the chat. And Shawn can shout some some names out and when it comes up to like say, what is some of the names for your program if you have one? And while you’re doing that, let’s get you know, like I just played around with Chad GBT, everybody’s UD Chad GPT. Right. So and it says he creates a monthly giving program names and here are some options, right? Community Care Club empowerment allies impact circle, change makers, so all of these things, right? So, so play around with that a little bit. So Shawn, anybody share any of the names that they have? For the program?
I see we got monthly friends circle neighborhood circle the share table. I like that one.
Yeah, I like that. Yeah.
Anything else cost? Opportunity happens. And
okay, great. Awesome. So, you know, so if you don’t have a name, or if you have a name using man, you know, I started this a couple of years ago, it’s totally okay, to refresh that, at some point. This organization, you know, they’d sent me all of a sudden, they didn’t really have much of a name before. And all of a sudden, I’m getting this email that says, hey, we’re now a quality advocate circle, right? So, so it’s totally okay to say, well, let’s come up with something new. And I’m going to relaunch that even to my existing monthly donors, right. So in in a name is important, um, for recognition for stewardship, but if you don’t have a name yet, that’s totally okay. You don’t have to have a name to get It started but I’m just like showing you this and saying, Hey, if you’re like, you know, wanting to do something new, it’s okay to refresh and re introduce it right? Now, why are monthly donors so important? Because they give you that unrestricted, reliable revenue that you can count to keep your lights on to keep your mission going. Younger donors like it, guess what, a lot of younger donors, they’re used to subscriptions, right? And monthly giving is kinda like a subscription in many, many ways, right? But it’s also especially so donor centric, donors can give it away that’s comfortable for them. It’s an efficient use of resources for you, right? So we tend to rates improve really, really powerful. And just think about the like, tremendous lifetime value, monthly donors tend to be six times more likely to leave you in their will. So small gifts now, but they’ll all they’ll leave you the ultimate gift, right? And again, who would have thought we’re in the middle of we’re still kind of like recovering from a pandemic, we’re still in the middle of a war, right? We’ve got disasters, we’ve got wildfires going on right now as we speak, that are hitting the US, right. So lots and lots of disasters. Having monthly gifts means that you can plan on those unrestricted funds to be there, no matter what happens. On average, they stay with you at least five years 90% retention rate. And it’s an overall increase of like revenue of like, doubles, right? And again, your lifetime value increases as well. So all of these are great numbers to say, man, we got to start growing these monthly donors, right? If we’re looking at like some of the trends in online giving, monthly giving was the only piece that was growing last year 28%, of monthly giving. That was how much the percentage was of all of the online revenue. But compared to the one time revenue that had dropped, monthly giving was still growing right? Now, if you’re saying well, I don’t know what can I expect in my nonprofit? Here’s a chart you can say if you’re an environmental organization, you could expect maybe 31% of your revenue to come in from all forgiving. If you Public Media, right? They’ve been pretty much short of the word some of the leaders when it comes to monthly giving 54% of revenue, online revenue comes from monthly gifts for Public Media, I’m getting health sizzle is still relatively small 13%. But again, all of this is growing. So take a look and think where do I fall? Right. But there’s definitely the potential wouldn’t you want to grow to 54% of your online revenue coming in for a month? Yes. Right. Really, really powerful. And as I mentioned, bumped, the donors give more money. Retention rate increases mentioned that’s 90%. So again, and you know, don’t imperfect has this wonderful little dashboard, so you can see exactly how your retention rate increases if you grow monthly giving. Now, here’s one last reason why monthly giving is so important. Most charities, they want the donors to go into that upper quadrant, right, right there on the right, the realities, only 6% of your donors are major donors, major donor prospects. So there’s a small percentage of donors in that in that area, they’re most of your donors, or your smaller donors, they might give on a regular basis, if you send them an appeal, they might give you two or three times a year. They’re not giving a lot of money yet, but if you can get them to give regularly give monthly, then that will bring them up the pyramid up that quadrant, right. So monthly giving is really, really important. So I hope I have convinced you of that. Alright, so what I’ve just like have shown if you want to launch the poll now, like how many monthly donors do you have in your organization? And while you’re typing in the answer,
I just launched for you, yes.
Okay. All right. So I’ll take a second. All right. So, so just think about it. And obviously I haven’t seen the polls yet, but like if you had 100 monthly donors, right now, industry average is $25 a month. So that’s $300 a year. So 100 monthly donors are worth $30,000. If you have 500 monthly donors a day give me $300 a year. That’s all By noon $50,000 from 500 monthly donors. So Shawn, can you share the poll results?
So far, we have about 76%. And the numbers are changing as we speak, but 76% have fewer than 100. About 15% said between 105 105.6 have more than 500. And about 2% are unsure.
Great. Okay. So in other words, those for that 76%, hey, if you could get from 50 or so to 100 monthly donors, it’s going to be worth $30,000 on an annual basis, right? So that might be a great goal to write down and say, hey, what if we could double the number of monthly doors we have, then that’s where we’re going to get. Now, the other thing is, if you think about, like, why why are you know, donors giving monthly on because people ask me this all the time, like, well, you know, don’t do don’t just really want to help, I know, we’re kind of in the middle of a inflation and cost of living crisis. So the reality is, donors want to help. Monthly giving is easy for them. It’s affordable, it fits their budget, several of them may be on a fixed income. So monthly giving is a great way for them to make a difference to the organization that they care about. And you know, that’s that’s really why monthly giving is so appealing now to your donors as well. But one thing to remember is that donors are monthly multichannel, right? So all of the things that we do when it comes to talking about monthly giving, can be used in all of the different channels and messaging that you’re using in your organization. The key with monthly giving, and I said it is you have to commit to it, how can you expect a donor to commit to giving monthly if you’re not even committed to it? Right. So I recommend that you join your own program, first join a couple of other programs to see what they’re doing. Right. You can borrow and you know, from what other organizations are doing, I give to like, 4050 different organizations, and I learned from them, I learned from you. Right? So that’s how I, you know, I see the growth, I see some ideas. And again, you know, I’m, I love monthly giving, so I have to join the program, right? So commit to it have be the driver, and then you know, it really helps you growing the program and keep it on track. Because you can’t do the start, stop start stop start stop thing, right. So monthly giving is really something that you have to do on an ongoing basis. And here’s the reality, when I started in monthly giving 30 years ago, it was hard it was mail and phone, now you have the tools, right? That’s the key, you have the tools. So what it takes to grow is you got to get that commitment. You got to have the systems you have those systems, you have the tools, then we’re looking at, like what are some of the amounts you can ask for, and storytelling, all of these things are really what you already have in place for your regular fundraising. The only difference is, instead of asking for a one time gift, we’re gonna ask for a monthly gift. That’s it, right? So use the tools you have and then start asking. So I’m all for keeping it simple, right? I’m all for trying to start with a small step. So create what I call like a tiny story. Try to say well, how can I explain in one, two or three lines maximum, how the donor can make a difference to the people I serve the animals I help through a monthly gift? That’s the key. So how can you create a little tiny story that we’re going to show you where you can use those things right? So but create a tiny story that shares the need and why it’s important for the donor to make a monthly gift. And here’s what I recommend that you do. Start with those monthly donors you already have in place, even if it’s 10 or 20 Reach out to them and say why are you giving monthly create some testimonials create what we call like social proof right? Um so find out why they are giving monthly and they you can use that to help you create your or tiny story, this organization did a simple email survey to their monthly donors. And they got an amazing, different, wonderful testimonials. And again, I want to support the work. Although the amount isn’t large, I want to be one of the people who’s always there for the organization month after month, right. So this is just one example of a testimonial that could help you create your tiny story, then create your monthly giving forum. If you haven’t looked at it in a while, take a look. I know like after this is a whole session about like monthly giving forms and and best practices within DonorPerfect. So take a look at what you can do with your forms. Because you want to drive people to go there, right. So create a tiny story, create your form and get people to go there. Also, it’s going to be really, really important that whenever you ask somebody to make a monthly gift, that it’s very clear. So drive them to a special monthly only form, right, or your monthly gift ensures seniors don’t have to choose between food and rent. That is the tiny story. That’s it. Your monthly gift, ensure seniors don’t have to choose between food and rent. That’s one example. And then you see some examples of amounts where this organization, ask for that help for them. Right. So but again, this is all about monthly giving, right? It’s really clear, start directing donors to that monthly only form. That’s the key I want to give monthly, really key have that tiny story everywhere you possibly can put it near that month, the only page a month a donation is the most effective way to help families year round. Thank you, right. So again, these are just a couple of different things that you have like where you can create that tiny story. And then add a button. The power of a button is huge right? Now, here’s an example of a test that was done. On the left hand side, you see there was just a donate button only right here. Then what they did was they said let’s add the give monthly button to the home page. Now what do you think was the result of that? You don’t use a chat to answer that question. Like what do you think? was the result of that test? Take gas was at a 10% increase of 20% increase 30% increase? What is what was the guess? What do you think? Tron? What do you think people thinking?
I’m hoping people are being optimistic and going for that 30.
Okay. All right. Well, that’s great. Okay, so, so the reality is not quite 30. But it was like 23% increase in recurring gifts, just by adding that second button. Right? Again, so two, so it can be really, really powerful. And remember, that give monthly button, then obviously has to go to the monthly only page, right? So so it’s really, really clear, give monthly light a candle in this case, right? This a religious organization. But here’s another example of an organization how they did it. This is a membership organization join donate give monthly. So if you have that option, take a look and see if you can add the button on the homepage right away. So it’s very, very clear that you want more monthly donors, right? Again, just think about what will a monthly gift do for the people or the animals that you serve? And again, how can you explain this in one, two or three lines. And normally when I do a workshop, we have a little bit more time to kind of actually create these but but I give make this your homework and say, go back and write down on a one liner, a two liner and a three liner. And I’ll give you a couple of examples. Lasting Change starts with you giving monthly is the most powerful way to donate right give monthly. Again, when you give to World Vision you will equip kids and families around the world to thrive with reliable access to basics like clean water, nutrition, health care, education, and more. Worldvision is obviously a huge organization, they’ve tested this, they would not put this button in here with this message if they hadn’t tested right. So well. You can add another button in your email every time and see what happens. Right. So so just one example. Here’s another example. Yes, I’ll give monthly with the monthly donation you become a honored member of the supper club, you will help ensure that we can provide healthy meals and deliveries to all of our clients. Every email, they have these two buttons in there. Yes, I will give Montego some of the only page Yes, I will make a one time gift obviously goes to the one time gift page, right? So, so these buttons are very, very powerful. So just think about like, where else can you include your tiny story? Maybe in social media, right? Social media is great. This is just like a two liners here. Right? So will you join in helping families in need around the globe? or in an email newsletter? Every time you send out an email newsletter, with an update, put the monthly gift opportunity in there, right? But how about putting that little tiny story in your email signature, support us with a monthly donation be and make long lasting impact, become a rock star today? Then obviously, if you are sending welcome emails, consider a Mumfie. Ask in one of your welcome emails I recommend like the second one or the third. But definitely, there’s proof out there that shows that the bulk of monthly donors join within the first 90 days after their first gift. So make it easy for the donor to consider a monthly gift by offering that option in your welcome emails. If you have those. Again, think about that second button in your longer regular emails, donate this summer, donate monthly and help families year round.
And the reality is just having that second button, in this case in this email generated a 10% lift of our new monthly donors just by adding this little button right. It’s one email, it’s one button. Why do you have to lose by testing this right? So of course, obviously, can you want to make sure that you go to that Monty only page. Now bringing up text giving, it’s really a great a great tool. I was at a conference last week in Europe and boy text giving is huge in in many, many European countries as reminders as thank yous as ways to get right. And I can only see this growing here, more and more and more. So use texting, as thank yous. And again, use it in conjunction with an email with a mailing and you know, make it part of like a multi channel campaign. So everything is focused on getting the donor to consider a monthly gift. Of course, if you’re sending out appeals, this is pretty much become a best practice that you offer the monthly gift as part of the appeal. I’ve tested it a number of times it does not hurt one time response, it does generate some new monthly donors. But as you’re as you’re adding that to their so, so get it doesn’t cost you much more or nothing to add it to your appeal reply form. So, so I highly recommend that you add that to it. And as I mentioned, meal, phone, email, texting, digital, all of these sorts of social media, all of these channels together, make it even more powerful. To give you an example, this was an organization and they had a goal of bringing in 15 new monthly donors, they sent a postcard with a tiny story. Your monthly gift betters the lives of Palestine Refugees around across the Middle East. You can easily adjust or cancel your commitment at any time. That’s like a two liner, right? So they sent out a postcard. And then they did a whole series of emails that was driving people to to support a match. They actually had a matching challenge. You have a secret admirer it was a series of three emails plus a final reminder. And they were blown away. They generated 64 new monthly donors by the combination of that postcard, the email and social media support right? And you see the images are the same. It’s like the colorful images, the messaging, it all fits together. Right. So that’s it when it comes to generating new monthly donors. Now of course when we’re looking at like, Okay, well now we’ve got these monthly doors, what do we do? How do we keep them engaged. And when I started in monthly giving, it was always like, yeah, you know, we don’t want to touch them, we want to leave them alone. Well, the reality is we know better now, right? We know that monthly donors want to be engaged, they want to be part of your community, and they want to hear from you. They want to see how their gifts are making a difference. But with that, it’s really hard, obviously, to keep coming up with new ideas, right with new stories. So we use what you have, maybe you’ve put something on social media, but you haven’t sent it in an email yet. Maybe you have a thank you video that you did for an event. Set, put it in an email, right. So there’s lots and lots of things that I I see, especially smaller nonprofits trying to reinvent the wheel when they’re sitting on a lot of great stuff in their archives. I worked with an organization recently and I said, Okay, well, let’s take a look at some emails that you did two years ago, that were really successful in generating new one time gifts. And we reworked those emails with an ask for a monthly gift. And it was it worked phenomenal, right? So donors are not going to remember. So they’re not gonna say, oh, you’re a bad organization because you reuse something that you sent two years ago? No, no, no, no. Okay. So just like Do yourself a favor, keep it simple for yourself. Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose, reuse your stories, because again, it’s impossible to keep coming up with new ideas all the time, right. So again, keep it simple, doable. Make sure that when you send a thank you to your new monthly donors, that you’re sending it out by mail, email is great. Love it, by all means do it, but something in the mail. And if you can make a personal handwritten, even more powerful, right, welcome to the compassionate care so coy. I’m going to hold on to this. So and the donor is going to want to hold on to this and make it easy to for them to connect with you to follow up to ask questions, have a phone number there, have a person’s name, have an email address in there, and this this action package came with a little business card. So make it personal and make sure that the donor can contact you in an easy way. But so many other things right? Well, again, that was maybe one of the advantages of, of the pandemic, if there was such a thing is that we’re all used to doing a lot more things virtually right? Guess what, we’re on this webinar series here, this these two days, right. So think about easy ways that you can give an update to your donors. Maybe it’s just like a half an hour, you know, video call, little zoom call or something like that, it pre recorded something that that you can send out to your donors, this organization is very small organization in every quarter, they do like a, they call it a heartbeat call, right? And they send an email, they invite the monthly donors and even some major donors to participate. And then they send the recording after, right. So so this is a great way to to engage your monthly donors because they want to hear from you. They want to know what’s going on. They want to see that their gifts are making a difference. Now, one last thing about like keeping your monthly donors because that’s also key right. And I know that’s typically the most challenging part when it comes to monthly giving is start with that donation experience. And this is where you know like the the monthly giving form is so important that the donor really really wants to give monthly that’s key. So they are committed on so that’s that’s the first part because that you have a right thank you message right away on a thank you email following up. But then it comes into like what are some of the other things you can do? Like that personal thank you message, baby, thank you call really, really powerful, right? A lot of people don’t get messages anymore. They don’t get personal thank yous anymore. So and it’s okay to leave a message right? So that stewardship is that like ongoing recognition, that becomes key then as well. Telling the donor how their monthly gifts are making a difference to keep them engaged, and then it’s going to be much harder for them to cancel their monthly gift right? If they really excited about how their gifts are making a difference for you. Then they want to stay right. They want to continue to give Add to your organization. And you know, and again, if for some reason, their payment doesn’t come in, pull out all the stops, because they did not tell you that they wanted to stop, right, they want to continue. But they didn’t realize that there are payment that they call it expired or that their cord was, you know, stolen and that they had to tell you to give you the updated information, right. So and doing a perfect house, like a credit card update or as well. So that’s really helpful. So kind of like make sure that you pull it all the stops. So that way, you can keep your monthly donors going on as as much as you possibly can use some automations. If their payment didn’t come in, then you can do a follow up by sending out an automated email. And don’t ever give up, right, that’s the key as well. So you see your automatic processing is on automatic receipts is on, you can even consider like automated retention messaging as well. So as much as you can automate, by like making it personal as possible, right. So you don’t want to sound like it’s coming from a machine, you really want to still have the personal touch and the personal tone and voice that donors are used to with your organization. So but use automations to kind of like, create some space for you to then pick up the call and write write a personal note as a as a thank you right?
And then finally, again, I hope that you can hear how enthusiastic I am about monthly gearing right, is that it’s really, really key to celebrate some of your wins, right? So say you did an email campaign and you got five new monthly donors great. You know, like, if you’re doing an email series in and maybe a postcard campaign, and you get 1015 20 monthly donors or maybe even 50 monitors. Great, right? So in when, however you share the results for your monthly gift campaign, annualize the results. So it’s not like oh, we brought in like 10 new monthly donors at $25 a month. So it’s like, Whoa, that doesn’t look very, very much right. But hey, we brought in 10 monthly donors. And they’re worth like, $3,000. Right? So now it’s like, me, I didn’t realize a 10 month returns were worth that much money, right? So annualize your results and share your wins, especially with those in your organization that are not as on top of it as you are right. So annualized those results. So just a couple of key takeaways here, generating monthly donors, I hope I’ve convinced you that it’s really important and it deserves some focus. There are really many, many, many tactics now to grow your monthly donor program. But pick something, pick what you’re comfortable with, pick one thing, and then start with a tiny story, create that, add a button in and see what happens right and again, as and then chip away at it. That’s really what’s what’s key. So start by by one thing with that tiny story of button, and then start implementing it, start sharing it. So it’s really all about like testing what works best for you. Find the approaches the messages to challenge channels that work best for you and your donors in your particular area in your that want to support your mission. Right. I create a little tech checklist here tiny monthly donors story monthly donor page ready button, add some buttons. I love buttons, right? Welcome emails, special email, tiny stories on your appeal, reply form, maybe ever print newsletter, put in a little message every time use that testimonial that you got from those monthly donors you already have. And repeat and generate the results right? It’s all about like planting the seeds as much as possible. In you know the messages that you have in the ways that you communicate with your monthly donors and with your donors in general. Now, one of the other recommendations I make and again, I work with like organizations of all different sizes. But what I found is those organizations that says look, I’m going to make my monthly donors my sustainers a line item in the budget. So it’s like so that way everybody in the organization can see hey, at the beginning of the year, this is how many monthly donors we have Let’s say you have humped 100 monthly donors, there were $30,000. At the end of the year, hey, we doubled that number of monthly donors. Now it’s worth $60,000. Right? So people can see the tremendous impact of the work you’re doing with growing these monthly donors, and then write down your goals. So I’m going to ask you to ask John to launch another poll right now. The final poll of today’s session here is like, write down your goals. So what is your monthly donor growth goal for the next year? Where do you what would you like to see in your organization?
Alright, poll is up. We’ll give everybody a moment to get those Yeah.
Again, I know I’ve been going at rapid speed here. So but I wanted to make sure that we had some time for, for questions.
I have a lot of them like, it’s gonna be an involved q&a. Oh, good. Good. Good. Good. Excellent.
All right. What’s, yeah, go ahead, what’s your monthly donor growth goal for the next year.
So we’ve got about 40%, hoping to double their monthly donor count about 5%. Trying to triple about 20% are getting ready to start one and 40% are looking to refresh and revamped their programs as of right now. Excellent.
Great. Okay. Thanks for sharing that. Okay. So and I hope I conveyed to you like the monthly donor programs, they grow by just chipping away at them. I’m a golfer, I ghost, I’m not very good. I go straight. I do go very far. But I’m pretty good on the, I mean, pretty good chippers, so so just like chip away at him. That’s how it grows. Because I love this quote, to great things are done by a series of small things brought together by fanciful Hall, or Vincent van Gogh, as you say. So great things are done by a series of small things brought together. That’s what I hope I conveyed to you today that it doesn’t take a lot of investment, it doesn’t take a lot of time, it’s a little bit of time, it’s a little bit of chipping away at it. And that’s how you can grow and refresh your monthly giving program. All right, so that’s it for me. I’m opening it up for questions. All right,
so I’m gonna go through the questions people can upvote. So I’m just gonna hit the ones that seem to be the most popular. And we’ll we’ll just work in a couple of minutes. So first question, should we still solicit our monthly donors? And if so, should it be less frequently than our other donors?
Yeah, great question. So the answer is typically, yes. You can still solicit your monthly donors, take a look at those appeals that are most successful. If you have like, say, a membership card, if you have a match appeal, those are really popular with general donors, and they’re also going to be popular with your monthly donors. So again, take a look and saying, Okay, how often do I even reach out to my donors, if you’re reaching and you know, if you have a print newsletter, a print newsletter is a great appeal to send to your monthly donors. Again, it gives them an update on how their gifts are making a difference. Write annual reports, if you’re still sending those out, you may want to consider like even your annual report or postcard to send out to your multi donors. But think about like what would be what would you as a donor, basically be upset about if you didn’t get it? Right. So severe, like I said, if you get a match appeal, include your multi. But make sure that in your appeal when you send it to the multi donors that you’re asking for an extra gift. And that you see thank you for your ongoing monthly support. How you do that, whether it’s a laser print, or like a little handwritten note on this lots and lots of things you can do with printing now. But make sure that the donor knows that you know that they are giving monthly, right, so you’re asking for an extra gift. So that also means the extra gift amount on the reply form, should pretty much be like I always recommend like keeping it a blank leaving at a blank amount. Like, you know, here’s my extra gift of dollar sign line, right? So because you don’t want to ask them for a gift that that’s based on their monthly gift because then you’re asking for too small but so so keep that keep that in mind but So recognize And then it’s totally okay to consider asking them a couple of times a year. So, great question.
Yeah, no, I agree. I was very interested in that one myself. Our next question is if you have a small instale monthly giving program, how and when would you reinvigorate or relaunch your program?
So, so again, is that we, you know, we, it, it all depends on like, you know, like, talk to a couple of donors and mean, if they think everything’s going great, then, you know, maybe you don’t need to necessarily reinvigorate. But it’s more like, take a look at what you’ve done to get to where you are. And then what can you do more of, to add some new monthly donors to the mix? Right. So, so if you think if if I mean, you know, we fundraisers, and I’m actually wearing my fundraising shirt right now, so we fundraisers tend to be we tend to be bored sooner than the donors are, you know, so we’re like, oh, we need something new when the reality is no, no, they think everything’s going fine. So. So if you say, Well, I don’t think I’ve done enough, I’ve not tried this button. I’ve not tried this, I’ve only sent one email like two years ago, then I think that is enough to reinvigorate and refresh your program. So, so So just make an inventory of what you’ve done first, before you think that it’s not good enough. Does that make sense? So
yeah, I think it’s always a great idea to reach out to your donors. I mean, they know themselves the best. Yeah. All right. So this one’s a great service. Great. Yeah. We had a presentation about those. So this one’s more of a technical data entry question. But what are the best practices for which fields to use in recording monthly donors? For example, a longer term campaign a one time solicitation something else entirely?
That’s that’s really, I don’t know, what if that’s if you’re a DonorPerfect users. So. So that may be a good question to hold for the, for the next session with Janet about how best to enter it. Because I’m, I mean, but yeah, whenever you ask for a monthly gift, it really should be, you know, you should know that it’s a it’s a multi donor join. Right. So but what field to use? I don’t necessarily have the right answer for that, unfortunately. So.
And honestly, what we teach as DonorPerfect trainers, it really will depend on the organization. So definitely anybody that’s interested in that one, check out Janet’s presentation coming up next. Yeah. All right. So our next question. We’ve had monthly donors for years, we’ve upped the asked multiple times over the years, what are some best practices for donors to increase the amount they give to higher amounts? And we’ve actually had that have that question a couple of times in a few different ways.
Oh, okay. Great. Okay. So, um, so yeah, I mean, it usually is. It all depends. Again, it all depends on what, what you can do in your organization, right? Because now you’re talking about like, segmentation. So you may want to divvy up your monthly donors and say, anybody who’s given say, less than $20 a month, we’re gonna send them an email and ask them to allow increased by $2 a month. So that in email with the ask would be like, Oh, would you consider an upgrade of $2 more a month, and then you get them to go to a page where you have the new amount, that’s like, you know, $20 plus two, and then maybe $20 times, you know, six and $20 times 12, or something like that. So you’re trying to get them to when to get to the page you trying to upgrade them to, to a couple of different options, right. But in the email, you only asking for a small upgrade. And then your donors, your multidose are like say between 20 and five $50 a month, you may want to ask them to consider $5 more a month and again, then you drive them to a page that offers a couple of different options that are higher, right? So that’s, that’s the key. So so you don’t want to make it too high. But you also don’t want to make it too low. But you do want to make sure that the donor opts into the new amount. So again, great, great question. So I hope that was that was helpful, but But yeah, segment your donors, but by all means, also take a look and make sure that they have been giving monthly for at least six months, right so so you don’t want to do too soon. You don’t want to come across too greedy. But you want to give ask the donors To consider it and in some industry study I saw recently is like, on average monthly donors tend to give 6%. On Monday North’s tend to give at least one extra gift a year. And then 12% of monthly donors tend to upgrade. So ideally, you want to do both right. So, so yeah, so just because they give you monthly doesn’t mean that they don’t care about other things that you’re doing. So you want to you want to reach out and ask them to consider it.
Absolutely. I think we’ve got time for one or two more questions. So the next one is, do you have any additional resources to help with growing an established slash mature monthly giving program? For example, this organization’s goal is to go from a quarter million a year in monthly gifts to a million dollars a year in monthly? Yeah, great.
Okay. Yeah, I don’t know. Sure. I mean, I’m happy to share my, my email address, because yeah, I’ve got a lot of responses. I’ve got planners, and you know, so in other words, I have plans for like a startup organization, and I have planners for like, you know, more mature organizations. But every clan is custom made, really, because you may have fewer email addresses than another or you may have more even more mailing addresses. And, you know, so every single plan is custom made, but it’s an Excel sheet. So so if you want to reach out after I’m happy to do to provide that as a as a planner, so that we you can you can help because yeah, and then you got to work the plan. Right. So
for everybody who hasn’t downloaded the slide deck yet, that is under details. Eric has information is in there. All right. And then our last question, it’s a twofer here. When we say that monthly giving us the most effective way to give, are we worried that it undermines people who can’t give monthly at this time? And is the follow up? Is that even something that we need to be worried about as fundraisers?
Yeah, again, I also have a shirt that says, Hold on, let me overthink this. So because that’s what we as fundraisers tend to do all the time, right? So. So again, if you reach out to a donor, and they say, Look, I just want to give once and or I only want to give one time gift? Well, again, give them a code in in the database, it says Do not ask them for monthly gifts, right? Um, but typically, because you’re driving, like if you if you’re sending out appeals, you’re usually driving them to the one time plus month and getting paid, right? So so the donor still has a choice there to make a monthly gift or a one time gift, if you’re sending on a couple of appeals a year where you’re driving them to the month, the only page well, if they don’t want to do it, at that point, they will self identify and make a one time gift by going to your website. So So those, you know, you’re not going to send monthly giving emails per se every every day, right or every month. So so, you know, as you getting more, you know, again, I ran out a program at one point where we had close to 200,000. Latinos. So and that’s where we said, Okay, well, we’ve asked these and again, this was in the mail, right? So we asked them, like a couple of times, if they hadn’t been asked like five times or more, and they had not said that they were going to give multi, we would give them arrest. So but that was because meal was more expensive, right. And the same with telemarketing was more expensive when so but you know, donors are gonna help. And today, maybe they say, Look, I don’t want to do monthly, but you know, three months from now, it might change, right? So, so, so don’t shoot yourself in the foot by overthinking it too much. So don’t raise one out. That’s that’s the key. So and they will do that in a way that they’re comfortable with. Right. So.
Absolutely. Well, that brings us right up to the end of our session. So I apologize. We did not get to every question. There were so many in there. So I tried to get the ones that seem to have the biggest amount of audience support. So if you’d like to follow up, please feel free to reach out to our support team or your training if you have questions about monthly giving with DonorPerfect. Or reach out to Erica with her.
Yeah, send me happy to help as you’re developing your program. So I’m really excited about it. Yeah.
So Erica, thank you so much for being here. This was a fantastic presentation. And then for everybody else we are getting into our next sessions at 230 Eastern, so that’s going to be in about 10 minutes or so. A almost direct follow up to this presentation is how to reengineer your donation process with my colleague, Janet Carroll. So we hope to see you in any of those presentations. And again, thank you all so much for joining us. Thank you so much for joining us. Take care. Bye bye