Flip the Ask: This Tiny Tweak Fuels Monthly Giving Growth

Announcer, as your organization grows, you’re probably ready to expand your fundraising efforts and become more efficient in your operations. To help you accomplish both goals, you’ll want a solution that integrates with your online donation forms, Read More

Announcer, as your organization grows, you’re probably ready to expand your fundraising efforts and become more efficient in your operations. To help you accomplish both goals, you’ll want a solution that integrates with your online donation forms, email and accounting solutions, donor, demographic, data and other top tier solutions. To make more time for your expansion efforts, you need to automate fundraising tasks such as creating personalized thank you letters and receipts.

To expand your fundraising, you need tools to help target the right donor with the right message, whether they’re major donors or monthly givers, from events to Moves Management, having a solution that can offer these capabilities means you can increase fundraising capacity without having to switch systems to make better decisions. You need a solution with the analysis tools and reporting your team needs to understand where you’re being successful, as well as areas for improvement in a time of frequent staff turnover. You’ll also want access to onboarding, training and support specialists whenever you need them, like members of your staff that will always be there to help you. DonorPerfect checks all of these boxes and perhaps others you didn’t know you needed get answers to your questions and learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with your account manager or attending a product demonstration webinar.

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when it comes to your fundraising journey, you don’t have to do it alone. At DonorPerfect, our team has stood by nonprofits as trusted partners for more than 40 years. We’re not just great software, we’re the team behind it. DonorPerfect offers personalized onboarding and ongoing support to ensure you get the most out of your system. We’re beside you every step of the way with DonorPerfect, our people make the difference in your success. Schedule a demo today.

We

as your organization grows, you’re probably ready to expand your fundraising efforts and become more efficient in your operations. To help you accomplish both goals, you’ll want a solution that integrates with your online donation forms, email and accounting solutions, donor, demographic, data and other top tier solutions. To make more time for your expansion efforts, you need to automate fundraising tasks such as creating personalized thank you letters and receipts.

To expand your fundraising, you need tools to help target the right donor with the right message, whether they’re major donors or monthly givers, from events to Moves Management, having a solution that can offer these capabilities means you can increase fundraising capacity without having to switch systems to make better decisions. You need a solution with the analysis tools and reporting your team needs to understand where you’re being successful, as well as areas for improvement in a time of frequent staff turnover, you’ll also want access to onboarding, training and support specialists whenever you need them, like members of your staff that will always be there to help you. DonorPerfect checks all of these boxes and perhaps others you didn’t know you needed. Get answers to your questions and learn more about how DonorPerfect can meet your unique needs by speaking with Your Account Manager or attending a product demonstration webinar.

You

Oh, hello. Hi everyone.

My name is Roberto Campo, and I’m a DonorPerfect training specialist, and welcome to today’s session.

Flip the ask this time.

Tweak that fuels monthly giving growth. Let me introduce Dana Snyder. She’s a dynamic speaker,

author of monthly giving mastermind, host of the nonprofit podcast, missions to movement, visionary behind the monthly giving Summit. Her mission is to create sustainable giving models, establish robust monthly training programs and make philanthropy accessible to all

before we start, some housekeeping items. You can download today’s presentation from the details section on the right side of your presenter window. All sessions are being recorded and will be available on the DonorPerfect website after the conference. And with that, I’ll hand it over to Dana to Dana to get us started. Thank you so much. Hi everyone. This is a rapid fire session, and you know, I like to jam pack as much goodness as I can welcome. I’ve already seen some great comments about where you are with your monthly giving programs. But to kick us off and so that I can know where everyone’s at, what priority is recurring giving for you on a scale of one to 10. One, you’re like, Mike, we’re kind of, maybe not even thinking about it. 10 is like, yes, it is super impactful. We definitely want to prioritize recurring giving. It’s very important to us. Maybe you’re in the middle and you’re like, kind of, sort of, Oh, I see lots of 10s, 815, I think I saw 100 we need to get it up and running. Okay, amazing. Now, follow up question to that, what’s one word or phrase to describe how you feel currently about your recurring giving program? What do we think? Okay, we see lacking. We need to get it going, recurring donors becoming major donors, tentative, absent. Need overwhelmed, stagnant, non existent. Okay, you’re in the right space. So my hope is that by the end of this, a becomes a 10 on priority, and you feel excited, you feel ready, you feel confident, to grow your program. So before we even get started, and before I forget to share it with you, I like to do some leave behinds. So in the chat, this is a free download to seven easy steps to start asking for monthly recurring gifts. So you can download that, access it afterwards. I will also share it with you at the end, but that is now in the chat, so it is with you. And then secondly, if you want to connect with me for more information my LinkedIn, I’m just gonna drop it in the chat. So that’s kind of some housekeeping items, but I want us to start with thinking about how much incredible opportunity there is for current giving what if we collectively could unlock $10 billion

how does that sound? Sounds good, right? Collectively 10 billion, and I should say, recurring annual in donations. This is not far fetched. This is a number that is put together by giving Tuesday Data Commons. So the current state of giving in a recurring method for the past five to six years, only 2%

of all US new donors are recurring, if we collectively can move that from two to 7% so five percentage points, that would equate to $10 billion in sustainable funding. Can I get some like high fives in here? This is so important. However, let’s talk about how we typically position monthly giving. Does this look familiar to you? Is it a PS message on your donation forms, if a donor lands on a page like this,

what’s the first thing they see? Really, they just see these donation amounts here at the top, because they’re big and they’re

bold. Does it excite them to join something powerful, something that’s ongoing?

This is like, really make somebody pumped to give recurring or are they asked to being given? Like to give once, for sure, with a small secondary option to maybe kind of consider monthly giving. Because here’s the truth, if we treat recurring giving as an afterthought, our donors will too. So I want to talk about habits,

our own personal habits.

Who here has a Netflix or a Hulu or a Disney plus some type of entertainment account,

who here has a gym membership a workout class,

who here has a subscription to HelloFresh. And I’m saying all of these things because these are me. I am not a great cook, so I go on and off between I totally do the free meals or the discounts alternating between my husband and my email address to HelloFresh. Anybody else feel seen all

of these subscriptions. So

these companies.

Ask for a recurring first method

for transactions. Do we as organizations have the habit of asking in a recurring first way? Because the reality is, if we need to change our habits

to ask for a recurring gift and make it prominent, then it will switch to being the primary way of giving, instead of the optional way of giving. And I don’t know about you, but with the hundreds, 1000s of organizations that I have spoken with and worked with, many of us, and I’m sure this is you too, do not just want a 20, 30% retention rate. When monthly donors have 80 to 90% retention rate, they give for an average of eight years. They go from monthly to major donors. The masses fuel the majors. They help attract major donors because major donors love to see that you have a sustainer group of people that are keeping the mission going. This is why I do what I do. I have the missions movements podcast that I’ve had for three years talking all about monthly giving best practices. I wrote a book that came out in September, the monthly giving mastermind. You can check it out on Amazon or on my website, and I host the monthly giving summit that DonorPerfect has so lovely been a part of, and 5000 nonprofits came together from 58 countries to learn all about this topic and why it’s so important is because we need to think about this new generation of donors. I give as a monthly donor to all five of these organizations you see on the screen. They have all entered my life at different points based upon what’s happened for me personally, and how I feel called in my identity and the causes that I want to support. Dresscember is now acquired by IJM International Justice Mission, and I’ve been giving to them for over five years, and I have no sign of stopping. Chamber of mothers I’ve been giving to since I became a mom two years ago. So everything on here speaks to who I am.

And only one of these channels of giving is really, truly, especially in this current climate, sustainable, predictable, consistent. Alexandria, I see you. You’re amazing. Thank you for so much for saying that monthly recurring giving is where it’s at. But here’s the secret to success.

Working together. There are over 600 of you in this room right now. You are all now invited into a mastermind, a mini mastermind experience, which is when we come together as peers, to mentor each other, solve problems, answer each other’s questions, get advice, get inspiration. And so what I’m going to share with you is just like, a little like sneak peek into my five step framework that has been generated over the course of working with now 28 building 28 monthly giving programs through my monthly giving mastermind. If you are in the process of building and you want help growing your program. The next round launches in July. So super soon. So you can check that out. And in my book, I interviewed 15 different organizations from 26 monthly donors to 66,000 so really runs the gamut, because it’s all about sharing our experiences, our learnings. I was just at sub summit, the largest subscription conference in Dallas, Texas last week with 20 plus nonprofits that came together, and the learnings from just sitting together was like mind blowing. It was incredible when we can open up and share what we’re either going through, be what we’ve experienced, what we’ve tried, and just sit across the table, or sit across virtually and share. So working with all these organizations, I’ve developed this five step framework. Today I’m going to zone in on number three, call in the believers. This is all about making a tiny tweak to grow recurring gifts. So how do we do this? Call on the believers is about the copy, specifically, the clear messaging that’s on your websites, in your social in your emails. There’s also a whole other aspect to call on the believers that’s around partnerships and press. But for the sake of today, in this very short segment, we’re going to be focusing on your copy and the key differences to make on your websites your emails. So for example, having a stand alone landing page specifically for your monthly giving program. This is Mission bit their monthly giving program is called bits of change. This is a custom landing page that we built through the mastermind. And if you read through this language, all of it is specific towards their monthly giving program. In the third paragraph, let’s rewrite the code, join bits of change to help teach and inspire youth to explore a world of possibilities and create a brighter future for all. Join bits of change. Now everything else on this page is dialed in to speak to the ideal supportive that they’re looking to have. Now I want to give another example of how you tweak this copy.

Be I’m a big fan of the Innocence Project on their normal giving page, this is the copy that’s there. Donate to help free the innocent. Be part of the innocent project’s groundbreaking work to free innocent people and transform the legal system. With your support, we can do even more donate today. However, if you click on their monthly giving page, this is the language you see, help free the innocence every month. And then it explains monthly donors strengthen our work by ensuring we can plan in advance, continue our work without pause, and take powerful steps towards pushing the innocence movement forward. Do you see how vastly different that giving language is. There’s a separate page. There’s separate language. So when we think about this for you, and if you’re already like searching on your website right now, go and take a screenshot of what currently exists on your site. When we get done with this, think about your email copy, and what we want to do is flip the ask. So you think about you have a one time donation ask, which is probably how you typically appeal for year end donors, a one off campaign. And we want to reframe it to show sustained impact. So this is what an example might look like from a recent fundraising appeal, a $50 gift provides a healthy meal and shelter for a family in need this summer. Okay, there’s usually a main problem you’re addressing. What kind of impact does a gift make, and is there urgency this summer right now? This is in the moment. However, if we think about monthly giving messaging, how do you showcase ongoing impact, the sense of being part of a community, belonging, inserting you language. So I have this template for you. I’m going to make this bigger screen with X dollar per month. You’ll What will you do over a time frame, helping who experience what? So the example here is now, instead of the $50 it’s your gift of $15 a month. Gives a family in need a warm meal and a safe place to sleep every night for an entire year. What’s the vision? What’s the actual change offering the stability and the hope they need to rebuild their lives? Monthly donors are in it for the long term. Here’s the two examples next to each other. Monthly donors are saying, I am in this with you for the long haul. I am in this for the actual change, not just the moment of a feel good that I have right now of something that’s happening. Do you see the difference between these two? Lisa saying, Yes, this is exactly what I need to change. Yes, you can do the duration. But again, you want to think about monthly donors in it for the long haul. How do I paint that vision versus a one time I’d be really excited to give for a specific need right now, if you can’t break down your donation option, options, I love this Diana. I have two schools of thought, impact dollar amounts. This dollar amount equals x thing, or 50 cents a day, $1 a day, which equals 15 a month, 30 or $31 a month. Don’t go a day without blink. So you can move it into more of a lens of every single day you’re doing something good. And if you break it down to 50 cents a day, $1 a day that becomes really easy to visualize. So then my question again goes back to, do you have the habit of asking in part two way in the monthly giving messaging way,

I am updating our donation form right now to put recurring at the top. Yes. Brittany, it all starts by making these tiny tweaks that make a huge difference. I was just talking to Happy Pride Month, to the Trevor Project yesterday, and if you go to their website, they added one simple line above their form that said, monthly giving powers our work. They went from growing and Kate Anderson, who I spoke with, she’s gonna be on my podcast tomorrow. This episode comes out. Yes, happy pride. They went from having about 50 new monthly donors a month to double by adding that one line so powerful. Because again, I’m gonna go back to this. The reality is, if we do not have the habit of asking for a recurring gift, of making it easy, of putting this messaging in, then there’s no way that someone’s going to take that action. It just doesn’t happen naturally. So the implementation starts right now, and somebody’s already doing it. What can you make tweaks right now?

Can we do this together? Who can you partner with? And I want to invite you into the sustainers. There’s a month free if you want to join me the QR code. You can scan it with community, or you go to my website. It’s a Slack group where we have 170

nonprofits all coming together to talk about nothing but monthly giving. I love it. I This is an interesting question. I want to acknowledge really quickly. Sandy said.

Make recurring donations a default on our form. I get people who are accidentally upset if you put the right language around it, that’s how you can avoid that. And Sandy, if you have a specific landing page for recurring giving, that’s the way to do it. Also, if you do one time and then there’s like a bump another Ask to give recurring I think it’s all about what, in context of where you have it surrounded. Thank you, Amanda, putting in the messaging, but yes, as long as it’s super clear, then you won’t have people upset. So today, right now, what’s one way you can start asking in a recurring first way, who’s one person that’s here, you’re already sharing together, which is amazing that you can collaborate with, because together, going back to that $10 billion idea, we can build the future of philanthropy together. So you are invited officially into the monthly giving mastermind if you want a ton of tips and suggestions on how to build this and learn from your peers. Grab a copy of my book, The monthly giving mastermind. I will link out to all of the things I shared with you before

this is truly where you have the opportunity to choose what to do next. Is monthly giving, a sidebar on your website, the PS message in your emails, a backup plan when you’re worried about losing the one time gift or does this change everything for you?

Thank you all so much. Very excited to be here with you. Very excited that you chose to be in a session about recurring giving. Would love to connect with you after the fact and don’t forget to grab that donor checklist. Thank you all so much.

Thank you everyone for attending Dana’s session. Please hop over to the next 15 minute session with Mina das connecting your team and tech. No matter what session you choose, you will not miss any content, as all the sessions are recorded and found on our DonorPerfect site after the conference, see you in a few. Bye, everyone. Bye. You.