Monthly Giving

Welcome to major donors create the splash monthly donors create the pond. So Arlene has already gratefully introduced me, one of the things I wanted to add to is that I’m an avid monthly donor myself, of course. So these are just a couple of organizations Read More

Welcome to major donors create the splash monthly donors create the pond. So Arlene has already gratefully introduced me, one of the things I wanted to add to is that I’m an avid monthly donor myself, of course. So these are just a couple of organizations I have joined. And as Charlene said to, there is a link to the monthly giving starter kit, it’s going to be on my website, and you will get a link to that as well. And I know we’re very, very close to finishing the marketing and cultivation kit. So that will be coming to you very, very soon. So want to start with a quick poll is to ask if you have a monthly giving program now. Just click on your screen, is it yes, no, not yet, but you are thinking about it. Because things have changed in the last couple of years, so many more organizations have really become interested in monthly giving. So that’s fantastic. Good, good. Good. Okay, so I’m going to close the poll. All right. So it looks like about half of you have a have a program. And then about 40. So are thinking about it, then some of you are Don says and Tracy says working on it. Awesome. Awesome, great. Super good. Okay, so just quick update, uh, what are these, these multi donors now who are there, they are typically small, small donors, that means they’re not your big check writers, these donors typically give less than $100 in their annual appeal. They’re small, small donors, but they’re really, really committed, a lot of them are on fixed incomes, and they really care about your organization, they just can’t write the big checks. The good news is that the retention rates for your donors is going to really grow tremendously. Right now we’re seeing that about 46% of donors are going to stay from one year to the next, if you don’t have a monthly giving program. But once you convert those donors to give monthly, you’re going to look at 90% of your donor is going to stay with you for multiple years. So that is a doubling of your current retention rate. So currently, tension rate, if you don’t have program 46%, on average, in this country, if you change, it’s going to go to 9%. So that’s really, really good news. So if you have a program, we’re going to talk a little bit more about how you can grow it. And if you don’t have a program yet, we’re going to really talk about starting. So first of all, when you start and grow your program, you really always want to think about thanking them and engaging them, even though they’re giving to you monthly, you still have to stay in touch with you and keep them engaged, then we’re going to talk about acquisition acquiring new Mongkut owners, how do we retain those monthly donors very, very important. And then if you have some monthly donors that you brought in a couple of years ago, now’s a good time to start upgrading them. And then you can also do some testing and transformation of current credit card donors to ACH EFT, Electronic Funds Transfer bank monthly donors. So that’s something that’s going to probably grow even more. So always, always start thinking about how are you going to thank your monthly donors. So here’s an example of a study that was done by Penelope Burke, some of you may be familiar with it. And the preferred recognition by donors Believe it or not, is they want to receive a phone call. So when a monthly donor comes into the mix, you pick up the phone and you say, thank you have your board number, do it, have a volunteer Do it, do it yourself. But by all means, pick up the phone and say thank you so much for joining as a monthly donor. Really, really important. Some of these other things are great, but the donors don’t necessarily need that. But that thank you call is going to be really important. And then of course, especially if you’re bringing in donors online, you want to make sure that you think through what you’re going to put in your auto responder email. This is an example of what you would see if you’re using DonorPerfect. So you have that thank you receipt type of thing in the bottom right there. That’s just like giving you the gift, the donor the information that they need for their taxes, etc. But also you want to make the auto responder a little bit more warm and fuzzy. So here’s an example of what the United Way does here locally on the cape. So they’re saying to the donor, what they are going to receive already in the email. So that’s a really good thing, the donor knows exactly what they can expect. And then they send a thank you by mail, I recommend that when a monthly donor joins your organization, send them a thank you letter in the mail and make it as personal as possible. So Barbara, she knows me, and she made it very, very personal. And then if you really want to grow some more, and if you’re a big organization, you can come up with a welcome package that has a couple of different elements in it. First of all, you always want to have a phone number in it. And you want to ideally, have an email address so that the donor can communicate with you because these donors really care about your organization. They want to know what you’re doing. They want to hear from you. And they want to be able to pick up the phone and ask you questions. So make it easy for them to communicate with them. Don’t hide it from them. So that’s really important. So put that right there in your welcome packet right there in your thank you letter. So one of the questions I I hear a lot is, so you’ve converted these donors to give monthly? Should you ask them in your appeals, what do you think? Is it yes or no? And again, this is not a poll, what do you think that you should ask your monthly donors and appeals? What I see a lot is that most organizations are mailing two to four times a year, maybe six to eight, and they have newsletters, and they have maybe like two appeals a year. So I definitely recommend that you continue to communicate with your monthly donors by sending them an appeal in the mail, and also by sending them email appeals, but you recognize them in a special way. And it can be really, really simply, you can put a personal note on there, you can say thank you so much for your generous support as a loyal partner, I’d like to ask you to make a special gift at the year end, something like that, you’re telling a story, you’re always going to be telling the story and talking to the donor about the impact that their gift is making that they are making to your organization. So recognize them in the Ask again, you will be amazed, just look at this. I did a survey for one of my clients to see how many monthly donors and responded and 59% of monthly donors, were actually giving at least one more extra gift a year. So that’s just great stuff. Just think about it, if you don’t ask them, you’re gonna leave a lot of money on the table. So that’s a really important thing to remember, you can absolutely talk to your donors, and ask them to make another gift. Because you’re recognizing you tell them that you know who they are. And then you can make a special ask them to make a special gift. And they will. And there’s a lot of other ways to recognize them, you can do special email version, again, it’s a very simple way to do, you can put them in your annual report, you can make sure that you recognize them at events, you put them in a newsletter, you might highlight a special donor in a newsletter. And again, what that does to is it will actually talk to other donors and saying, Oh, what is this champion for animals? Oh, yeah, well, that’s a great monthly donor program that we just started. So and you can absolutely recognize donors by asking them if they would like to give a testimonial. Why are they joining you as a monthly donor? And then you can use that to promote your program. So and they’re going to be feeling very, very honored, believe it or not, so by all means, absolutely continue to communicate with them. Okay, so that’s the piece about thinking. Next piece is how do we know start and grow that program? So we’re how do you acquire these new monthly donors? So we’re going to expand on an existing program. I know a lot of you probably have maybe two or three, maybe 10 100 200 monthly donors already. So how do you grow that? Well, a lot of the same techniques that we’re using in appeals. So it’s absolutely important that if you want to grow your program, you have to put monthly giving front and center, you have to make it easy for the donor that find it. You have to ask and ask again. And you want to make it the first option. So let’s look at a couple of ways to do that. So what I recommend is that you put your monthly donor program right on the homepage, even if it’s for a week or two weeks in the year. Just put it out there, and it will help you generate like what we call like organic monthly donors. It really tells a story look this you join feed hungry hungry kids all year long, join the monthly giving club. So make it absolutely easy to find. Then make sure that you have your monthly giving program in your pulldown menu if you have that on your website. So again, donors can see right there Donate now monthly giving. And again, I always recommend that you have a named program. So you come up with a catchy name for your program. So you can add that on there as well as an extra tab. So again, it’s easy to find,

make it the first option. It sounds like counterintuitive, but this is what happens if like Habitat for Humanity is so gung ho about joining about growing their monthly giving program. So if you click donate, now, you come to this page, it says yes, I want to make a monthly gift. And then the second single gift is the second option. So again, they really really want to put it out there make it very easy to find. Again, here it is a simpler website monthly giving, it’s right there. And again, here it is front and center Donate now monthly giving and then their higher level sand dollar circle for $1,000 plus $500. Plus. The other piece when you starting to acquire monthly donors as you want to think small, I always recommend 1/3 of the annual appeal donation. In other words, if you’re typically if you look at those donors who give less than $100, in your annual appeal, say that average gift is $35. You can start with $15 as the first ask, you don’t want to start with 35, that’s too high. You want to bring in new monthly donors, right. So start small, and then you grow from there, you can always upgrade your monthly donors. Here’s an example you can start with $5 $10 $15. Again, the goal here is to bring in monthly donors, you don’t want the amount to be a bottleneck, or hurt URL, if you will. The good news is this study m&r strategic benchmarks comes out every year. And the latest study for over last year for 2015 just came out yesterday. So last year, monthly online giving grew by 24%. That’s just fantastic compared to one time donations online, grew by 18%. So overall, online giving is totally growing. And that’s you know, that’s no surprise to a lot of you. But online monthly giving grew by 24%. So that’s great news. So you can absolutely ask for monthly donors via email. That’s basically a no brainer, make sure that you build that in any time you can. So if you’re doing a welcome email, so So a donor comes to your website, and you’re sending out a welcome email, make sure that you talk about your monthly giving program in that they can join a monthly giving club right away, the earlier you can convert them to give monthly, the longer they’re going to stay with you giving monthly, right? So that’s really, really important. Come up with an email that you send. When I went to the conference last year, somebody said that they had a monthly giving Monday. So as often as you can fit it in your communication schedule, build in a number of email approaches to ask for multi donors, the more you’re going to ask the more multi donors you’re going to get. It’s really important, it takes a while for donors to get familiar with it. So then it becomes a common ask and they’re gonna say, oh, yeah, yeah, I was thinking about that. Yeah, why not? Let me do that. So again, make it easy. Put the clicks right in there. And you know, again, if you’re doing a perfect client, you will have the tools right there. Also, challenges work remarkably well. Habitat for Humanity gets a challenge every year, and they promote it in a series of emails. So it’s usually like it’s an email series of three or four. So you start with the announcement of the challenge. Then you’re doing a reminder the week before the deadline, and then a day before the deadline. So with the challenge you always tie in deadline. So it has generate that urgency. You don’t need to do a giveaway, you don’t need to do anything else. But this particular carrot, which says, Look, if you can join me as a monthly donor, in this case, Habitat for Humanity called the hope builder, if you can join me by this day, then we will be able to get so much more money. I did it for one of our local libraries, and they had a donor who says, Look, I really want to help you create sustainable revenue. How are we going to do that? Their librarian says, well, we can join, you know, we can promote this monthly giving program called subscribers. So they did a email blasts series generated 100 new monthly donors, the donor was so enthusiastic about it, we did it again, half a year later. So now they have 200 monthly donors just by virtue of that challenge. So you want to make sure that the goal that you’re setting is dependent, obviously, on the number of donors you have. So there’s a tool that we’re going to show you later on, that will help you identify how many donors you could potentially set as a realistic goal, because you want to make sure that that goal is actually achievable, obviously, so. And then once you have set up everything online, you can share, you know, videos, you can share Facebook and Twitter, you can share to your heart’s content. I want to talk a little bit about direct meal as well. So I’m going to do another poll. How many? How often do you send an appeal to your donors? So how often do you ask your donors for money every year? So is that once a year, twice a year, four times a year or more often. And while you’re while you’re set, filling out the polls, I can look at a question here and says, Do you recommend sending thank yous every month, every month? Good question. My answer is no, I don’t recommend that you send a thank you every month, the donor would think that’s a waste of a stamp. Right? So you’re telling them when you send the first official, thank you when they join the program that they’re going to receive a tax receipt, every January. And that’s going to have an overview of all of their donations. And most of them are going to be very, very happy with that. Now your email systems in some cases that will generate a thank you, there’s not much you can do about that. But again, that depends a little bit on the system, but you do not need to send a thank you every month. Okay, great. So looks like most of you have filled out the poll or rate. So it looks like a lot of you. Okay, so but bird sends an appeal once a year. So you’re leaving a lot of money on the table, and then about 42% Twice a year, and then another quarter, four times a year, and then some of you more often. Great, Super, thanks so much. So what I recommend is, and again, this comes back to you want to try to get these donors to join as monthly donors as soon as possible. So start with the welcome package. And thank you letters. The reason why this is such a great time to do it is because they just gave which is usually a good time to ask a donor to do something else anyhow. They’re going to be hot to try, you’re going to treat them the right way. And they’re going to feel really, really good. So what I recommend is your first sending your thank you letter, obviously within that 48 hours that we’d like to see, write, make it as personal as possible. So send the thank you letter and no ask right away to a donor when they come to your organization. And then within the first month, you send them a welcome package with a little bit more information about your organization, but also with an invitation to join this very privileged group of supporters that are going to help you on you know with ongoing support, make them feel really special. Oh, this is a special invitation that they’re receiving. You’ll be amazed look at this result when we send this welcome package to new donors. So they’re coming into the first time in the fold. They’re when they’re invited to join this special group 4.6% of them makes a one time donation. One form for per Schande joins as a monthly donor. And that is very dependent on the level of gift As you can see here, these are three different levels of gifts. But overall, it’s very close four and a half percent on average. And then 1.6%, on average, are going to join your monthly giving program, just by sending a little welcome package doesn’t cost much at all to do. And you will be amazed at what you can do. But again, it’s a two step approach, you send a thank you letter right away, and then you do a follow up within the first month.

Another way to do this follow up is you send a brochure, again, make it very easy pop that into a special thank you letter thing, thank you so much for joining the organization. And here is an easy way to support our organization. And this particular organization has 2500 donors, they have 300 monthly donors. And those 300 monthly donors are generating $95,000 a year. So just a simple approach you have to ask. And of course, as you’re sending out appeals, you can absolutely build in the ask for monthly donors, donors are getting much more accustomed to being asked to join your monthly giving program. So make it easy for them to find. Now, if you really want to grow your program, you have to do a targeted appeal. And here’s a simple example of like, again, convenient, easy, you know, affordable, all of those messaging items are going to be in your targeted PL and of course, I have a lot more examples. So I’m showing you just this highlight here, simplify your life becomes sustaining star. And then the other piece, what I recommend is that you always want to put the option of joining your multi giving problem this case is called champions freedom for capabilities. And you put in every news you put in every newsletter, if you sending that out, build it in wherever you can, make sure that use your put it there. The other piece, the other way to generate monthly donors is by doing Google ads, I know a lot of nonprofits, they can get Google grants. So look into that if you haven’t already, because it’s a great way to advance recognition, but also use some of those ads to build month of giving donors. And then finally, if you already have a program, and you’ve been running it for a number of years, and you’re comfortable with it, and you know everything’s working right, you can look at adding an additional program. That’s more for the bigger organizations like here’s food for the poor, they actually have eight monthly giving programs. So they’ve really, really made that a way of life, if you will. So that’s a piece about acquiring new monthly donors. The next piece that’s really, really important, actually, even more important is retention of your monthly donor. It’s starts with your donor service. And I mentioned earlier, you want to make sure that you have a phone number, and an email address in the thank you letter when somebody joins your monthly giving program. And, again, make it make sure that that phone number actually works, make sure that that phone number is actually being manned, or woman by somebody. So that way, somebody the donor can actually reach somebody that’s really important, I find that most donors that stop their monthly giving program, it’s because they didn’t hear back they didn’t get through. And you know, that’s really important. And that’s something that’s very, very easy to fix. As I mentioned, you want to highlight that personal contact, so put somebody’s name there if you can, if you’re comfortable with that. So it’s very, very important to make sure that you prevent lapsing monthly donors and if your DonorPerfect client, you have what we call like an EFT transaction log. And you can see in this case, this is just a one of their reports that shows you that the last three of Roger sandstone were failed payments. So if you see that you can contact the donor and ask them for updated information. So make sure that you check those reports that’s where it starts. And you know any feedback that you get from your finance or accounting person, you want to make sure that you get that right away as soon as possible. So it’s so if you’re multi donors get get processed on the 15th of the month. Make sure that on the 16th of the month you get anybody who doesn’t go through but if you can do Do this before the cart expires, that’s even better, of course. So whatever you can do to make sure that you get to them, as soon as possible will help you. So pick up the phone as soon as possible saying, Hey, we were trying to charge your card didn’t go through hope everything’s okay. Can you give me the updated information? I mean, everybody got the new cards with a chip in it pretty much, right. So that’s why a lot of existing monthly donors may not have gone through, because their car change, and it didn’t realize that they have to inform you of their new card information. So absolutely pick up the phone, send them an email with a link to the page to renew their information and send them a survey, if takes a couple of months, you can say Well, would you be you know, perhaps things have changed? Would you be willing to make the amount a little bit smaller or have to offer a payment stop, you can have that conversation on the phone, you can have that conversation in a survey like this, or in a letter, but again, make sure that you communicate with the donor as soon as possible as that happened. Because the more monthly donors you can prevent from lapsing, the more monthly donors, you can reactivate by simply picking up the phone or sending an email, the last new monthly donors you have to bring in because obviously bringing in new monthly donors usually cost the most money. That’s the same with lapsed donors. So try to optimize the number of monthly donors that you can reactivate and prevent from lapsing. And that will help you grow your program. So next piece is if you have a program that you’ve been running for a while, you can totally upgrade your multi donors. And when is the best time, I recommend that you wait nine months, don’t go do it. After three months or six months, I’ve seen that the best time to do this as nine, between nine months and 12 months. They’ve gotten used to giving that way they’re gotten used to the amount you’ve been communicating with them, they’re used to that part. So now’s the time to upgrade and ask them to you know, you tell them that everything’s got more expensive, and you’ve been able to help more or you’ve gotten more requests for support. So now you want to ask them to help you with a small additional, monthly amount. And you’d be amazed at how responsive that’s going to be. So let’s look at what the current average monthly gift is. It’s actually $23 a month, but it does differ by type of organization. So $23 a month. That’s a lot of money, right? So you want to absolutely look at that and say, Oh, wow, what if I could get a just a little bit more a month. So here’s an example of a simple upgrade ask table that you can use. So for example, if the month a gift is

about $6, you can start with an upgrade of $2 A month $5 A month and $7 a month to see what you can generate. So I always recommend that whenever you do an upgrade that you try to personalize it as much as possible. And you can do that in the mail, you can do that in the email, and you can do that on the phone. So it works like a charm. Here’s an example of an email that is done to ask donors to upgrade their monthly gift, can you round up Your monthly gift to $20. So in this case, the current around is 15. They’re going to ask for a $5 a month upgrade. And I said earlier that if you use 1/3 of the average gift that somebody gives to the annual appeal to join your monthly giving program, you can apply that same 1/3 logic to the upgrade ask in this case $15 1/3 of that is $5 as an confortable upgrade, ask, again, the donors will tell you what they are willing to do. So you again, you don’t want to ask too high you would never ask for a $15 upgrade because that’s just too high. That’s almost makes you look too greedy. Right? So think about but the most successful way to upgrade is absolutely on the phone. What’s wrong with picking up the phone and saying thank you so much for being a monthly donor. But let me tell you about the great things we were able to do this year but you know as you understand everything gets more expensive. So would you be willing to increase your monthly gift to x. So again, you want to make sure that monthly gift ask amount is based on what they’re already giving. Here’s an example of the tremendous results you can see this is for a religious organization. So when we sent a mailing, asking for an upgrade, we got almost 4% response rate people that says, Yes, I’m going to upgrade at $8 a month, when we did a phone call campaign, we got 24% of people to say yes, on the phone. And again, they’re already giving my credit card, or they’re already given by ACH. So all you have to do is just send them a confirmation letter. So you want to make sure that that you make, you know, you don’t have to get a new pledge form from them, they don’t have to sign anything, all they have to do is receive a letter from you saying that you’ve increased their monthly giving amount 24% of the US on the phone with $5 a month on average. So that’s another $60 per year that you’ve just generated from this moment on. So that’s a piece of upgrades. So Torley, ask your multiorders for an upgrade. And I recommend at least one upgrade, ask a year, you have nothing to lose and everything again. And again, some storage might say look, I just can’t do it right now, or don’t ever ask me for an upgrade, because I just don’t want to do that. And then you flag the donor in the database. So the next piece is testing and transformation. So you can do a lot of testing, obviously, with emails, depending upon the numbers. And one of the biggest tests that I recommend that and again, every organization is different. But if you currently use what we call like a freemium or a giveaway when you’re sending out your appeals, if your donors are used to that, then you typically may have to also offer something in the back end for when a donor joins your monthly giving program. So you see a lot of organizations that are sending out calendars and address labels and note cards and things like that, that they find that they need to give something away. But most organizations, their mission focus or if you’re mission focused, you don’t necessarily have to offer a giveaway. So take away the fear. If your boss says well do we need to now buy tote bags or whatever? No, you don’t. But you may have something else that might be fitting your mission that could serve as something special, like whether it’s a bumper sticker or just even a certificate. But if you can test it by all means, test it offer the note what we call it a no incentive no back end premium over. And, you know, as you want to grow your monthly giving program, as you want to make sure that you retain those monthly donors at a hot at the highest possible level. Try to convert them to give by EFT electronic funds transfer, ask them for your you know, to join by automatic bank withdrawal and offer that option. Absolutely whenever you can, because the more donors will do that, the more they’re going to retain and stay with you. Because that’s absolutely once you get their bank account, they’re very, very rarely going to change. And that retention rate is like 94% Compared to 85%, on average for credit card people. And also think about this if you know that your donors are older, and you know that they’re not necessarily that comfortable yet giving online, add a form to your website as a PDF. And in this case, it’s actually you can go to the Habitat for Humanity website and download this form in a word and you can make it your own for your particular organization. So the key with growing your program is that you need to plan ahead, you need to plan and build it in your communications program. But one of the recommendations I always make is you must absolutely whenever you present your results to people who are not as familiar with fundraising to people who are not familiar yet with monthly giving. Always always annualize your results and people will be blown away. They’re gonna say well, why didn’t we do this sooner? Right. So to this organization I just talked about Over 300 monthly donors are generating $95,000 $23 A month times 12 times 100. Donors, right. So just think about that, when you present it that way people are going to really take notice. They’re going to say, Whoa, wait a minute, we have a lot more of these small donors, right? So if we could create more monthly donors from these small donors, we’re going to create that pond of money. Right? So it’s, it’s just a different way of thinking. And sometimes your boss and your board may need a little bit of help, but showing them charts like this are going to be really important. So annualize your results. And keep asking, keep thanking your donors, tell them about the impact they’re making. Make it personal, tell the story. It’s nothing you’re not already doing. It’s fundraising. So you just have to continue to ask. So I’m going to do one more poll. How many donors do you have? Is it less than 1000? Is it between 1005 1000? Is it more than 5000? Or you’re not? Sure. And this is great. I see a lot of questions coming in. Okay. Tracy says less than 1000. All right, we see here.

All right. So I’m going to close the poll. All right. Okay, so it looks like a 15 43% has less than 1000 donors, and then another 40% has between 1005 1000 donors. And then 14% has more than 5000. And some of them are not sure. Great lesson. And the reason why I asked that question was, because if you go to the donor, perfect site, and you’ll get that link, to download the monthly giving starter kit, in that month of giving starter kit, there is what we call like a monthly giving calculator. So what you do there is you plug in the number of donors that you have, like, like, What have you said, 1000? donors. And if you look at say, if you already have a number of monthly donors and say their average gift is $20. So you plug in the average pledge amount. And then you look at the outcome of the calculator and say, Oh, wow, it looks like wait a minute, I already have 50 monthly donors now. So I am already at 4% of my donors giving monthly. So this is an overview of the money that you get from them. If 100% retains, right, so what if you could convert 5% of your donors or 9%, or 12%. Just think about that, if 15%. I mean, if you look at what happens with public television, and public radio, and some of these other organizations that are really, really, really gung ho about monthly giving, they are looking at 20 to 30 to 60% of their donors giving monthly. So that amount really grows like cabbage, as you would say, right? So punching your numbers here, in this month of giving calculator, plug in what your average monthly gift is now, and then look at what your next goal could be, and the potential that you have. So absolutely download that multi giving calculator because again, it will give you the tools that you need to invest in doing more and spending a little bit more time on growing your monthly donors. So I’m going to end with my website here and my email address. And I New Orleans has that. You know, I’m happy to answer any questions. We have a couple of minutes now. But any questions afterwards. So as you as you have any questions, you’re sitting there and you’re saying, hey, what, what would you recommend here because I’m a DEP expert as well. So by all means, send me an email. And I’m very, very responsive, whether it’s tonight, tomorrow or next month, five months from now. And you know, I’m happy to answer any of those questions. So, want to end with a quote, go the extra mile, it is never crowded. So call instead, what’s the difference between giving donors an option to give monthly and a monthly donor program? So good question, Colleen, it’s really not very different. The only thing is that if you ask the donors to give monthly, you’re not necessarily telling them that they’re going to be part of the champions for animals, or the daisy circle or the coffee club or whatever you’ve, you’ve named your monkey Donor Program. So in other words, when you want to recognize them down the road and say, Hey, as a member of the champions for animals, then they may not know that that’s what you’re doing. But yes, you always want to make the option of make it monthly on your one time donation forms. But if you can explain a little bit about that means that then they’re going to join as a member of the club, whatever the club is that you have, then that that makes it a little bit easier for your recognition down the road. Should I keep going? Okay, it looks like we get all right, let’s see. Hilda said, What about a manual monthly email? Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. You can certainly send a special manual, monthly email. Thank you, that makes it warm, fuzzy, anything you can do to recognize them. But what you may be able to do is just segment your email list so that you know which email names are monthly donors. And then you can say, Dear Allah, thank you so much for being a member of the DayZ club. And here is, you know, your evening news for the month or whatever it is that you’re, you’re saying. Liz, Brian says is welcome, pack digital, or hardcopy, I recommend that the welcome package is a hard copy. So again, it’s something that they will pay attention to. Absolutely. Okay.

Hi, Erica, can you hear me? Yes, I

can hear you. All right.

There we go. I did also just want to mention, because I see many of the questions coming in are about the calculator for determining your monthly giving. So in the chat in the GoToWebinar, there is the link to DonorPerfect.com. That takes you to that monthly starter kit that’s available for you to download. So I did just want to mention that that’s there.

Wait, did you want me to just keep going with the questions? Sure.

I can read them out loud if you’d like.

Yeah. So So I have a and I’m just jumping jumping around here. So Renee says, What if I have a hard time getting the info the credit card information from them? Yeah, I mean, if you if you can’t get the new credit card information, you know, that’s where it stops. So So you know, because you can’t process the credit cards. Without that new information. And I know down the road, you’re going to get some, there’s some new systems that are going to come out, that will give you that updated information. But those systems aren’t out yet. So so that will build becoming so then you don’t have to worry about that anymore. But if the donor doesn’t want to give you their information at the at the first time. You know, there’s not much you can do about it. But you could go back in three months from now and ask them to join your monthly giving program again. And sometimes they will do that and say, oh, yeah, I used to do this and I actually kind of miss it. So So try that

okay. Brian says we don’t have a monthly giving program just about all our donors give I checks from appeal should be sent out and appeal specifically requesting monthly donation? Yes, absolutely. Start by email. Make sure obviously, that you can handle monthly donations, and then start via email and then start sending out appeals. And what you can always do is because so many monthly donors give by credit card is identify those donors who are making a one time donation by a credit card and start there, that’s going to be your most responsive group. So if you if nothing else, if even if you have 100 owners who made a credit card donation last year, start there, keep it keep it affordable, and keep it controllable for you. And you’ll be very, very happy. And then Joe says I want to communicate with donors on a regular basis. Should I have a monthly meal or contact for monthly donors? What’s the best interval to communicate with multinode if not, sending a thank you letter Again, it depends a little bit Joe. I mean, I know that a lot of animal organizations, for example, and some human service organizations are very, very comfortable sending at least a monthly email newsletter, and if nothing else, even a monthly direct meal letter. So it all depends on what you’re doing right now what your donors are comfortable with. But an email newsletter, where you are recognizing the donors in a special way is a great way to least stay in touch with them, again, keep telling the stories. And Glen says again, yes, like recommend, since just starting a month of giving program by going to a donor database, identifying those who have given a small, one time small amount less than 100, and asked if they would be willing to participate. Perfect. That’s exactly the target group I would start with. And again, if you know that they’re giving credit card, absolutely. But then, Jeff says most of my donors give by cheque despite the option for credit cards, gifts only remit slip, is it likely they’re going to convert the giving method and provide a credit card for them to give, what you may try, Jeff is actually if a lot of your donors are giving write a check, they may be more willing to join by automatic bank withdrawal. So So that’s one way of doing it. The other way of doing it, and I know some organizations do this, especially religious, where they have like a mailroom, they actually sent monthly reminders. So they still allow the donors to send in checks monthly, and call it a monthly giving program. And then what they do is they try to convert those check monthly donors to eventually give by automatic bank withdrawal. So then that’s another way to grow your program.

And Leslie says, I’m surprised to hear do you make an ask in a thank you letter? Okay. So absolutely, what I meant to say was, you send a thank you letter, right away, no, ask, then within a month, after the donor joins, you send another letter, thanking the donor, again, talk a little bit more about your organization, and then also say, Oh, by the way, I’d like to invite you to this very special group. So it’s an essence of follow up to the thank you letter, if you will, but it’s still done in a very short period of time, because the sooner you can convert them, the longer they’re gonna stay with you and the more money you’re gonna raise. And, you know, I work with a lot of different organizations, and some of them are also very successful and asking for money in the thank you letter. But, you know, most of most smaller organizations just don’t want to do that donors are not used to it. So doing this two step approach works very, very well. Um, and Mary says, to the, to the point of the monthly giving calculator again, is there a specific average percentage of donors who prefer monthly giving? Well, there’s a lot of research out there, that shows that, for example, 52% of millennials is interested in giving monthly 21% of baby boomers are giving monthly. So those are a couple of indicators that tell you that there is definitely the potential to to grow your monthly giving program. Great question Mary has do I regard my United Way payroll doctors as monthly donors, you can totally do that. They’re not necessarily like that. That’s not how they started out. But by all means, if you want to recognize them as such, and say, well, you’re doing this United Way payroll, when you’re now a member of our special, whatever the club name is, you can totally do that. You just need to make sure that it’s coming in differently. So in your within your system and your coding, you need to make sure that you know that these are payroll people compare to those donors who have joined through your website or through direct mail appeal that you have done. Vicki says how do you set up the program initially? Great question. If you download the monthly giving starter kit, there is pretty much everything is right in there. And then do you count for monthly gifts as a pledge? Yes. You can call it a pledge and again, I know like some organizations use that word pledge to accommodate for monthly donors. And then they also lie like to sometimes use pledges for over multiple years for bigger donors to accommodate them as such. So it depends a little bit every organization is different. But the key is that you want to make the donor be part of this special group, you want to make sure that you’re getting in the money over a period of time on a regular basis. So it’s going to just generate a lot more money for you. Able says is it better to give them a range or a set amount for the donation, I would recommend that you have multiple options. And you can do that on your donation forms pretty easy. So you don’t want to tie them down to one amount is my experience. Again, having said that, some organizations, they only offer one amount, but you’re better off just having multiple amounts, just like you’re better off having multiple amount asks when you’re asking for a donation, because donors are going to choose what they’re comfortable with. And you be amazed. I was working with a local rescue. And we helped them develop their appeal. And they were astonished at their average monthly donation is $50. She had the first donor sent in $150 a month, so and they just had a series of different options. So if you ask too low and only off of that one, you might just get that one. So. Okay, let’s see. Emily says is it better to do a relaunch of a monthly giving promo at the beginning of the year doesn’t matter. There’s really not a bad time to ask for monthly donations. But what I recommend is if you don’t acquisition, if you’re bringing a lot of donations, or if you have a lot of donors who just made a gift to the annual appeal at the holiday timeframe, then January, February is really good time, you could say help our organization 12 months a year, join our monthly giving program named x. So let’s see. Imperative Shara says is it imperative to the success of the initiative to have EFT in place with your campaign? So yes, if you want to use DonorPerfect, absolutely, it’s really helpful. It’s going to make it a lot easier if you have the EFT setup with them. Vicki Yes, the webinar can absolutely come later. Um Let’s see. Web Link form Eileen says yes. Web Link forms are great, and they’re very easy to customize. Matt says, Oh, that’s a great question, Matt, for all the things to emphasize in a given program. So in other words, in fundraising, where do you place monthly giving on a list of priorities? Well, it depends a little bit obviously on the size of your organization and how many people you have. But what I recommend is that you obviously want to use your annual appeals, your your direct mail appeals in your emails, first, you need to have those in place. And then monthly giving would be a next step. Building on your annual revenue because it’s going to help you with your ongoing expenses, your ongoing revenue, your ongoing programs, and then your major donors. Obviously I’m more for those people who are able to write the big checks. So you do your annual peels, your monthly giving next and then your major, major donors. Um All right. Florin says great question on online donation form donor would choose frequency, do you recommend putting monthly as the first option before one time? So my recommendation is when you’re doing an email appeal, to ask for monthly donations, you’re actually going to create the recurring only page. And that’s the page you go to so you’re not even offering the one time donation on that forum. Don’t offer it you want people to join your monthly giving program. Now, on your one time donation, I recommend that you add to make it monthly. So that way the donors do have like, oh yeah, I can actually do that. But if you’re asking your donors to join monthly, only offer them the monthly giving option on the form. Let’s see. For NASA says We have monthly donors that are employees of an organization should we give them a club name? Yeah, I mean, why not? I mean, I mean, if you’re seeing a specific employees and having to come up with a specific club just for the that group of employees, I wouldn’t worry about it. And we just keep one monthly giving program and make those employees be part of that group. So don’t go crazy, like developing multiple names go nuts. So just try to keep it simple. And Vanessa, also, yes, the more you can do personal meetings, but you know, absolutely, if you have events, and you can recognize, here’s a group of our special members of the daisy club, whatever it is, absolutely. You know, personal is always good. Anything we do with with fundraising, the more personal you can make it. But think about this, too, is if you’re sending on an appeal. And you have, say, like 150, or 200, potential big donors that you send a personal note to include these multi donors in your personal note group. And you know, just write that personal note on them, have your board member write a personal note or your volunteer, again, it’s going to help with the recognition, the warm and fuzzy, the feel good. The personal approach, you get to you know, your board members are getting to know these people. And then again, they’re going to give you more money.

April says, Any advice on how to transition credit card givers to bank withdrawal? Great question, I find that the best way to do that is actually do a special appeal, whether it’s an email or direct mail, and using the savings that you could generate from not having the credit card fees by going to the automatic bank withdrawal. And then what can you do with the savings that you could generate? And that’s logic also applies it if you have people who are check monthly donors, for example, then that too, could work really, really well in trying to convert them to automatic bank withdrawal. They’re gonna love the fact that oh, okay, so in other words, this 5000 nodes you’re gonna save a year is going to do X.

Thank you, Erica, so much for answering those questions. We are just going to wrap it up now that we’re a little past three. So I do want to thank you again for sharing your tips on implementing a monthly giving program. As we mentioned earlier, the video and the slides for today’s presentation will be available in our nonprofit newsroom and the knowledge base. You’ll also receive an email letting you know that it’s available. We do have a promo as you can see on the screen right now for our conference. That is going to be this September, the 19th and 20th. And Erica will be presenting at the conference. So we’ll get to listen to her again, which is great. And you can go ahead and register to attend that conference, right using that link at the bottom of the screen. But we do just want to thank you again for all of our attendees and Erica and we hope to see you in a future webcast.