Spark A Recurring-First Mentality With Your Supporters

Members have your own staff that will always be there to help you. When you get started with DonorPerfect, we provide a full data transfer and onboarding team to make sure your system is set up correctly, and that it matches your unique needs and ways of Read More

Members have your own staff that will always be there to help you. When you get started with DonorPerfect, we provide a full data transfer and onboarding team to make sure your system is set up correctly, and that it matches your unique needs and ways of working. Our professional trainers will then make sure you get off to a fast start explaining what you need to succeed using a variety of training programs that cater to your preferred learning methods. Our customer care team provides ongoing support whenever you need it by phone, chat or email. They’ll answer your questions help you improve results and quickly become your best new work friends. While you focus on your mission. Our product managers and developers are incorporating your feedback and prioritizing your needs and concerns to deliver easy to use software that will enable you to achieve all your goals. When our customers and employees are asked what do you like best about DonorPerfect, they both say the same thing, the people, you will to learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with your account manager or attending a product demonstration webinar.

People are the heart of DonorPerfect. It all starts with our staff. By focusing on our employees needs happiness and well being we ensure they can best support you, you’ll quickly realize that working with our team is like having additional members of your own staff that will always be there to help you. When you get started with DonorPerfect. We provide a full data transfer and onboarding team to make sure your system is set up correctly, and that it matches your unique needs and ways of working. Our professional trainers will then make sure you get off to a fast start explaining what you need to succeed using a variety of training programs that cater to your preferred learning methods. Our customer care team provides ongoing support whenever you need it by phone, chat or email. They’ll answer your questions help you improve results and quickly become your best new work friends. While you focus on your mission. Our product managers and developers are incorporating your feedback and prioritizing your needs and concerns to deliver easy to use software that will enable you to achieve all your goals. When our customers and employees are asked what do you like best about DonorPerfect, they both say the same thing that people you will to learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with your account manager or attending a product demonstration webinar.

People are the heart of DonorPerfect. It all starts with our staff. By focusing on our employees needs happiness and well being we ensure they can best support you you’ll quickly realize that working with our team is like having additional members of your own staff that will always be there to help you. When you get started with DonorPerfect. We provide a full data transfer and onboarding team to make sure your system is set up correctly and that it matches your unique needs and ways of working. Our professional trainers will then make sure you get off to a fast start explaining what you need to succeed using a variety of training programs that cater.

People are the heart of DonorPerfect it all starts with our staff. By focusing on our employees needs happiness and well being we ensure they can best support you. You’ll quickly realize that working with our team is like having additional members of your own staff that will always be there to help you. When you get started with DonorPerfect, we provide a full data transfer and onboarding team to make sure your system is set up correctly, and that it matches your unique needs and ways of working. Our professional trainers will then make sure you get off to a fast start explaining what you need to succeed using a variety of training programs that cater to your preferred learning methods. Our customer care team provides ongoing support whenever you need it by phone, chat or email. They’ll answer your questions help you improve results and quickly become your best new work friends. While you focus on your mission. Our product managers and developers are incorporating your feedback and prioritizing your needs and concerns to deliver easy to use software that will enable you to achieve all your goals. When our customers and employees are asked what do you like best about DonorPerfect, they both say the same thing, the people, you will to learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with your account manager or attending a product demonstration webinar.

Hello, everyone, my name is Jonathan Bulacan. And I’m a technical support representative for DonorPerfect. Welcome to Dana Snyder session spark a recurring first mentality with your supporters. Dana is the founder of positive equation and the host of missions to movements. As a digital marketing strategist. She supported organizations like Movember, dress for success, American Idol and USDA. By leveraging the latest digital innovation tools and strategies. Dana frequently gives presentations to help nonprofits use social media ads to transform their online experiences and retain donors with their monthly giving programs. Before I hand the session over to Dana, I’d like to remind you of three housekeeping items. The presentation slides are attached to the detail sections of this session, and can be downloaded for your review. Also, be sure to add your questions to the q&a tab so that we can see them and get them answered for you. And lastly, all of the sessions are being recorded, and they’ll be available to you on our DonorPerfect website following this conference. So let’s give a warm welcome to Dana and take it away.

Thank you, Jonathan. I appreciate that lovely introduction. And I want to kick it off. If you’ve ever attended a session of mine, you know, I like to have rapid fire conversation in the chat. And since we’re talking about recurring giving, I would love to know in the chat. What is one word or phrase if you’re feeling fancy, to describe how you feel currently about your recurring giving programs. I mean, it was the ads coming in here from beautiful Canada’s east coast. Welcome. Okay, Tracy says dismal beloved Angela, what a great word flat, it’s down. Not big enough not invested in the big one. Just started planning congratulations. Absent harder than expected. A little weak, outdated, disorganized, but crucial. Ooh, good. Increasing. One donor Hey, one donor is a great place to start. Now, you just got to get a couple more. Oh, not appreciated by staff. We’re gonna talk about that Heather hopeful, feeling inspired room for improvement. These are so good. Okay, so today, what I want to do is I want to invite you into a mastermind. We are going to do this together to feel supported, and coming up with ideas to create that spark for crank giving. So the first additional question that I just had, is have you heard of a mastermind? Why for yes, and for no in the chat? Have you heard of a mastermind like program before?

Okay, lots of ends a couple of yeses. See, Julia says yes. Okay. So mastermind. And why I want to bring it up is it was a game changer. For me personally, as a business owner, and for the organizations that I serve. And essentially, a mastermind is simply a group of peers coming together around a common desire, a common problem, a common challenge, to be able to work through it together. When you’re trying to come up with this collective goal in mind. Napoleon Hill was the founder of the term masterminds. And he really says it’s the coordination of knowledge and effort of two or more people so they can be small or more people who work towards a definite purpose in the spirit of harmony. So in 2021, right, we were all still kind of in the midst of a really rough time with a pandemic. And as a business owner, I was feeling alone. And I felt like I was making decisions by myself and questioning myself Also shout out to anybody here who’s also a solo team member or has a very small team, because this is what I felt. I was just like guessing, right? You feel like you’re just like guessing at what might work and you. Yes, Tammy says the same. And so I was listening to a podcast at the time called the influencer podcast. Julie Solomon is the host. And she was running a mastermind program again, very similar, like the first time I’ve ever heard of it. And it was female entrepreneurs coming together from all over the country, to do this to work towards being more successful in our businesses to strive towards our purpose. And what was crazy and amazing was the transparency that everyone shared, to be able to learn. We had online calls every single month. And then we got together two times together in Nashville. And honestly, it felt like this sisterhood bond. And for once, I felt like I wasn’t alone. And so I want to share with you this is the group of individuals that I got together with in Nashville, and this mastermind each month with the virtual coaching, coaching sessions, brainstorming solutions, the in person retreats, allowing for that deeper connection, transform transformed, not only how I felt in running a business, but also actually my business and the way I decided to do business, and work with organizations. And so why I share this is because I want to invite you into our mastermind, we are in one right now. And the mastermind is to be able to come together as a collective to share case studies and ideas in brainstorms. If I’m talking about something during this presentation, and you have implemented something similar, I want you to shout it out in the chat, I want you to share your LinkedIn URLs, because the best part of a mastermind is not the guide that is leading the conversation, but it’s the peers within the group. And this all came to fruition in 2022, when I decided to launch my monthly giving mastermind program, so I have helped launch 15 monthly giving programs in this exact framework. And the number one thing that the organization say, at the end of the day, is that yes, it was amazing to work with experts on building the website and creating the video and running the social ads. But what was the best and most beautiful part was doing it together in a small group. So a shout out to these incredible 15 organizations. And also shout out to you, because we’re about to go through this mastermind together. The other thing I want to share with you is context for this presentation. Over the past year, I have been interviewing alongside building 15 monthly giving programs, I’ve interviewed 15 organizations that you see on the screen that are incredible, from that have 26 to 66,000 monthly donors for my book that’s coming out later this fall, all centered around recurring giving, so that I can share these case studies and real best practices about what’s actually working out there right now. So at every conversation at the end of the interview, I talked to them about growth, we talk about retention. And the biggest thing that always comes away is that it doesn’t matter the size of the program that you have. And there’s some of us that it’s non existent, or we have one donor, all of you have different goals and objectives that you’re looking to meet. Every Size program matters. And one thing I want you to think about throughout this presentation is what does a successful monthly giving program or recurring giving program look like for you specifically? Because the most crucial part is if you could go back in time. This is what I asked all of the interviews of my book, if they could go back in time. What would they have done? Can you guess in the chat, fill in the blank here? If you could go back in time, we would have Blink. Any guesses? Marriott you nailed it started sooner? That’s exactly right. That’s exactly what they said all of them just wished they would have started sooner. Some of the organizations were a decade in before starting a monthly giving program. Some of them started right at the beginning of the origin story with monthly giving. But here’s the fact here’s kind of like the state of the state as we stand right now. This is a report by SEMrush. And I always look at also what’s happening. As consumers, right. We are consumers and we are donors. We are one in the same. So what’s happening in the economy right now that would lend us to think that recurring giving is really on this rise. Well, this is a look at the subscription economy. Just in next year, they’re reporting it to be, I think, $1.5 trillion industry. And within this report, it not only was talking about the substantial increase of subscriptions, but look at what it says specifically, I’m gonna like double tap in here. consumers choose brands that align with their values, and their interest in social responsibility and sustainability is growing certain business models like direct to consumer and subscription models are enabling this authentic, ongoing engagement that modern consumers desire. So we’ve seen kind of time and time again, this one time, gifts might be going down. But what I’ve seen on every report is talking about the steady increase and sustainability that comes with recurring revenue. So that’s what’s exciting for us to jump into today is how can we jumpstart this incredible recurring getting program or scale the one that we already have? So today, okay, right now, if you have some notes, have Notepad ready to go, if you’re gonna take notes on your computer, here’s what we’re gonna walk through, I’m going to share with you a five step framework to building a successful monthly giving program really getting that recurring first mindset going to how to self audit your existing product. And yes, I’m calling these things a product, which I’ll talk about in just a second. And then what are some unconventional growth and joy and gratitude strategies? So Jonathan gave me the very kind introduction at the beginning, beginning at the beginning of the presentation, and honestly, my mission, and what I love about recurring giving, is that’s how I’ve been giving for a number of years. And it makes me feel like a philanthropist. And a lot of times that felt so far fetched as a donor. But when I give monthly, I feel like I am telling the organization like I am in it with you for the long haul. So how can we make a diverse group of donors feel like they themselves are philanthropists, to your organization. I am the host of the podcast missions to movements, you went over some of the exciting stuff beforehand. I am also a wife, a mama and a dog mom to a Labradoodle. I live in Atlanta, Georgia, and I am a UCF Knights, so any fellow knights in the room Go Knights. And I wanted to share with you the quiz that I’ve worked on recently, with DonorPerfect, I’m going to drop it in the chat, because we worked on a quiz together about growth, because finding growth strategies is not a one size fits all approach. And so we wanted to make sure that we put together Oh, yeah, fun nights in the room. I love it. I just shared with you the link, we wanted to put together a quiz that would guide you towards resources that are specifically focused for where you are in your growth journey. So when you visit that page, you will see this nifty little quiz with five questions. And if you select each one, you will get a custom plan for you with podcast resources, webinar, resources, blogs, templates download. So whichever way you prefer to learn, it is accessible for you. So I would love your feedback on this quiz. And I hope you go check it out. It’s for recurring. It’s for one time, it’s just an overall growth strategy. Yeah, you Jocelyn, you’re so welcome. I hope you hope you get to use it. Alright, so with that said, let’s jump into our steps. So step number one is creating the product. And yes, I say product, because when you think about a product, it comes with budget, and name, a team resources. Anytime you have purchased. Let me just pick this candle. This is a product. This is colored this unique green shade. It’s called crisp time, elicited notes. There’s branding, do you know how many decisions went into this product, but there was a budget against it, there was a team around it. So I want you to think about your monthly giving program is a fundraising product that you have accessible. And when you’re designing it, and you come together even as yourself or as your team, what is the reason for your product to exist, and what’s the impact that it is intended to have. And then also the structure. So the photo that I have here on the right side where it says Our vision is a world where all people are free. It’s from dress Ember, it’s the first organization that I decided to give to as a recurring donor. And traditionally, they did not have a monthly giving program. They had a big peer to peer fundraising event every fall dress cember is for December, where we would wear dresses and or ties for the month of December to raise awareness and funds towards anti human trafficking efforts. So it was a blend of like fashion and fundraising. And I loved the founder story and got involved as a peer to peer fundraiser. But that was it. They didn’t have a way of bringing together and cultivating their audience in the months really outside of October. I think January was like their sweet spot. So February waiting until October they were basically saying like, see, isolate or like will talk to you through stories, but there was no fundraising elements. So they created the collective their monthly giving program for those months in between a different organization. Daily giving is incredible. They started in 2019 and they only accept recurring donations that is their primary way of giving They created this structure. Because for their minds, they said, we are creating our organization to make sure that people feel like they can do good every single day and not a day goes by without giving back. So they have like $1 a day model, and they see a lot of their donors donate $1 to $3 a day, per the number of people in their household. So not a person in our household is going a day without giving back. So something you want to think about is, what is should be the structure of our monthly giving program or recurring Giving Program. does it align with the mission and the values of your organization. And recently, I had the lovely opportunity to interview Gloria, the founder of the hope booth on my podcast. And I was talking to her about their recurring giving program and she said what we talked about the beginning like shoot day and like, I wish I would have done it sooner. We have this huge influx of givers from our Kickstarter at the beginning. And then we’ve like kind of lost them. But this is what she said. The hope booth is built for the community. It’s this really cool. Anybody remember telephone booths from back in the day that used to see at airport basically everywhere telephone booths used to be they refurbish them to now be Patrick says, yep, they refurbish old telephone booths, they put kind of like an iPad in it. And it’s this iPad experience that is like proven to give mental health support, and then it connects you with local resources to your areas, like so brilliant, look them up. And so Gloria was saying this, like, if our innate mission is about community, then it our program doesn’t exist, like literally doesn’t exist without them, then we have to get more intentional when we’re talking about our monthly giving program. So thinking about the structure is really important. Then, within your product, something that I mentioned about said candle is the naming process. There is to two schools of camp here. One about being having a name and then just saying well you give to our monthly giving program, a very popular monthly giving program is the spring by charity water if they did not have the name, and I just said, Hey, Patrick, will you join our monthly giving program to provide clean water? Okay, option one. Or if I said, Hey, Patrick, will you become a member of the spring to help us provide clean water? which one sounds more transactional versus community led. I like having the name associated like calling somebody in. We as human beings naturally crave belonging and togetherness and being part of big, audacious missions that are bigger than ourselves. When we give, and I’ve heard this quote before, it’s essentially like we’re joining a monthly giving program. It’s a declaration of who we are. And the photo on the right hand side of the screen right now the mothers will save us all is another monthly giving program that I give two called Chamber of mothers. And their program is called the matriarchy. And they wanted their name to feel so bold, so strong, that they are repelling people that don’t want to be in that program and attracting like a magnet, the ones that want to be in it. So when with common comes with naming, I absolutely think that you should have a name. And here’s another example. Has anybody ever seen ducks on Jeeps before? While you’re passing?

Has anybody ever seen these? Yes? Okay. Okay, did you know the story behind it because I did not. So the other day, I was driving to pick up my daughter from daycare. And I noticed a mother and her son in the car next to me rearranging a row of ducks that had taken over their entire dashboard. And what I found out was is there is this proud community of Jeep owners who participate. Yes, Tammy has a jeep, okay, she knows what I’m talking about. It’s called Duck Duck jeep. And it involves this tradition of placing a rubber duck on another person’s Jeep as a sign of respect to the owner of the vehicle. And essentially, when you buy a Jeep, you are joining this entire micro community of fellow Jeep owners now, I am not cool enough to be part of this duck, duck Jeep, gang. I have a Toyota rav4 Over here. But this is the point. If a car was just a car with no product name, there would be no community belt and there would be no branding. Right? And it’s hilarious. I was like, come on, grab four people. Can we like come up with something? It’s kind of the same with the bugs back in the day was like punch bag, you know, punch back right there. If the name didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be the community around it. Ooh, there’s a moo moo Subaru. What? Okay, now I have to definitely look this up because my parents have a Subaru. I’m getting educated in here. Okay, I have to look that up. So I strongly believe in having a name for the sense of being able to build micro communities just like this amazing duck community. Step two, is make it easy. We Have our product, you figured out the why we stick it out our name. Now we need to make it easy. It’s all about your website and your donation experience, every product, this candle, this lipstick, next to me have landing pages does your monthly giving program have a website specifically for it? The biggest reason is to avoid donor confusion. I’ve often heard, we’re nervous about asking for recurring first because donor signup and they didn’t mean to. And now we have to deal with a email that’s not super friendly. So my biggest thing is if there is a specific landing page that is talking about nothing, but monthly giving, even right here, where at the big bold at the top of this example, join our monthly giving program, if you have monthly free highlighted, if the stories are all about monthly, you’re avoiding that confusion, make sure the format is friendly, mobile friendly, big, audacious statement at the top. And of course, your donation and your button and your forms are clear. And what does this look like? So right here, having monthly only as an option, not even the one time as a huge win again, to avoid that donor confusion. Having multiple payment options. I worked with an organization. I think they were in the first round of my mastermind, and never had PayPal turned on after I think it was less than six months 40% or so of their donors were now giving through PayPal. And she was like if I had never had PayPal, would they have given I don’t know, right. But this was how they prefer to give. And making sure there’s no long forms again, thinking about it being super mon mon mobile friendly meeting where they are. The other thing that I want to add to making it easy, is again, this was the CEO of C O from daily giving with this quote, where he says first and foremost, you have to have the technical capacity for that user friendly experience. They wanted to have a clear login process on their website. Because if you can intuitively see how to pause, or cancel or even increase your account, then there might be a lack of trust. In my example with this is Is anybody else a HelloFresh? Customer? Anyone else? Because you cannot pause or cancel? Me I used to be yes. Okay. You cannot pause or cancel your subscription on your phone on the app. Have you noticed that? You have to go to the desktop website. And it is so annoying for somebody who travels all the time. And I’m just like, oh my gosh, yes, Haley candidates devious. Exactly. And so we feel this way as users and it’s like, come on, can you just like, make it easily accessible for me to just pause it like, I have come back to them more times than I can count, because it’s convenient for my family, but just make it easy. So again, and that’s a great experience. The other thing that I love that he said was he considers the donors that leave him to be surfers. He’s like they’re coming along for a wave of generosity, maybe they’re going to stick with us for a while. And if they leave, that’s okay. But I want them to have the Grest the best like wave experience of their lives. So hopefully they come back to us. And that’s such a positive way of looking at it. And they have a whole retention strategy of reaching out to people who are leaving because they might come back. Okay, step number three. I love this one call in the believers. Okay, I am a major UCF night fan. I know there’s some fellow alumni in here. And that happened from going to my first UCF football game when I was in the color guard. I’m doing like my flag motions here. And I was hooked. And I’m sure if you are a fan of a collegiate sport or somewhere that you’re a super fan of something of Taylor, look at what happened with Taylor Swift like she boosted the economy and all the different cities. How do you call in your believers, you want clear value proposition I’m going to talk about NLP language in just a second, but showcasing the need and the impact and that is a collective effort that they are a part of. So this example of text is pulled from ij M’s website. Their monthly giving program is called Freedom partner. So you are a freedom partner. And right at the beginning, as a freedom partner you are helping IJM work with authorities to bring children and this child is the image is big on the landing page to safety and support survivors as they heal. You’re also helping enable systematic change and it goes on their stats in here. It’s pulling up the heartstrings. They’re showcasing the need and they’re talking about the impact and they’re talking about together what can be possible. I want to dive into NLP language has anybody ever heard of and this is a mouthful neuro linguistic programming or NLP? Does this ever come up? Oh, is that roll tide in here okay, Cindy, okay. Yes, some people have heard of it. So NLP is essentially this like subconscious language that can produce real Live outcomes and feelings through the use of specific words, phrases, behaviors, when we’re talking about this is very common in sales page language. But there’s ways to use it. I feel very organic and authentic when it comes to talking about positivity, urgency and trust. So some words around positivity on your page that you might use that are going to tap into this NLP are believe, thrive, progress, remarkable change, they can also be around urgency, exclusive deadline, final now limited, calling you into that moment, or trust guarantee proven expert certified, there’s different words that you can pepper into to be able to call in your believers. So the main message I want you to get across from this step is to think about the copy on your landing page about your monthly giving program. I don’t have the link accessible with me. But if somebody wants to find it and put it in there for the chat, the Hemingway app is incredible. And also grading the language. And actually, there may even be a tool that DonorPerfect has grading the language on your website. So the average language that should be utilized in copy is fifth, I think it’s around fifth grade. And so often because we are just deep into the weeds of our missions, I did an analysis for a couple of organizations earlier this year, and it’s like 12th grade reading level. So the Hemingway app be totally free. And I just definitely recommend checking that out to do like an audit on your site. Step four, is make the ask. We have to ask, if you’re not seeing growth in your monthly giving program, I want you to think about all the different levers that you’re using or not using, how often are you talking about this program, right steps one through three are really, really setting up the core foundation of being able to call people into your monthly giving program. But you want to make sure that your email marketing has a strategy that is a front and center ask for recurring giving, are you testing SMS with text messaging, paid advertising. The example here on the left hand side is from the Tim Tebow foundation. I interviewed Kyle on their team. And they launched ads starting last summer in June, they had 6500 monthly donors in June of last year. To date, they now have over 20,000 monthly donors strategically and like pretty much just through their ads, he started with just a couple $100. And now I have like skyrocketed and seen I think it’s like 4.5 times return on investment with ads. In March alone. They got 3000 new monthly donors specifically from ads, incredible Facebook and Instagram ads, in particular. Morgan, thank you so much for sharing that. So I highly recommend if you’re in a place to test some paid advertising, podcast. So I have an example on here. How can you pitch yourself to be on different podcasts within your subject area to talk about your new monthly giving program.

And this example, I love, Kibo Drew, runs the organization queer women of color Media Arts Project. This quote says and I will explain the context after we just show up for this, the donors do it. And then they invite folks and we invite people in our donors list as well. It was literally a donor thing that they organized. So the premise of this is there are six recurring donors that put together something called the angel brunch, for their organization. It is a brunch entirely ran by these, the six monthly donors and then like a committee, they do the invites. They get the room prepared. They’re making the ask in the room. So it’s like a peer to peer giving the organization when I talked to Kiva about this, she says the only thing that they do is provide like the customized thank yous and graphics. Otherwise, it would be completely donor run event to invite new donors into their monthly giving program. And I thought this was the coolest ask. So building an event and there’s I think she says 100 people roughly that attend this angel brunch every single year. How cool is that? Step five, constant joy and gratitude. So retention plan is so key. This is an example on the finance a little bit hard to see. From that brown bagging for kids of Calgary. It is really important that you break down what is your strategic plan that inspires joy every single time that transaction hits the account. How do you create like that dopamine hit that they had when they originally gave. So in this example, you’ll see she has different kind of like highlights of what they’re going to do every single month. She designed this in Canva which I thought was super cool, and to plan out what is going to happen every single month, and then how can you sprinkle in surprise and delight moments? Is there a text message that goes out? One example that I shared with the Gary Sinise foundation with that when I saw them is Gary Sinise is their, like celebrity spokesperson for the organization, right? has like, how cool would it be? If as a surprise and delight for your monthly donors, they got an audio text message from Gary every single month, just with an update saying thank you. And here’s what’s going on in the mission. Amazing, right? Like to hear his voice. I also listed here, is there an authentic time point or time in your timeline where you can do a surprise and delight moment. So Chamber of mothers is all about creating a better support in the United States for moms, from childcare to parental leave? And so I was like, what if you did something around the 910 month mark, right when people when women deliver and I was like that would be so clever. Also, how can you create a responsive, automated sequence. So whether that’s through snail mail letter Labs is a great handwritten, as you can see here on the right hand side, handwritten tool, emails that go out, were looking at your CRM, it’s like if this then that milestones, if there have been a monthly donor for six months, or a year or a lot of recurring donors, and you might see this, the average I think, is seven to eight years, they will stay a monthly donor. I’ve been I was looking back at my emails actually in prep for this for dress ember. And I’ve been a monthly donor for almost four years for them. I didn’t even like Blink. And it’s like, pass, but I love it because they keep giving me updates. So if you’re just starting this process of thinking about a plan for 12 months, I call it constant joy and gratitude, how can you sprinkle in that first moment when they gave and make them feel that way for years to come? I’m going to share with you a link, you can scan the QR code, or here’s a link in the just make sure you put in this code monthly, it’s going to ask you how I’m doing. And then this is a Google Doc, where I’ve listed examples of different retention strategies for each month. And then it gives you a section where you can make your own notes as well. So you can download that resource. Let’s keep on moving. Okay, now we’re gonna jump into our self audit. So we have our five steps, we’ve created the product, we’ve made it easy, we call them the believers. Let me go back, we’re making the ask. And then we are making sure to have constant joy and gratitude. So as we look through our own organizations, ask yourself number one, does the current structure of your program align with the intent of your mission? is big? Or does it need to refresh? And that’s fine, too. Do you have a product name is even considered a product in your organization? I know there was a comment at the very beginning about maybe leadership buy in the numbers are there y’all I am deep into writing my book on recurring giving. And the data is there. That recurring giving is not only here to stay, but it aligns with exactly what’s happening with how we act as consumers in the subscription based world. After this fun fact, try and even make a list of all the subscriptions you have. I think the research the average millennial has 17 subscriptions. And the majority of them are entertainment based. But when I was asking friends, some have coffee subscriptions. And this dress that I’m wearing give us a dress but it’s a dress shirt. I’m newly a clothing rental superscription I have because I prefer renting clothes over like fast fashion. There’s, I mean, you can have subscriptions to have your instant cart your groceries delivered, like all of the things that we might not even think about in our mind is also relative to recurring giving. And why would you not have a program that allows you to get back every single day, so long winded on the product name but to add a product name. Number three, do you have a product landing page with all of the important information above the fold? The fold is when you start to scroll. So before anyone starts to scroll, do you have your big audacious statement? A sub headline, the ability for somebody to donate all in the header? super clear. Now 80 90% of people will never scroll past the fold. So very important. Number four, does your copy call in the believers? Are you sharing values aligned language go back use the Hemingway app. Let somebody else look at it. Talk to your monthly donors ask them why they gave are those words peppered into your copy. Is it easy and clear on how to give? How can you remove any of that either friction but also any potential confusion so that it’s super clear. And then lastly, the most important the The biggest thing I want you to give them is not really the growth, it’s on the retention. Do you have a strategy on making the ask and providing constant joy? And gratitude? How do you keep them around for years to come? And this will all create the spark to be able to have those recurring first asks, Please make the ask. There’s an amazing case study. With a DonorPerfect client living hope, they were able to enroll 64% of its donor database in their recurring giving program is outstanding 64%. In their recurring giving program, another organization I know 70% of their revenue is from their monthly donor program. And the huge benefit of this for anybody who’s also looking for a little bit of like, momentum to like push their leadership to really focus on this is it creates not only a diverse group of donors, that it creates another more flexible sustainable revenue stream. major donors are fabulous. But if you don’t get one is that going to completely throw off your budget for the year grants, same thing, wonderful, if you don’t get a couple of them that you’re used to? Is that gonna throw off your budget, the monthly getting programs, and I just talked to roots Ethiopia about this. Megan said, when we have had the down months of individual giving, or maybe a major donor can’t give our monthly giving program, she’s like, let’s meet Bree.

How huge is that, like I’m not in a panic of what’s going to happen, I can breathe, because I have this consistent program that has a 90% retention rate. That is like pacing along and continuing to grow. And so how living hope did this was 64%. The other integrated online forms, integrated donation processing, and integrated email marketing, all three included in their DonorPerfect subscription, so everything was in one place. And then that makes it easily being able to add to the donor record, record and online them or upload anything and change it. And then in addition, with the email marketing, they’re using Constant Contact, where they can automate the email receipt, create specific email lists, do segmenting and send these personalized impact statement every single month and onward communication. So with this, I want to invite you to join the monthly giving mastermind officially in September, I am going to be hosting alongside partner don’t apart which is amazing for supporting a monthly giving summit where we are doing nothing but talking about monthly giving for two half days. And so I want to share the link with you if you want to register, it’s going to be a lot of fun, doing probably going to be there doing like a TED talk, being in the breakout room, we’re gonna do some live coaching. And so it’s going to be inspirational, but also getting into the weeds. We’re gonna have one on one networking, so it’d be a really fun time to get together. And then lastly, the other resource I wanted to share with you is to not let don’t feel you have to do it alone. Don’t feel like you have to do it yourself. The second thing that I did after the mastermind because a mastermind ends, right it was a 12 month program that I was in. And then I found a Slack group of nonprofit consultants. And I recently even like with my book, I asked people, what do you think about this title? What do you think about this, and we asked questions back and forth. And so I decided to create the sustainers. It’s a Slack community for you for nonprofits with monthly giving programs, even if you’re pre launch. And it is so much fun in there. We have like specific channels for growth and retention and tech chats. And we’re gonna I’m gonna be doing like a paid ads demo because somebody asked about what they should do for their campaign coming up. And it’s just a place to be in community with one another. And so I wanted to share that with you where if on the day to day, you just have a question and you want to ask somebody about it. There’s a Slack channel out there for you if you already use it. And so I’d love to invite you into the sustainers. And hope to see you in September for the monthly giving Summit. With that. I will open it up for questions. Jonathan, if we have some time. We

do have a little bit of time, Tina, that was excellent. I know your your message lines up exactly with what DonorPerfect emphasizes as well, which is the need to have monthly recurring donors. It’s so important to diversify how you’re getting your donations. So we don’t have a lot of time for questions, but one that I think summarizes a lot of what I’ve seen is can you talk to maybe the nonprofit that’s listening today that doesn’t yet have a monthly giving program active or maybe it’s really stagnated and they haven’t been working on it. They haven’t been acquiring new monthly donors. Can you talk about maybe like the most common roadblock that is preventing them from being effective in their monthly giving program?

Yes, absolutely. And if you ask a question, please message me on LinkedIn and I will answer it for you. I see that there’s a lot in the q&a box that we might not get to see. So if you don’t Have a program or if it’s like slow growing, I would say make sure that you have the fundamental set up, like, where is someone going when you’re asking them to make the ask? If there’s the ability for somebody to be confused, or like linger off screen and like click on a bunch of other options, we don’t want that to happen. We all have lizard attention spans. Here, we’re like, super busy and all over the place. So make it very easy for somebody to be able to give. And the biggest thing I can tell you is like that column, the believers is true, like, make that big, audacious statement in that sub headline, something that is calling somebody in. And just make sure that the asks are consistent. Again, at podcasts at speaking events, in your emails on social media, you are going to feel like you are talking about it all the time. And it might feel silly, but I promise you when I talked to when I interviewed Cubby, Graham at the spring, he’s like, we talked about it everywhere. And it might feel ridiculous. And you might be like, Why just posted about that. But the reach is, like not everyone seeing even the same thing with the emails, I share this story around a Black Friday, where we are so cautious as nonprofits as to how many emails we send out around these like holidays. And I looked at my inbox of nonprofits versus Nespresso, the coffee machine, and I had like 25 emails from Nespresso. Now here’s the thing, I did not open them all. However, what it continued to do was keep them top of mind. And Jonathan, did I make a purchase in this brushes? I sure did. I just started, I was like, You know what, I do need that coffee. And it just like when that one next email I needed because at the time I was dealing with, like a husband and a daughter with COVID. And I was like, I have every intention of making this purchase. I just needed that next, like, um, so if you’re just starting out, try and at least get like some sort of landing page together, put a form that is so easily accessible, that’s monthly only, and just start making those asks.

That’s awesome. Let’s do one more question. I know we’re a little bit over on time, if anyone jumps off now, our final session is going to be our keynote. It starts at 4pm, which is in eight minutes from now. So we’re gonna have a stretch break. But let’s do one more question together, Dana. So I wish I knew who this was, it was an anonymous question. Our patron base is 90%, aged 60 or older? How can we use a monthly giving program to acquire younger patrons to carry us into our 100 year anniversary? I wish I knew who it was. But can you mind talking about that? And then we’ll close out the session. Okay,

congratulations. That’s amazing. You have so many secrets that need to be shared with the rest of us. Two things on that one, my parents are in their 70s. And they give recurring, and they love it. And they talk about it all the time with me as like being in the space, too. For the younger demographic. I would say think about the language and the copy that you’re using for to target that demographic, what’s going to move them to make the gift. Again, what payment options are you using? And if you saw on one of my previous slides DonorPerfect. There’s like Venmo, included PayPal is probably really popular. How are you doing your marketing, you can do paid advertising and target specifically that age demographic, text messaging, I honestly, I love text messages from nonprofits. And I do not get it nearly enough. Ironically, I feel like I only get text messages when it’s giving Tuesday. And it’s an ask and then it’s like, I don’t know where the SMS strategy went. But I would say focus on where they are to make that ask and then maybe have dollar amounts that seem approachable, and then they can obviously grow with it. That’s great. I love there’s so many good questions in here,

or there are I wish we had more time. But Dana, thank you so much. And thank you everyone for attending today, attending Dana’s session. I hope you’re feeling empowered to go forth with a recurring first mentality. It really is paramount are like I said, our next session is going to be in six minutes from now at 4pm. Eastern. That’ll be our keynote session with kushana Palmer. She will be igniting this. Yes, to be igniting the spark of leadership for your nonprofit. You don’t want to miss it. We will see you there in a few minutes. Thank you again, Dana.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone.