Nonprofit Expert Episode 11 – Maximizing Monthly Giving: Masterclass on Sustainable Nonprofit

DonorPerfectAnnouncement00:03

Welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect.

Julia GackenbachHost00:14

<span style="font-weight: Read More

DonorPerfectAnnouncement00:03

Welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect.

Julia GackenbachHost00:14

Welcome to Nonprofit Expert, a podcast sponsored by DonorPerfect. My name is Julia. I’m so excited to be here and joined by Erica Waasdorp, someone who is very well known in the sector, especially when it comes to monthly giving, which is what we’re going to tackle today. I can’t wait to hear all the practical advice you have for us, Erica. Thank you so much for being here.

Erica WaasdoorpGuest00:38

Really excited to be here, Julia.

Julia GackenbachHost00:39

Great. Well, we’re going to get started at getting to know you a little bit. Why don’t you share a little bit of your story when it comes to nonprofits and why you’re so passionate about monthly giving?

Erica WaasdoorpGuest00:50

Yeah, I’ve been in the nonprofit world for more than 30 years now in the direct response world for 40 years. I’m old, so in a love, love, love, love, monthly giving, because I’ve personally experienced growing a program for an international animal welfare organization and really really saw the power of monthly giving. So it was an organization that had basically brought monthly giving to the United States from Canada. They expanded into a number of different countries. I’m originally from the Netherlands. I’ve been here 30 years and I was comfortable giving for my bank account. That was a thing in Europe a while before it became a thing here. So again, I saw the power of these small recurring donors and I started talking, I started writing and here you are a couple of years later. It’s finally catching on in this country, so I’m really excited about it.

Julia GackenbachHost02:00

That’s so good. I mean just that setting the stage that you saw the impact of giving in this way personally is going to lead to such a great conversation. I can’t wait. I’m so excited. I’m so excited that you’re here. Well, let’s jump right in and talk a little bit more practically. I think something that nonprofits can sometimes struggle with is goal setting. So when setting up a new program like monthly giving, say, some of our listeners have never done monthly giving, or maybe some of our listeners have inherited a monthly giving program step one maybe should be figuring out where they want to end up. The same way, when you plan a trip and buy a plane ticket, you have to know where you’re going. So knowing where you’re headed with monthly giving and setting goals, do you have any advice on how someone should set goals or what the industry trends are when it comes to monthly giving? What should our listeners expect as they set up their programs?

Erica WaasdoorpGuest03:01

Yeah, that’s a great question, Julia. So I think the first step is really taking a look at where are you now. So, before you worry about, like, sending goals, it’s like okay, well, let’s take a look and say how many recurring donors do you have in your donor base and what’s their value, what’s their annualized value? So that’s like I would say step one and then take a look and saying how many donors do you have, how many active donors year to 24 months typically? How does that compare with the number of recurring donors that you have? If we then look at like industry wide I was actually talking to somebody earlier today and we looked at like statistics and if you’re able to convert about 15% of your donors to make recurring gifts, that is a good goal to strive for. Having said that, if you really want to grow even more, I mean there are organizations out there that have been doing this for a while, because they, too, saw the power early on, and some of them are seeing 40, 50, 60% of their donors giving monthly.

Julia GackenbachHost04:22

But, 15%.

Erica WaasdoorpGuest04:24

So 15%, 15% is a good goal to strive for, because that’s what we’re seeing for those organizations that have a focus on it. So that’s a key 15% 15%.

Julia GackenbachHost04:45

That’s a good place to aim for. Well, let’s talk a little bit about people who maybe haven’t even started a monthly giving program. Maybe they’re either new to fundraising or they’re at a new organization, or they just haven’t stepped their foot into the monthly giving fundraising pool. What would be the first one, two, three steps for someone to start a monthly giving program from nothing?

Erica WaasdoorpGuest05:16

Yeah. So it’s interesting and I have to put a little shout out to Donor Perfect here, because you guys were actually one of the I would say pioneers when it came to donor based CRMs that were jumping on the recurring giving bandwagon. In 2014,. 2015 is virtually every single donor base, every single payment processor now has recurring giving options on their online donation forms. So that’s like the first step is take a look at your online donation form and make sure that your recurring giving option is there and activated. So that’s a key. So everybody has the tools, everybody has a website, everybody has an online donation form, because otherwise you really can’t raise any money, right? So pretty much everybody has that. 99.9% of organizations have that. So take a look and say, okay, these are my online donation form, I have the recurring giving option included and I look at the thank you messaging that goes along with that. So make sure that that is in place.

So when a donor comes sort of like organically, you know, if they go to your website and they find your donation form and they say, oh, you know, I’m not ready to make a one-time gift, but I can be comfortable making a smaller monthly gift, then that option is on your online donation form. So that’s the thing. Then the second thing is, if your system allows this, if you can do this and I know with a donor, perfect, you can do that is create what I call like a monthly only online donation form, because you’re going to then start directing people to go there. So when you ask somebody to make a monthly gift, you don’t want them at that point confuse them with one-time gift. So it’s okay if you have a one-time gift option at the make this a recurring gift, that’s perfectly fine, and you will find some donors that are giving monthly organically.

But then if you really want to start promoting it, you need to have the make make it very, very clear that the donor wants to give monthly. So having a special online donation form with monthly only is is key. So that’s like step two. Again, step three is really test it out. Make sure that, again, everything is working, that everything you know integrates with your donor base, that the thank you messaging is exactly what you wanted to say and that’s you know. So you really want to get all of that prep before you start promoting it.

Julia GackenbachHost08:16

That’s really helpful. I love step three, testing it out. There have been many times where I would try to set up an email that had the wrong fields in it, things like that. So being sure to test out the form is really important. When you shared, you know these three steps are offering the opportunity for people to give. You need to tell people that this is an option. So, once those really practical things are set up, what should our listeners do to get the word out about this program?

Erica WaasdoorpGuest08:50

Yeah, so. So again, if you have that form, I mean it can be as easy as adding a button. I mean you’ll hear me talk a lot about buttons because sometimes it is really that easy, but you’ve got to make it really really clear for the donor to find right. So add a button to. You could add a button to your homepage. It could say donate now and give monthly, right so, and that give monthly then goes to that monthly only payment online donation form. So so button there, put it in your email newsletter. A button about giving monthly put it in your emails, you know.

So you really have to start talking about it on your online messaging, and then you can also start talking about it in your offline messaging, in your direct mail. So so that’s like the second step. You got to make sure that everything’s ready to go and then you just you got to drive people there. I mean, people are not going to decide all of a sudden like, ah, today is a good day, I’m going to make a monthly gift. Now you need to. You know, tell them the need, right, tell them that you need them, tell them that you, you need help. And then donors are going to say, okay, yeah, and guess what? I can make a difference with a small amount, you know.

So again, the, the, the fact that that then the donor goes to your page and says, hmm, donate now a big gift, or can I break it up in smaller chunks? And some people will say, yeah, I want help, but I can only do it in smaller increments. And and other people are going to say, yeah, I can do it and I can make a big gift right now. So, so donors are different, right? So that’s that’s what you’re. You’re going after that donor that wants to help, but it’s just not able to write the big check yet it’s not able to make the big gift today.

Julia GackenbachHost10:48

That is applicable for donors of different age groups, like maybe millennials are, still are Gen Z are becoming givers and they need a lower threshold to start giving, which makes a lot of sense. I also love what you said. You know, put it in your direct mail, put it in your email, put it on your website, put it on your social media. If, if we’re not telling people that this is an option, how would they know? So great, great points on getting the word out and the ability to say it in multiple ways, and so, as a fundraiser, we had people who, monthly, would send in a check and we communicated with them through direct mail, I think sometimes we think monthly givers are all online givers. That’s not necessarily true. So using all of these lines of communication is really helpful.

Erica WaasdoorpGuest11:37

Yeah, and I think I mean you know those organizations that are, you know, again, as you start seeing the power of it and as you start an education program, then they’re like, oh, wow, you know what let’s do, like a special sustainer recurring giving drive, right, so like every February, they do a mailing, they do and it could be a postcard, right, and they do an email and they do like some social media, maybe even a phone call, right, so they can. And then you know, it’s all focused on, you know, bringing in XYZ number of new recurring donors. So those what we call like multi-channel, right, those really work the best because they’re like oh yeah, I saw that in the mail and, yes, I see it online, and you know. So everything aims at growing that number of monthly donors at that point. So, and you can do two sustainers a week, a month, I’m sorry, two sustainer drives a year, you can do four, I mean you can do something monthly. It all depends on how you want to grow.

Julia GackenbachHost12:42

I love that. I love the idea of using it as a campaign. You know, we talk about these capital campaigns to build a building, or we talk about giving Tuesday or exactly, or end of year campaigns or, you know, back to school campaigns or whatever. What about a monthly giving campaign? Why don’t we run those so much? So that’s a great idea and a great way either to start or grow, which is another question I have for you. So when I started out my organization, they had been around for almost 20 years by the time I was there and they had a monthly giving program that I inherited. So what could I have done to grow that program or to level up that program or encourage those givers to be more involved?

Erica WaasdoorpGuest13:29

Yeah, so again well, it’s two different questions, right?

So it’s like if you look at refreshing your program, you know, again take a look and think, well, how long have they been giving? What caused them to give to begin with, right, what caused them to start making a monthly gift and then saying, okay, well, what are some of the opportunities that I can add into my communication schedule that I can offer this more often, especially to I mean, monthly donors tend to be smaller donors, right? So you may want to add a special thank you letter, so you send the thank you letter after they make a gift and then you know, say, giving Tuesday, they make a thank you, they make a gift and you send them a thank you letter and then a month later, you send them a special invitation to become a monthly donor, right? So it’s not a huge number of pieces that you have to send out, but it’s like one more opportunity to that special. That’s at a different time than donors normally might be used to getting something from you that is like, oh, okay, yeah, like hey, I’m going to be part of a special community and you know I want to do this because I really care about this organization, but monthly tends to be the best way I want to give, right.

So, yeah, there’s lots of different ways. You know that you can refresh things if you feel that the program has gone a little stale, but a lot of times we tend to again. Fundraisers tend to be their own worst enemies, right? So we get tired of something, but the donors, like, after five times they’re like they’re finally starting to see what you want to tell them, right? So don’t give up too soon, don’t think that something stale too soon. You know, but take a look and say, okay, what can I do to add opportunities that may not have been there 10 years ago, right? So, because that’s the other piece, there’s so much changing right now that you know, like we, you know, I think, there’s so many opportunities that even big organizations are not necessarily even even um Taking.

Julia GackenbachHost15:51

So you know, thinking about the, maybe my program has become stale. For me, it was sometimes difficult to get new people into my program. You know we had X amount of monthly givers and they were sustaining a certain part of our budget and that’s great. But then how would you give it? What advice would you give for people who are looking to To involve some new monthly donors? Where do you find new monthly donors? How do you convince them to be part of your monthly giving program? What for lack of a better term marketing do you offer when it comes to your monthly giving program? What might that look like?

Erica WaasdoorpGuest16:28

Yeah, so, so again, I mean, obviously, like you need to be sure that your overall program you know that you’re bringing in new, fresh blood right, that you’re bringing in new donors or maybe new volunteers or or you know what, if some of the new groups of people that might get involved with your organization, and then Could you do a welcome email and as part of that welcome email, you know, make it a series of two or three, where this, the second or third, is hey, you know, like you know what would be the best way to support, you know, this organization, our mission, blah, blah, blah, blah, and be specific, you know, consider a month, a gift, and then again you, you can make it really easy. You can click right through to the, the donation page, right. So so, welcome emails are great, special invitations are great this, if you’ve never done that before but Postcards are great. Again, a special drive, like I was talking to an organization last year, and Every year they do a Valentine’s Day campaign and it’s a postcard that they send out to some of their smaller donors and then it’s a, an email series, three or four emails that are all focused on on Valentine’s Day and you have a secret admirer and you know. And then there’s a goal built in, right. So they say, look, we have, we’re looking for 15 new monthly donors and if we reach that goal Then we’re gonna receive a match. So kind of like a lot of the principles that maybe you’re approaching giving Tuesday with you. Can, you know, use that for your monthly giving campaigns as well? Like matches are great, right?

I work with an organization and they had like a lot of volunteers and they had a board member that says, you know what? I’m gonna put up a match, a $5,000 match, and we did like an email campaign. It was like two emails and we reached out to the volunteers because they didn’t have a lot of like donors yet and the volunteers were great, you know, interested in helping and they wanted to generate like 25 new monthly donors with this $5,000 match and they reached like 38 new monthly donors With this campaign from their volunteers. So so, again, it’s like sometimes we fundraisers tend to Assume things right so, and we can’t assume we have to give the donor the opportunity. The worst thing they can do is no, not right now. Right so, and there’s actually like research out there that, especially with like organizations that do a lot of.

They used to do a lot of phone call campaigns when the donor might say no on the phone, no, I’m not ready to make a monthly gift. But then when you sent them a letter afterwards they had thought about it and then they decided to become a monthly donor in the mail and so again that combination of like mail and phone and you know other other Opportunities. So just because the donors is not right now Doesn’t mean they’re gonna say no, not ever right. So so again, we we tend to assume things well, the donor probably didn’t want to do it, okay, well, then give them another opportunity, right? You know something to your marketing point. It’s like sometimes we need to see a couple of different things and a couple of different things. More often you know you tend to give up too soon, oh well, it didn’t work. And you know it’s like, okay, well, how many people did you send it to? Okay, when you know why did you get a while?

Julia GackenbachHost20:16

I had a couple of people click Okay, alright, so well, maybe you need to give them another opportunity to click again well, and something you mentioned that I I’d love to push in on a little bit more the example of the organization using their volunteers to Kind of connect to their networks and figure out who may want to give. What about the idea of Advocates people who maybe already are monthly giving programs, having them use their voice Is? Is there any avenue for that? Is that appropriate?

Erica WaasdoorpGuest20:51

Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah, again, I mean, you know, I normally say like you know, like, especially for those organizations that are just starting out, that they may have a few monthly donors and you know each hour and ask them, why are they giving monthly?

And Then get their testimonial and then you can reach out to other people saying, you know, erica is like you know, she gives monthly because, whatever it is, and then you can put that on the website, you can put that on a special landing page, you can put it in an email, you can put it in a letter, you know so. And again, donors love hearing from other donors like, oh, okay, other, you know donors have already made a, considered a monthly gift of acts, right? So those nudges, that social proof, I mean there it does work. So, so kind of use some of those opportunities. Again, I was working with an organization and they had 15 monthly donors that had come to them organically and they said, okay, we want to grow, we want to generate like 100 monthly donors this year and and so the first thing they do was reach out, sent a note really nice handwritten note to their monthly donors saying thank you so much, would you like to share why you’re giving monthly?

and they put in a little three by five card and a reply envelope and they got the most amazing testimonials back. So you know, so that’s like and and and. Again, if you’re engaging your monthly donors, that’s that’s great because, yeah, they want to be part of that community, they want you to succeed as a nonprofit right. So, and they, they see the power of giving monthly themselves.

Julia GackenbachHost22:32

Yeah, that group in Itself is so valuable. Like you know, we we’ve called them sustainers. These are people who are Long-term committed to your organization and who care about what your mission is, and so using them to help other people care, I think, is wonderful. Another question I have about people who are already part of a monthly giving program, which is another thing as a fundraiser that I had a hard time with. Do you have any recommendations on upgrading Current monthly givers? How do you have that conversation? You know somebody’s been giving 15 bucks for three years. Maybe they could give 20 bucks and how do I start that conversation?

Erica WaasdoorpGuest23:12

Yeah, yeah so. So again, you don’t want to upgrade somebody too soon, right? So you want to wait at least six months, like six to nine months usually is sort of the sweet spot. But, yeah, you can explain how things have gotten more expensive or how you need to help more people or more animals, right, and that costs money. So then say you’re, you’re giving monthly. We really, really appreciate it, but would you consider a small increase, just. And then, you know, let let donors choose what their increased amount is. And some donors will say, yeah, go for five dollars more. Some will even double what they’re giving, right.

So again, it’s like you have to give them the opportunity to to consider an upgrade, right. And you know again, if, if you’ve steward them right During the time that they’ve been giving in New York, you said, well, they’ve been giving monthly for three years. Have they received updates on how their gifts are making a difference? Right, through email newsletters or through print newsletters, right? So so the more you can talk about how their gifts are making a making a difference for you and how that they feel really part of your organization, right, they feel committed. I think that’s the that’s the key point. So so, everything that you do with monthly giving, it’s sort of like it all goes hand in hand, right? So so you bring them in, you got to give them opportunities to make a monthly gift, then you got to say thank you and you know, in the right way. And then you got to steward them on an ongoing basis by telling stories of how their gifts are making a difference and how important they are to your organization and In most organizations.

Again, I’m all for like, if you, for me, speak, it’s all for like, keep it simple, right, so you know. So, again, don’t over promise things, right. So, so you’re like. I always say, well, like if you, if you start giving monthly, tell them two things. One is they will receive updates on how their gifts are making a difference. You don’t have to say how often that is and what that looks like.

So don’t get yourself hung up on like, oh man, I promise that they were gonna get two newsletters a year or whatever, and you can’t do it right. So just say you get updates on how you get to making a difference, right, and then you know, but you don’t need to. But we’re not gonna send you a Thank-you letter every month. We will send you an overview of all of your giving every January. So you have that for tax purposes, right? So those are related to promises. I recommend you make that. That will help make your life as a fundraiser easier and you still steward them in in the right way, right? So that that way again donors know exactly what to expect. They know then shouldn’t have to look at, you know, wait for a monthly Thank-you letter in the mail, because that’s a waste of a stamp, right? But you’re better off like giving them some other other updates during the year on how they’re getting at everyone’s that’s a great idea, I think, for me.

Julia GackenbachHost26:36

I had a really hard time with figuring out stewardship of monthly donors. I, my executive director and I went back and forth sometimes because we were sending a thank-you letter to monthly givers every month. Somebody who’s giving ten bucks a month was getting a monthly giving thank-you letter every Month, but somebody who gave a ten thousand dollar gift in December got one Thank-you letter. So I had a hard time reconciling what the best way was to communicate, and you touched a little bit on this broad communication. Is there anything special that we should do to communicate with monthly givers?

Erica WaasdoorpGuest27:16

well, so so again, you know, like two point is like you want it to be doable, and and and you know, you know, fundraisers are so busy, right, we have so much going on, right, and a lot, of, lot of organizations have small shops, they don’t have a lot of staff, right. So so again, maybe it’s like one afternoon you sit down in your office and you think, okay, let me see what all of the different things that I’m sending to donors, regardless of the level of gift, right, what is it? What are we sending out?

You might have a print newsletter, you might have a couple of appeals a year right, you might even have something with a little Chatsky or a sticker, or you know something that you say, oh well, we’re doing this for an event or whatever, right? And then say, okay, what could we use some of these things to make the monthly donor feel special? How hard would it be to say, oh, my god, I got this box of stickers sitting here. You know, and can’t we just like when we send a thank-you letter, when the you know the month it owner first comes on board, I’m throwing in a sticker, right? Or you know, hey, there’s a special occasion day, or you know, that fits your organization, maybe, you know, say it’s a health organization, right? And you say, oh, I got this little recipe card or something healthy, whatever. Well, maybe there’s something that you can Put in. You know something else that you’re sending out to them and you pop in a recipe card.

Sometimes it can be as little as like oh man, look at this, I got this beautiful drawing from this kid that we’re helping, right?

I’m scanning it in, I’m popping it in an email and I’m sending it to my monthly donors as well as everybody else, right? So, every so, a lot of things that you’re sending to your other donors. Just make a tiny version of it for your monthly donors, right, but you can have a virgin, as simple as like, okay, well, you want to make sure that you have them as a separate email segment or group or tag over however you call it in your constant contact or meal shimp or whatever else program you have and then say thank you so much for your ongoing month of support. Um, let me share this wonderful story, or let me share this beautiful picture that we just got, thank you, you know, just as simple as that, right so it bite by that little tiny variation. You’ve just made it special for the monthly learn and everybody else gets it as well, right so? But they don’t get that Monthly monthly reference, obviously, right.

Julia GackenbachHost29:57

That. That sounds like a really great way to save the fundraisers time, to save the monthly givers time. I love that. I mean.

Erica WaasdoorpGuest30:06

I know a lot of a lot of nonprofits have gone back to events, right, some of virtual summer combination, right, I would Invite a month to donors to your events. I Mean, you know it’s, it’s like in a lot of cases it’s not that many per se, it’s a couple more invitations and just bit by inviting them makes them feel special. They don’t necessarily have to come, but you can, you know, you can make them feel special. So there’s a lot of Simple things I think you can do. You know, just don’t, don’t overthink it.

But, man, if there’s something comes across your desk and like, wow, that would be wonderful, I mean, I think all of our donors would like to see this, but especially on month, they don’t, right? So, so this, there’s probably stuff then I are being done in your organization that you could use. Again, a lot of times people are like, wow, yeah, I just put this thank you video on social media and it’s like, okay, well, how about those dormitories that are not on social media? Send it in an email, you know. So it’s okay to repurpose as well, right?

Julia GackenbachHost31:16

Yeah, and this goes back to what we were saying these people are deciding monthly or seeing funds leave their bank account monthly. They care about your organization. So they care about the little things like a drawing by a kid just as much as you care about your organization and the little things like a drawing by a kid. So I love that idea of taking these little things that come across your desk and saying, hey, you care about our organization and here’s a victory from today and we wanna let you know. Okay.

So I want to return to one thing that we talked about, which had to do with the upgrade question I mentioned. How do you get some of the people who are already in your program to upgrade? And you said something that I think is incredibly practical and I don’t wanna fly over it. You said reach out to them and say you’ve been giving $15 and you’ve helped dog eat dinner for a month. I wonder if there’s some way to say, okay, you’ve done this for three years and you’ve helped this. Now would you consider giving enough to feed two dogs for a month? So it’s a very impact, yeah, so how do you recommend having those conversations?

Erica WaasdoorpGuest32:41

Yeah, again, it’s like yeah, the problem is it all depends on what type of organization. You are right. So if you can quantify it like, you can say, okay, well, you’ve helped spay neuter X, y, z cats in the past year. Would you consider, hey, you have to kind of like say, well, we have an influx of more animals this year because obviously after COVID that happened a lot. So it’s like okay, would you consider adding increasing your amount to spay neuter, to spay neuter just one more.

So, typically, again, just like with general fundraising, you wanna try to tell the story of like one more or that would help, like feed one more child, have lunch or things like that. So make it a doable something. Again, not like and I work with a couple of organizations and they like to say, well, we’ve already spent five million on research and it’s like okay, well, but how is my five more dollars gonna make a difference? Right, so don’t talk to me about that. Right, say, but hey, we’ve got so many patients and we wanna just help one more patient. You know what would that look like, right? So again, stay away from the big numbers. Make it bite size, right Again, because I don’t know. I’d say, well, yeah, I’m already giving $15 and I can’t go to 20, but I can go to 18, you know.

Julia GackenbachHost34:15

And monthly giving in itself is bite size. That’s the whole purpose. So giving these small incremental growth is great. At my organization we did like donut parties and pizza parties for students, and so a donut party was 18 bucks and a pizza party was 27 bucks, and so if somebody was giving enough for a donut party, I could reach out to them and say you threw 15 donut parties in the last year. Would you like to throw some pizza parties? You know, so it does. It kind of humanizes this seemingly small gift but it was a huge deal for my organization. So encouraging the giver that they’re making an impact not a $5 million impact but an incremental impact giving lunch to students at school was important. So I love that idea of this incremental growth and I think that’s a very practical way to grow your monthly giving.

Erica WaasdoorpGuest35:19

Yeah, and again, don’t be afraid to schedule it in once a year. You know like what year you’re doing an upgrade campaign, so just like it just becomes part of your plan.

Julia GackenbachHost35:31

Well, okay, so we’ve covered a lot today, a lot of things that hopefully our listeners can implement. What would be your, like, key advice for these organizations that are still afraid to jump into the monthly giving pool? People who feel like it’s too much work or our givers wouldn’t be excited about it, or I don’t have a team to help me with this. These people who are a little bit still nervous. What would be your parting wisdom for the people who are still have pause?

Erica WaasdoorpGuest36:04

Yeah, so I mean well, first of all, like say don’t pause.

Julia GackenbachHost36:08

Yeah.

Erica WaasdoorpGuest36:09

So, in other words, don’t worry about not having a name or not having like a lot of stewardship stuff, you know. So that’ll come later. But I mean, you have the tools, you have the online donation forms, you have your donor base, you have your website, you have an email list.

Julia GackenbachHost36:34

And if you don’t check out Donor Perfect Right exactly so.

Erica WaasdoorpGuest36:40

But, yes, I mean, you know, virtually every organization has some type of tools and all of them include recurring giving options. And this is like you know. Like I said, donor Perfect started that whole roller coaster, if you will, and you know, and everybody’s been following since then. But it is important to kind of look at that. And then I say, you know, one hour a week, start, make it every Monday morning from 9 to 10,. You’re saying, okay, I’m going to focus on my monthly giving program. Take a look, what do I have? Okay, I have an online form and it has recurring on it and hey, I have so many monthly donors already. And then calculate what the annualized value is, right. So, because sometimes I ask organizations like, okay, so how many monthly donors do you have? Well, we got like 50, okay, so, well, what do they work? Okay, and then like, what’s their average gift? And if you get $25 a month, which is industry average right now, right, so, $25 a month and I know donor perfect clients is even higher than that. So, but if you look at like industry average and again it does depend a little bit of like you’re an animal organization or human services organization or arts organization or health. It’s all over the map at $25 a month on average. That’s, one monthly donor is worth $300 a year. Here they got 50 monthly donors, right? That’s like $15,000 a year, right? Do I get to calculate that, right? So you know? So it’s like that’s where it’s like you know a nice amount of money. So it’s like no, 50 times three is $150,000. So it’s like so it’s even more. So it’s worth a lot of money.

So start with what you have and take one hour a week and just chip away at it. Hey, I’ve got this page. Let me just try a button in an email, see what happens. Let me try another button in an email, right, see what happens. So it’s not gonna grow overnight. It’s not gonna be like, wow, you know, we did a campaign and all of a sudden we got 150 new monthly donors. No, it’s gonna take time. You literally have to just chip away at it and say one hour a week. I’m gonna do this for the next year and see what happens. So I mean, who does not have one hour a week?

Julia GackenbachHost39:16

Well, if anybody doesn’t, it’s fundraisers. We are very, very busy. Of course, but if you say, that’s the first thing I do, I’m done, you know, and prioritizing it, and I think that the numbers you just shared speak for themselves. The ability to grow, giving so much makes this an important priority when fundraisers are so, so busy. But having a sustainer program in the longterm is going to help lighten the load a little bit.

Erica WaasdoorpGuest39:47

And just remember one thing Monthly giving is really very donor-centric, so donors can make a difference in an amount that they’re most comfortable with. And especially if you’re in the situation you’re in right now, where we serve at inflation, we’ve got a lot of worries going on. It’s like there’s disasters happening all the time. Is building that sustainable revenue is critical, right? And I think the final word is like, just because somebody gives monthly does not mean that they’re not gonna upgrade, that they’re not gonna give extra gifts, that they’re not gonna give to Giving Tuesday, right, they’re giving to other things, so, and you can upgrade them to higher levels.

I mean, if you look at universities, one prime example was an alum that started giving $5 a month 20 years ago and then they made a million dollar gift, so because they were part of that community and you did the stewardship and so, but you gave them the opportunity to get started with a small amount. And sometimes donors are like that right, they’re like, well, let me try out this organization and see what happens. And if you treat them right and you’re like saying thank you so much for your $5, and hey, thank you so much for your $5 a month, we really value you and you’re part of the special community great so. And then you upgrade and then you start asking for an extra gift and you give them opportunities, maybe for a special capital campaign or something like that. So you send them updates and emails and newsletters. It’s they’re your really loyal group of donors that are worth a lot of money.

Julia GackenbachHost41:39

And just remembering that they care and I think that’s a great thing to rely on is these people love our mission the same way I love our mission, and they’re partners with us literally every month, which is so encouraging, yeah, and a lot of them leave you in their will.

Erica WaasdoorpGuest41:57

So you know, like there’s, I mean one study I saw like six times more likely from the UK, six times more likely to leave you in their will. So, they may not be the big, big givers right now, but they’re gonna. They’re gonna be committed, they really care about your mission and they’re gonna wanna help you even after they’re gone.

Julia GackenbachHost42:16

So Well, great, this has been so wonderful. Erica, I really hope that people will be able to leave listening to this and feel empowered to love on their monthly donors or to start some new programs. I believe that it you have proven how important it is and how valuable it is, so I hope that our listeners are going to be able to enact some things. This is great. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing your wisdom. We’re really appreciative.

Erica WaasdoorpGuest42:44

You’re welcome. Thanks, Julia.

Julia GackenbachHost42:46

Thank you.

DonorPerfectAnnouncement42:47

Thank you for listening to Nonprofit Expert presented by Donor Perfect. For more information and a special offer, visit donorperfectcom. Slash podcast.