so all right folks the reason why we're here
right I am so stoked to have a very special guest speaker that is Chad Barger with us
today to dive into something so important called monthly giving building your nonprofit
sustainability plan I don't know about you I am so eager to learn about the strategies to really
get that monthly supportive income rolling in um but before I dive into the session I wanted to
share a little bit about our guest speaker today this is just very a very small fra
ction of all of
the amazing things Chad does Chad Barger he's a seasoned expert in nonprofit fundraising through
his firm productive fundraising he teaches small and midsize nonprofits on strategies that really
help you deliver sustainable and growing Revenue we all know and love him he's a sought-after
conference speaker a webinar presenter a master trainer for all of you nonprofits that have very
resistant boards about fundraising I'm sure we can all relate to that um he also serves as a
strategic advisor and a coach for so many of us nonprofit professionals and I would say you know
myself and other fundraisers we come to know and love him as fundraiser Chad he host an amazing
free monthly webinar series and I would say one of the most comprehensive resource libraries out
there free of charge for all of all of all of us so all to say we're definitely in great hands
today great thank you so much Brit um pleasure to be with all of you today pleasure to be back
with donorbox
I love donor box it's how I get people to take the Deep dive from not just using
PayPal for an online donation page and actually getting something optimized for their donors
and one of the great things about donor Box 2 is it is completely optimized for um monthly
giving so uh we'll look at that a little later but I'm going to go ahead and share my screen
and get started so here we are monthly giving your nonprofit sustainability plan and why do
I call it that why do I call it your nonprofi
t sustainability plan well we're going to look
at two nonprofit organizations so these two nonprofits were actually clients of mine um at
the start of the pandemic so in March of 2020 um you can see their revenue mixes uh organization
a was extremely reliant on special events they had six events throughout the year was almost
half of their income and look less than 1% of it came from monthly giving organization B kind
of the complete opposite 60% was from monthly giving sustaining donors gi
ving each each and
every month and only 5% from special events um so who' I hear from first within three days I
heard from organization a because they already had to think about canceling or postponing two
events and there was nothing to fill that Revenue Gap uh number B um B uh was they were fine like
the money just kept coming right um you know 5% from events the I didn't hear from them until
our next reg regularly scheduled call it took that long uh they were fine they said you know
we
might have to do something with that event in the fall but the money's coming we're okay so
that's why I call it your sustainability plan the money just keeps coming what are we going
to do today we're going to talk about the why why monthly giving if that's not reason enough um
kind of talk about how to launch a monthly giving program if you don't have one how to Market
one if you do how to better Market one if you do and finally if you have a really good program
what are some things you c
an do to optimize that program you already have um if you've ever been
to a fundraiser Chad webinar I will give you tons of additional fundraising resources and we'll
take your questions and comments at the end um I don't need to tell you who I am uh Britt did
a fabulous job but career-long fundraiser worked with the organizations in the top row a bunch
of certifications and these days I spend my time with my own firm productive fundra ing
providing fundraising training and coaching for sma
ll to midsize nonprofits and I have the
honor of serving on the faculty at both Temple University and Messiah University teaching their
fundraising courses so that is me I am coming to you from just outside of Hershey Pennsylvania
where they make your chocolate bars U because we have lots of milk lots of dairy farms in the
area I already saw the question in the chat can you get the slides yes you are going to get the
slides the resources the recording um you have my resources link you get a
follow-up email from
the good Folks at donorbox um you get everything you get everything and there is that direct link
to my resources page let's get into it why smart nonprofits focus on growing monthly giving well
here are some reasons monthly donors give more the average onetime gift to a nonprofit is $125
the average monthly gift is $25 do the math that's $300 a year versus 125 monthly donors are
more loyal they have an 80% retention rate after one year 95% after five years the average
donor
retention rate for one-time donors 43% which I think it's down to 42.6% depending on Source
monthly donors make estate gifts they're six times more likely to in include your organization
in their will and the push back I get a lot is you know Chad I donors my donors just won't give
monthly well I'm waiting for the updated stat here because this was a 2019 stat in 2019 45% of
donors were already enrolled in a monthly giving program somewhere um and your donors are used
to monthly giv
ing they pay so many bills monthly just automatically charges to my credit card or
deducts from my bank account um they will do it we just have to give them a compelling reason why and
monthly giving programs provide budget stability and eliminates pledges that aren't fulfilled so
great ways so if you need to sell it in your shop here's the slide take these stats take it to the
powers that be and show them why you need monthly giving also it will make you a favorite person of
the Bean Count
er in your organization who is your Finance person your treasur your bookkeeper your
CFO they love monthly giving because it provides steady predictable recurring income which makes
their job so much easier they don't have to do all the cash flow Antics tools they have there's just
going to be that funding there um and The Time Is Now um monly getting a really kickoff in 2020 it
continues to grow very well uh year-over-year much faster than it used to we saw a 26% increase
in monthly giving
enrollments in uh 2021 um 24% the year after um you know a lot of good
movement um if you're not on the monthly giving train the time is now bottom line organizational
stability matters much more now than it did in 2019 donors still get it and if we make that
case they are happy to give so how do we do this how do we launch a monthly giving program
well let's talk the tech you do need some technology right it doesn't have to be complicated
right so it doesn't have to be complicated um if y
ou have PayPal you can have monthly giving
it's an option in there I don't recommend having PayPal as your only giving form because it's
like you're buying something off eBay rather than making a donation but interesting stat there
20% of donors actually prefer PayPal and 9% won't give if you don't offer it as a payment option so
it's somewhere in your ecosystem but it's not your system right um I love a builtin giving option
so if you have an advanced CRM it's going to have giving pages an
d and all kinds of tools that you
can create and monthly giving is an option there um if you don't create a donor box right it's
a fully functional optimized tool we'll look at one here in a little bit um that can really
allow you to BR sent customized giving options to your donors monthly giving being one of them
and fully optimized for that here's an example page so this is actually a donor box um and you
can see right there there's a slide between one time and monthly that monthly is is
highlighted
um there are the options we can embed it right in a page with photos and telling me why why help
us give children their best tomorrow um here's another one I really like this one look what it's
doing it's bringing our case for support into the donation tool and telling us what that does $5 a
month provides a student with school supplies $10 a month covers tutoring reading support or college
entrance exam preparation so optimize tool tell me why I should give monthly um that's th
at key you
can't just put up a monthly option and expect them to do it you got to tell them why if you make
monthly giving the default option on your form you can increase conversions by up to 35% you
have to decide if you're comfortable with that if you do it I highly recommend multiple times
in the confirmation process you're telling them that they're signing up for a monthly gift but
it really highlights it monthly first um you got to look on mobile um I need to update this stat
because
now 33% of all online donations are made on mobile devices including 18% of monthly giving
enrollments what's that like at your organization if you don't know after the webinar make a $510
donation to your organization on your phone is there friction if it's if there's friction you're
losing donations because people aren't going to stop and go to your website to do it instead
they're going to just stop and be frustrated you have to inspire that gift all over again make
sure your organizati
on name shows up on the credit card statement right um I'm not going to say it
out loud but there's a vendor listed there that the default is their name first right so what's
that look like at your shop because if they see a name they don't recognize they're more likely
to contest the charge and add a checkbox to your print donation forms as well it seems weird like
why would we do it on print because they probably have to go to our website to enroll but we just
need to keep repeating that
monthly comes first right we want to encourage that monthly giving
everywhere it looks something like this right here I want uh patients to be able to count
on my support please make this a monthly gift and then we'll just follow up with them with the
enrollment form whatever we need to do but we're just looking for them to give away um make it
easy to ask for help through your monthly giving enrollment process they might have questions so
you have maybe a dedicated page on your website tha
t explains the importance of monthly giving
there's a phone number and an email for a real person not your info address in case they have
questions there's a downloadable form in case they'd actually like to fill it out and send it
in I really wish we could get away from this but fortunately some people think it's still more
secure to write their credit card number on a piece of paper than to type it into a web form
but maybe it's an option make sure you have good internal policies and proc
edures on what happens
with that piece of paper there are still donors that won't do that so give them the option all
right we are functional we got our web form we got it on our um e blast but I'm not ready yet I
want to talk about the donor experience of being a monthly G and set that up at our organization
first so first things what happens as soon as I um as soon as I click donate soon as I click
sign up to give monthly um I don't want it to go to this generic page that just says uh you
know
it's like a transaction it's like a credit card statement no you can have some fun so show some
emotion show them what their dollars are going to do you can create like a 12 second video in canva
like take stock photography from your organization say thank you it's very easy to do have that
autoplay after they make the donation and then go to the transaction confirmation page Infuse the
mission and what does that confirmation email look like let's make it a little more personal here
we go because of you countless children and their families have a reason to be thankful because
of your recurring support children patients can celebrate health and healing and look forward
for Hope and strength there's a real person at the bottom yes it's automatically generated but I can
get in touch with somebody and begin to have this conversation we're still not ready what happens
after that what's your monthly giving stewardship look like maybe they get a handwritten welcome
note a fe
w weeks later every January you got to send them an annual summary like listing all the
gifts from the pr previous year with the total that's their tax statement we don't need to send
them a mailed statement every month we're going to automatically get the confirmation email when
it processes I like to flag them in the database and remove them from our standard mail so they're
not getting solicitations when their monthly gift just processed yes we can still solicit them for
maybe an upgrade
or a special gift we'll talk about that a little later but let's not just
yeah there's this one organization I support monthly and my credit card happens to process on
the same day that they have an automatic monthly like solicitation request so literally within an
hour of giving I get solicited from them every single month and every single month it annoys me
and I'm like H if I didn't love this organization so much I would cancel this right so let's not
annoy our donors um one of my thing
s too like our end of calendar year appeal where we usually
have a great story hopefully you have a great story in that one if not all of them I'll kind
of still send it to them but I'll put a little note on it like I love to do a Post-It that says
thanks for being a monthly donor we just wanted to share this fabulous story with you period
and we can still include an envelope and some of them will still make an extra year- end gift
but we're acknowledging the fact that they are a monthly do
nor um I like to do something special
for monthly donors kind of quarterly maybe a quick little video hey there thanks so much for being a
monthly donor we greatly appreciate you couldn't do it without you your recurring monthly support
ensures we are always here to serve the kids each and every month thanks again took 20 seconds we
walk around with highdefinition video cameras in our handbags at all times right um some other
Creative Touch points um you know here's example monthly GI uh a
thank you note for a monthly donor
right it acknowledges me as a monthly donor um you're helping our neighbors in need month to
month and day to day right um I love postcards this is my favorite postcard I sent of all time
but you know just a standard postcard I like the jumbo ones um don't send them during October to
Mid November of this year our politician friends will be sending plenty of them but any other time
of year they work great um but I sent this uh this is a diecut postcard so i
t's actually was in the
shape of a violin you can see the front and back there the pink line was the die cut um these
are the same price as jumbo postcards as long as they have the die in stock um so there's tons
of dyes there's pineapples there's owls there's ice cream Sundays um a lot of my clients love
to do diecut hearts at around Valentine's Day um but easy way to kind of stand on from the crowd
and do something pretty inexpensive to thank our monthly donors but you need to send your d
onors
a piece of generous communication every month in hopes they'll actually see or read a quarter
of it right see or read a quarter of it final step excuse me folks I was at a hockey
game last night have a little bit of tickle here I was telling the uh donor
box team at the beginning that uh had to do a little extra encouragement
to encourage the win it didn't work but uh we're sipping on some tea to help with
that so final step that 90% of organizations um don't do and why they don't ha
ve that many monthly donors is they
don't set a goal right set a goal um what is it can we get we're at 50 can
we be at 100 by the end of the year setting the goal ensures that we have some consistent effort
moving forward marketing a monthly giving program marketing a monthly giving program how do you
actually get people to do it it's not good enough just to create it you can have the most optimized
program ever but if you don't Market it Market it well no one's going to join this is not t
he if we
build it they will come situation we have to do some smart marketing so i' like to focus Less on
the name of it like the whatever our sustaining pillars Society whatever we call it less on like a
brand Less on the benefits they're not giving for the benefits they might be nice but focusing more
on the why tell me why I should become a monthly donor repeatedly repeatedly so let's look at some
of those wise I'm going to skip the first one because it didn't used to work main things we
used
to say um pre pandemic was your monthly support allows us to spend more time serving our neighbors
in need and less time on fundraising all right it's fine but we're probably still going to fund
raise just do it a different way right um or we primarily share stories of impact with our monthly
donors rather than request for more support which is fine but then you actually have to remember
to pull them out and ask them for more support what works really now good now is your monthly
fin
ancial support provides ongoing sustainability for our programs that sustainability word works
really well now you your monthly support ensures we are always standing by ready to help ensures
that the show will always go on at our theater that kind of language okay so let's look at some
uh optimized Pages here I love this group this is uh Sparrow's Nest and Hudson Valley um look
at the language over here your commitment to Sparrow Circle our monthly giving program helps
us deliver a comfort
each month while funding our mission for future generations and it goes
on to talk a little bit about which programs it supports right in there um testimonials work
really well how do you get more of anything more volunteers more donors more monthly donors
let's hear from the ones we already have this is social proof my monthly support allows me to
go to bed each night knowing that I'm doing my part becoming a monthly donor has been such a
rewarding process we know that we are part of the
solution as we talked about a little bit earlier
your first ask should be for a monthly gift your donors pay everything monthly so let's think
about all our channels you know on our website having monthly fee first in an email blast I've
actually seen email blast with two buttons monthly giving first one time gift second nail appeals
we have it on the check box in there it's first peer-to-peer campaigns we're going to ask folks
to raise money on our behalf instead of onetime gifts will you
go out and find US $10 a month
donors then they're going to stick around if we do a live appeal at our special event instead
of asking people for onetime gifts ask them for monthly gifts please raise your paddle if you'll
give $500 a month $250 a month 100 a month we kind of come on down and when we're trying to renew
laps donors let's try to remove them renew them as monthly donors I mean they've already showed
they're kind of inconsistent so let's bring them back at that consistent level
another great way to
Market monthly giving programs is with a match so we're familiar with matching gifts know we raise
a pool of funds maybe from our board a certain donor a foundation and we match some kind of
activity 84% of Po potential donors are more willing to give if a match is being offered the
ability have a match also creates urgency this is really great for like a midyear appeal so
end of year 1231 kind of creates some urgency but you know if we're trying to do something to
wra
p up our fiscal year on June 30th um having a match can kind of create that down your donors
do not care about your fiscal year but if June 15th is the deadline to make a gift and have it
matched that creates some urgency make monthly giving the only way to get the match I love
to match all new and increased monthly gifts so again I'm showing them Behavior the behavior
that we want here's a sample page um from feeding America look at the text there your monthly gift
creates a reliable sourc
e of funding year round to help provide meals to families facing hunger
as a monthly donor you will be welcomed into the feeding America hunger Council and thanks
to a generous partner the impact of your first monthly donation can be doubled right there we
go um yeah social media more social proof last week our monthly supporters had the opportunity
to do a live video chat with six of our students the kids got to practice their English and
the donors got to ask questions about their experie
nce here thanks to all who participated
all right that's pretty cool can do that um what what I love here look the staff member is
stepping back right they're stepping back the kids are directing interacting directly with
the monthly donors we can create that that's a better benefit than a t-shirt a bookmark whatever
you want to send me give me connection with the kids with the experience so what in my personal
experience in you know I didn't do monthly giving my whole career but certainly
my last uh 10 years
as a Frontline fundraiser and what have I seen work with my coaching clients everything set up
and optimized now but we've got a million other things to do so who do I ask to become a monthly
donor how should I do it and when do I make the ask kind of those key questions the who the how
and the when who we kind of try to First target folks that are kind of already partway there
so maybe donors who already give by credit card they're comfortable with it donors who already
give more than once per year you know every time you send a newsletter they send back the envelope
donors to give through multiple channels they'll make an online gift if we ask they'll attend our
event they send in a end of year donation in the mail they give through their donor advis fund all
these different channels that tells you they're comfortable a lot of places also younger donors
um 52% of Millennials are interested in younger in monthly giving um it kind of goes up from
there uh
the younger Generations grew up with the subscription model uh they're growing up currently
with all the streaming services they're used to this donors don't don't give enough you know this
is kind of my Frank addin especially if you're a small shop donors that don't give enough for you
to be able to give them personal attention I would love to be able to give personal attention to all
of our donors but we unfortunately have to choose who to focus on I don't like just focusing on the
high
givers but they are certainly one group so we take out who we can handle personal attention
with it's probably 90% of your existing donor base that you should be working to try to convert to
a monthly donor how this is my counterintuitive approach that I've seen work in many organizations
I actually go to mail people get too much email you know it goes to a subfolder that they don't
read that often so mail right um in that letter which I have a sample one for you we make the
case why it's g
ood for both the organiz ation and them and so specific amount recommendation is
onethird of their last gift amount I think that's a little high sometimes um so you know if they
gave $25 we'd be asking for $8 per month $100 is 33 per month you know nicer number with 100
might be like 20 you're still going to go from a $100 gift to $240 over the course of the year um
but you know you have to figure out what you're comfortable with but asking for a spefic specific
amount based on their past g
iving history it is a hand signed letter it has a little personal note
on it like I hope you'll join me in becoming a monthly donor for our organization um you can
have a photo of your program and their support uh paperclip to it we're making this highly
personal um maybe there's a QR code that shows a video of the program in action that redirects to
the monthly giving form and this is sent in a hand addressed stamped envelope and crooked stamp
I don't know if you know this statistic but a
crooked stamp actually has a 7% higher open rate
because they know a person touched it this seems like a lot of work but could you send out five of
these a week could you get a volunteer to help you do most of this work and get out you know 30 a
month something like that this slow consistent effort over time there are a few personalized
follow-up emails it's not a eblast it's not canned it's coming from a person from you maybe
from a volunteer maybe from another donor asking them to join th
em and becoming a monthly donor
and uh that personalized video asking them to do it hey Mary it's Chad I sent you a letter last
week asking you to consider becoming a monthly donor of ABC organization I hope you'll join me in
doing that the kids would really appreciate it and we'd see so much more impact something like that
it works because I said her name Mary volunteers can be incredibly valuable in getting this done
because this takes time time but it is effective uh this is on the resou
rces page for you this is
my template take it adjust it make it work for you and create that highly customized mail pack and
your email system followup um here's an example page of uh you know having that QR code in there
um things you can do put it right in the letter um I also like to caption it as well what happens
if you scan this QR code scan this code sign up to become a monthly donor here's an optimized
mail letter so if you're going to include a story you want to include photos uh t
his fully optimized
here's that hand address stamped envelope uh needs a little more tilt on that stamp right okay when
when I like February March as my favorite time if you're not going to do like the five mail packs
a week or something you're going to actually do a mailing asking them to convert it's not going to
work as well but it's more time efficient February March works really well assuming you've sent some
stewardship in kind of that January time frame um February March works well t
hey've made their
gift um you've shown them what happened they have their gift acknowledgement letter now you're
ready to say thank you so much for your support uh wouldn't let you know about an opportunity to help
out uh folks in our community each and every month so that works well August September also kind of
works well it's that LOL before our quarter four giving time and then in general like two to
three months after a major appeal it's a good time to reach out and talk about potentia
l ways
you can convert to monthly giving you can't send a letter you can't send one of these asks unless
you've already had some stewardship where you've told them what happened with their last gift have
to tell them what happened with the last gift um here's math fundraisers don't love math we like
giving money not counting it right so but here's what happens if you do this consistent process
so five monthly conversion ask per workday all right maybe we got a steady volunteer we have
good
Staffing we can pull that off that's going to lead to 1,25 asks we're just assuming a 10%
conversion rate with which that mail pack is pretty pretty regular 112 new monthly donors
average monthly gift is given in the range of 19 to 25 I'm going low end here $25,000 new per
year I I would maybe do that investment right and these are maybe major donors of the future
you only get five per week still a big impact 22 new monthly donors over the course of the Year
extra $5,000 per year it can ma
ke a big difference it could be a lot more if you get folks way above
that major gift okay that's my conversion process that's the who what when let's talk a bit about
optimizing your program give you some additional resources and then uh we'll get to your questions
so optimizing two tips to optimize your program um if you are not using a system that automatically
updates credit cards I recommend switching to A system that automatically updates credit cards uh
like a donor pox typ tool but
um you can do that as an add-on service have you noticed um you know
longer get requests from anything you subscribe to for an updated credit card expiration date like
that just doesn't happen anymore the for-profit companies use this they just get it updated it's a
cost of doing business it's eliminates the hassle from the donor all of that so that could work you
know if that's a problem for you also we can kind of try to get our fees down so we need to wait a
while I don't like to do this
until someone's been a monthly donor for maybe three years or so but
we can encourage them to switch to bank account so switch to AC for their monthly gifts um it
reduces declines from 6.3% down to 0.5% right because people close credit cards every once in
a while people very rarely close bank accounts like typically only if you're leaving an area
and um you know going to a place that that bank doesn't exist it's kind of one of the the few
times that we actually do that and some people sti
ll they just keep that open because it's too
much hassle and I'm just going to transfer money between them online so um adds some consistency
helps to increase retention even more finally to optimize your program this is the big one don't
forget or be afraid to ask your monthly donors to increase their support increase their support yes
not often but I kind of like once a year reaching out and asking them to consider increasing their
support um yes I do have the stats in here 12% of monthly
donors will upgrade their monthly gift
amount once per year if asked now thank you so much for your loyal monthly support of $20 a
month we're writing to see if you'd consider increasing the $25 per month as unfortunately the
needs for our services continue to grow simple ask 12% I'll take 12% as I said before another great
use case for matching gift matching any new or increased monthly donation the amount of your
increase will be matched for the first year as a result of the support of u
h ABC Bank you know
whoever is doing the match just like before more personal the request is the more likely they'll
respond to say Yes um they're also more likely to respond digitally at this point they've gotten
to know us know our resources they're comfortable with us that way and another great use for that
personal video asking them to do so top example um many of you probably are familiar with them but
my favorite example of completely fully optimized monthly giving is Charity water um
you unless you
have big budget you're not going to be able to do everything they do but we can take our tools and
Implement a lot of what they do so um at charity water their monthly givers are part of the spring
it's a community of monthly donors bringing clean water to people in need see they Ed that word
Community they've taken their monthly givers and built a community around them you feel like
you're part of something they're not giving you a lot of stuff they're just making you feel
a part
of a group of committed people changing the world um look at that this is their donate page there
is no way to give one time that's a bold choice but to join the spring you got to be a monthly
donor you actually have to dig um I timed it last year when I was updating this presentation
it took me 43 seconds to figure out how to give to charity water with a onetime gift I had to dig
through like three or four pages it's a choice but it creates more monthly givers look they have the
wh
y right on there your $40 monthly donation can give 12 people clean water every year uh when
you interview uh the Harrison the co-creators of Charity water Victoria says all roads lead to
the spring it's charity water's flagship giving product the one that everything else relies
on the spring is a passionate and determined group of monthly givers on a mission to end the
Water Crisis In Our Lifetime would you love a passionate and determined group of people on a
mission to solve your challen
ge right I would love that so what's this look like it's a culture
of monthly giving that they have built want to give you some additional fundraising resources
uh monthly giving related and then some general ones as well and then um monthly giving creates
lots of questions so I wanted to be sure to save um ample time here today to get to your questions
and for us to wrap things up so uh where do I go if I want more or dig deeper well you go talk to
my friend Erica so uh this is Erica wdor
um she is my go-to monthly giving expert fabulous on
the topic um linked up on the resources page I have the free resource on the this is her monthly
donor road map I believe it's 11 steps on how you kind of drive this process so if you want to get
even more granular than the simple process I gave you um this is the go-to place and um one of my
top five fundraising books of all time is hers monthly giving Made Easy um as you can see it's
a nice quick read what I love is there's tons of exam
ples screenshots she shows you exactly how to
set up optimizes pages optimized pages and gives you tons of options um and also affordable 20 30
bucks um on on Amazon or um as we were talking among staff in the pre-chat um check your local
library a lot of libraries have fundraising books um if you use Libby you know you can get it to a
Kindle a phone those kind of things but check and see what resources are available for you but
definitely um Erica also has a weekly eblast that I highly rec
ommend if you ever see her at a
conference always a great presentation me I go by fundraiser Chad on social media so if you like the
style of practical easy to implement fundraising tips um I share them on both my Facebook page
and Linkedin um where I'm most active articles tips uh a little bit of self-care because if
we don't take care of ourselves we can't be good fundraisers um information upcoming webinars
all kinds of great resources for you folks um one of those resources is my free m
onthly webinar I
do one of those each and every month um and this month or actually I already did this month so next
month we are doing engaging your donors online in 2024 so how do we best engage our donors online
where we actually get their attention in a very noisy noisy space especially during an election
year um in the US so finally U my firm productive fundraising what do we do we do board and staff
fundraising training coaching for fundraisers and nonprofit executive directors and on
board in
coaching for staff new to fundraising so with that but I'm going to stop sharing and hop over
and take some of your fabulous questions yeah and and Chad just um I was saying yes yes yes
during the webinar I would say um in a lot of my coaching sessions with various nonprofits
there's this kind of shared siment of being in reactionary mode right we're kind of navigating
a very tricky giv time a a tricky economic time and I think just everything that you've touched
on about creatin
g a monthly giving program this is kind of an uplift uplifting way right um to
really kind of have some some control in the work that we're doing so just extremely energized about
everything you talked about and um again before we just jump into the Q&A session Lindsay can you
just share that valuable resource of Chad's in in in the chat box for us that would be great um
thank you Lindsay and Cara for addressing some product related questions throughout the chat
let's go ahead and dive into
all of the juicy questions I am G to start let's see from bottom
to top so we have Chad we have a great question from Miriam and or actually Georgia first and
the question has to do with how do we attract new donors and make them believe in our organizations
in order to get them to give us money yeah so um I'm assuming we're not talking new monthly here
just kind of new donors in general because I find it very hard to attract new donors as a monthly
donor typically most donors are going to
need some kind of experience with us um most donors
make test gifts so you know I like this cause I'm going to give you 25 bucks I'm going to give
you 100 bucks but really I could give you 250s or a thousand bucks I want to see how I'm treated um
major donors especially do this um and for me this is the one I'm not a big events guy um they take
a lot of time they take a lot of energy I've been exhausted for way too much of my Frontline career
from fundraising events so but that is one way
I like to use them is to attract new donors our
fundraising events are some of the most public things we do it's the easiest way for our current
donor to invite new people to come with them join them in attending this supporting the cause so
events can serve that purpose it's actually the only way I like organizations to even do them
like my first goal with a fundraising event is not to raise a certain amount of money it's
to have like 40% of the people be people I've never met before so th
ey're being introduced to
the cause so thinking about that also my last Point here is when you pull major donors on how
do they like to be introduced to new causes they overwhelmingly say at a small intimate event
in the home of someone I know and trust right so maybe instead of a Gala we do like I call them
small socials five or six small socials throughout the year where we're going to get to know maybe 10
15 new people each time so just a couple thoughts yeah I appreciate that Chad and I
would also as
a fundraiser coach at donorbox I would encourage everyone here look at your existing donors look
at your data who are the donors that have given to your nonprofit multiple times in the past it
might be a past year past two years those are your people that are already bought into what
what you're doing right and so look to them first and then anything you're doing whether
it's storytelling or creating these campaigns make it so that you're talking directly to them
and also fi
nding out where those donors are the most active so um that's great Chad let me pull
out another question from Sophia Sophia asks do you see value in connecting monthly donors
to each other in addition to connecting them with our work with the work of our charity so do
you see any value in connecting monthly donors to each other within this kind of monthly giving
program yeah I think that's a little bit of what um you know the example I gave with Charity water
does with the spring like you'
re getting specific information um there is I believe a community
there where they can come together um there's multiple donors supporting the same project um
they actually send you like GPS coordinates on the well that you've supported so I mean the
impact reporting is kind of nuts um but yeah but I would recognize the fact that not every
donor is going to want that you know some donors are very introverted they're not coming to us for
Community they're coming to to serve but I think that'
s something you can look into per perhaps
creating an opportunity um creating Community could be as simple as we do quarterly Town Hall
Q&A like something like this where we just offer it to our monthly donors maybe our certain groups
of donors and come ask our um you know our program staff key questions about the people we serve you
know maybe we can have a beneficiary talk about their experience something like that but an option
sure I think it could deepen donor relationships and perhaps
grow giving over time that's great um
throwing out another question for you or I from David thanks David for asking this is recurring
Revenue more valuable in your opinion than annual revenue um so I I'll see what you think Britt but
for me um the the key is retention rate difference um so are we talking monthly recurring versus
annual recurring are we talking um David yeah David positioned it as monthly and recurring um
I just I think for the s of of the conversation right now let's touch
on just monthly Don donors
as opposed to those one-time donations right yeah I mean it's it's a total retention rate thing for
me I I would much rather have 85% retention than than 43 so um and they're on aoil it they just
pretty much don't go away um right I'm always a monthly donor I've cancelled one monthly
gift in my giving career and it was a pretty egregious offense so it takes a lot yeah and
to add to that Chad I think I think you know the monthly giving it really kind of again we'r
e
navigating these really tricky times right and so it really brings us that stability to really
invest in the infrastructure right that we need the operations to build that infrastructure
for that lasting sustainable impact so I am very biased to monthly giving but obviously
you you need to really execute all fundraising strategies so my dream goal for any you know at
least small to midsize nonprofits like if you're not big enough to have a midsize program would be
you have maybe a hundre
d donors 50 donors that you keep in touch with quarterly with personal
correspondence and then everybody else just gives on a recurring basis and you create a nice
curated experience where they're hearing lots of impact reporting for from you that's great Chad
I'm going to throw out um let's see we have time maybe for for five more minutes all we love those
questions thank you so much um let's see let's see here so another question from Harrison C can the
monthly fundraising be undertaken a
s one campaign or would you suggest the nonprofits setting up
their monthly giving program through a series of different campaigns throughout the year yeah
what what everybody wants to do is kind of like twice a year I'm going to send down an eblast
asking people to become a monthly donor you can try it but I don't really see it working so kind
of this simple little you know it's easy thing um that's why I kind of outline that very curated
Personal Touch um and because it's curated and pers
onal and takes time I like to just run it
um I typically don't send them in quarter four but you know from like February 1 to Halloween um
kind of five a week can we get five of these out just slow steady progress to try to get some
some supplemental growth that's great that's great Well Chad I want to extend a thank you
you we know this you have been a long time just a valuable resource in our Professional Circle
I'm guessing it's just nuts with all of those fundraisers and conferences com
ing out and just
looking here at the chat people we're just all very grateful for the wealth that you're sharing
so thank you so much for being a guest speaker on today's session and of course to all of you I'm
a former executive director a former development director I know how hard the work that you're
doing is it's also very impactful um keep the chin up and honored to really help you uh provide
the resources you need to succeed so thank you so much for attending today have an amazing we
ek
and remember we're here for you and cheering you on
Comments
Thanks for your encouragement to monthly donor's high lights it was important lessons!lam the director of Bukura Uganda ltd nonprofit organization
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