October 7, 2020 |

DonorPerfect Release Announcement: Monthly Giving Stats At Your Finger Tips

Sometimes, it’s easier for donors to donate a small amount every month rather than give a large, one-time gift. DonorPerfect’s data shows that these committed and enthusiastic supporters make a substantial dent in overall giving. Why? Because monthly donors provide your nonprofit with a reliable revenue source through small monthly donations that add up to a sizable annual total. The average lifetime value of a monthly donor is $2,400.00 compared to the average lifetime value of a one-time donor, which is just $70.00. How can you estimate the impact of monthly givers on your nonprofit organization? DonorPerfect’s new Monthly Giving Dashboard and Monthly Giving Report expands your monthly giving toolbox to include monthly giving metrics you can use to track and measure your program’s success.

How to Measure Your Monthly Giving Success from Your Dashboard

Understanding your monthly giving program success and the metrics that define it can help your team improve your fundraising results. Let’s review the monthly giving metrics in DonorPerfect’s new Monthly Giving Dashboard.

Monthly Giving Metric #1: Monthly Giving Amounts

The monthly giving amount tile helps you quickly determine the total dollar amount received through your monthly giving program in a 12-month span and determine your yearly average monthly gift.

Why the Monthly Giving Amount Metric Matters

You can gauge how well your monthly giving program is performing by tracking the total funds raised through your monthly giving program. Compare this amount to your annual revenue to determine what percentage of your funding is received by monthly donors. Challenge yourself to increase this percentage over time.

As you encourage your monthly givers to upgrade, pay close attention to the average gift amount to see if your messaging is paying off. The current average monthly gift is $53.00 and this amount has been increasing. How does your nonprofit stack up?

Monthly Giving Metric #2: Monthly Giving Donors

The Monthly Giving Donors tile tells you how many donors gave a gift that was processed through monthly giving in the past 12 months. Donors with more than one recurring gift will only be counted once to ensure an accurate and distinct count of monthly givers.

This tile also includes a 12-month conversion rate metric. This metric takes the total amount of donors who have made a monthly gift in the past 12 months and divides that number by the total number of active donors (any donor who has made a gift in the past 12 months).

Why the Monthly Giving Donor Metric Matters

The 12 month conversion rate is a great statistic to keep an eye on as you try to grow your monthly giving program. While new donors may be a metric you pay close attention to, converting existing donors to monthly donors can have a larger financial impact. DonorPerfect users have found that monthly donors generate an average of $360.00 annually compared to one-time donors who contribute an average of $50.00 annually. That means you’re likely to increase a single donor’s annual contributions up to 7 times by converting the supporter to a monthly donor.

Monthly Giving Metric #3: Failed Amount

Stay on top of donors at risk of not fulfilling their monthly pledges by monitoring transactions that failed to process. The Failed Amount tile will show the total dollar amount of all gift transactions that have failed to process in the last 30 days. If you click on the dollar amount, it provides you with a quick report that lists out the donors whose transactions have failed. A hyperlink to their constituent record is available for easy access to their information.

In addition to the failed gift amount, this tile will also display ALL bank returns, not just those that failed through monthly giving. Now you can quickly identify failed gifts and address them immediately.

Why Monitoring Failed Monthly Gifts Matters

Reaching out to these at-risk donors early is the key to retaining them as monthly givers and avoiding unpaid pledges. After analyzing DonorPerfect user data, we have found that 85% of donors who enrolled in automatic monthly giving in 2017 are still giving today! A quick phone call can let your donor know that their gift is impactful and motivate them to keep giving for years to come.

Pro Tip: To avoid failed transactions, consider using Credit Card Updater. This feature updates expiring credit cards with new information so monthly gifts can continue processing uninterrupted.

Monthly Giving Financial Report

To access and run the Monthly Giving Financial Report:

1. Go to Reports>Report Center and click on the Financial Reports folder.
2. Search for and click on the report name, Monthly Giving Report.
3. Remove any selection filter or sidebar criteria and remove the dates from the date range field.
4. Click Run Report.

This report provides a full list of all active monthly gifts. The report displays the following key metrics:

• Distinct Count of all monthly gifts
• Distinct count of all monthly donors (The report will only count a donor one time for this total, even if the donor has multiple recurring gifts.)
• Total Paid: The total amount that has been paid on this pledge.
• Annualized Value: This is calculated by multiplying the bill amount with the number of payments that will be made in a 12-month date range. (Ex. $50.00 (bill amount) x 12 (frequency of monthly) = $600.00)

Why the Monthly Giving Report Matters

This report provides a comprehensive look at the value of your monthly giving program. As you create annual goals for your organization, particularly concerning your monthly giving program, consider how meeting your goals will impact this report. While a single month’s worth of donations may seem small, the contributions from your most loyal donors pack a big punch when it comes to funding your mission. In fact, the average lifetime value of one monthly donor is equivalent to the average lifetime value of 34 one-time donors.

Monthly Giving Resources to Support Your Fundraising Success

In recent months, we created resources to help nonprofit teams like yours establish and grow thriving monthly giving programs.

• Visit the Monthly Giving Success Hub to learn how to set up your program in DonorPerfect, gain monthly donors, and expand your program over time.
• Use the Monthly Giving email templates available in Constant Contact to promote your monthly giving program and engage your most loyal donors.

Coming Soon

Check back in the coming months for exciting changes and resources that will help you keep your donors. What can you expect? DonorPerfect wants to make thanking your donors even more seamless by offering automatic receipting for gifts processed through Monthly Giving.

Release Notes

The new Monthly Giving dashboard is the highlight of this month’s release. Check out the additional improvements to DonorPerfect in the 2020.10 Release Notes.