Charitable donations are at record highs in the United States these days. The trend started in 2015, strengthened in 2016, and hit fever pitch with the election and inauguration. Sustainability of this historically high giving is in doubt, however, and savvy nonprofits are strategizing how they can both capture the moment and do so in a way that sustains them through uncertain times ahead.
Chief among these strategies should be a laser focus on amping up monthly donations that can keep on keeping on even if times get tough. But how?
Monthly giving is easier and more appealing than ever - for donors and nonprofits
Monthly giving has come a long way in the United States in the last decade. We now live in a subscription economy. Netflix, Spotify, Audible to name a few have prepped your donors for this moment. The landscape where donors were afraid to give out their credit card information is becoming less of a challenge as online giving continues to increase year over year. As Harvey McKinnon tells us in his book, Hidden Gold, this is true across generations where “...monthly giving appeals to younger donors who find it convenient and easy and to older donors, who are more likely to live on a budget.”
What’s more, the benefits for nonprofits are pretty intense: When a donor converts to monthly giving they usually give three times more than they would have as occasional one-time donors. Monthly donors will often give for decades, are more loyal than annual donors, and are far more likely to leave bequests. Monthly giving programs typically see retention rates over 70% after one year. What’s more, the cost to manage a successful monthly giving program in terms of dollars and staff time has decreased dramatically due to advances in the industry.
Who is a good candidate for monthly giving? Anyone giving a one-time donation.
While the value of recurring gifts is clear, finding these sustaining donors may seem less so. It need not be. Why? Two straightforward reasons: your one-time donors are prime candidates to become sustaining donors, and monthly giving increases the more you emphasize it.
Do a mass call to action of your donor list and a specify monthly giving ask. Better yet, find the folks that are most likely to hop on board straight away and do some personalized calls to action. Anyone who has given to your organization recently can become a recurring donor - especially those who’ve given by credit card. Donors giving by credit card already trust that you will keep their information safe and confidential. Trust is a really important feature for a successful monthly (or any) giving program.
Prep your people, systems, and donor data to focus on monthly donations
Just like any new initiative, you need commitment from the people most closely connected to your organization: your staff, your senior leadership, and your board of directors. You’ll need to prepare yourself and all those folks that this is a long-term project that will build over time. Don’t give up!
Your backend also has to be in tip top shape - and, no, I’m not talking about doing squats! Review your current systems for giving and constituent relationship management (CRM). How do you process recurring gifts? Can your online giving forms be set to make recurring the default? Can you create predefined values that are different for sustaining gifts than one-time donations? Are online gifts and subsequent recurring payments for sustaining donors automatically posted to your CRM to minimize staff intervention? Do you have a CRM? Can you effectively track upcoming credit card expiration dates to stave off missed installments and lapsed donors? If the online donation tool you’re using right now can’t do these things for you, you might want to find a new tool.
You’ll also want to have crystal clear, easily accessible information on who is giving monthly, who is a lapsed previous sustaining supporter, and who has given once recently. Knowing this will be vital in creating effective, personalized calls to action that boost sustaining gifts.
How much and from whom?
You’ll want to nail down how much you’re asking donors to give and what levels you’ll have for monthly donations. Here are some questions to answer that will help figure this out:
- What is the average age or demographic of your supporters?
- What is the average size of your one-time donations?
- What is the average size of your monthly donations?
- Why do people give?
These answers will give you insight into your donors, and help you build a foundation for marketing your monthly giving program. For example, If you know the average one-time donation you receive is $100, a great place to start is asking for a monthly gift of $10. That’s not a stretch for what a donor gives in a year, but it’s actually a 20% increase on their annual gift!
The monthly giving journey of your donor
Monthly giving should be part of the donor’s journey with your organization. It can be as straightforward as implementing a step-by-step list of tasks for donors that fit the engagement model you’ve established.
One of my most favorite aspects of fundraising is that you can test and test and test until you figure out what will work best for your organization - and you should do this with your monthly giving program.
In the meantime, just get started. You can do this, and stand to create crazy amounts of impact on your fundraising program and your donor’s excitement for the work that you are doing. You’ve got this, and we’ll be here working with you to make it easier along the way.
Sustaining supporter campaigns and the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack
Want to get insanely strategic and obscenely specific with all of this in the context of using the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack? Register for our upcoming webinar Convert One-Time Donors to Sustaining Supporters: Strategy, Tactics, and the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack taking place on March 16th at 3 pm ET. We’ll not only dive deeper into strategy but empower you to do the following:
- Capture key recurring donation data on the Salesforce Contact record using custom fields and User-Defined Roll Ups in the Nonprofit Success Pack for greater visibility into giving data
- Create Levels in the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack to track status and trigger success
- Develop Engagement Plans in the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack to operationalize your approach Automate donor cultivation steps through Workflow Rules to optimize staff time and ensure success
Related content:
- WEBINAR RECORDING: Convert One-Time Donors to Sustaining Supporters: Strategy, Tactics, and the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack
- SALESFORCE HOW TO BLOG: Display recurring donation data on Salesforce Contacts using User Defined Rollups in the NPSP
- SALESFORCE HOW TO BLOG: Using User Defined Rollups and Levels to Target One-Time Donors for Monthly Giving
- SALESFORCE HOW TO BLOG: Create Levels to track and cultivate sustaining donors in the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack
- SALESFORCE HOW TO BLOG: Create an Engagement Plan Template to cultivate one-time donors into sustaining supporters
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