S1:E6 Monthly Giving
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[00:00:31] Jeremy: Welcome to today's episode where we will be talking all about monthly giving. Now, before we get started, make sure you tap, click or smash the follow or subscribe button. To make sure you'll be notified when each new episode drops. Today's episode about monthly giving is near and dear to my heart because I personally feel this is an area. Where, so many of you are listening to this, have room for improvement.
[00:00:55] Jeremy: There's a lot of organizations when I asked them. What's your monthly giving program look [00:01:00] like, and they say we don't have one, or are you doing anything to acquire new monthly donors? And a lot of times they don't, it's an afterthought. Fundraising is often campaign driven about that one-time gift or seasonal holiday, or that big event that it's tied to, and not enough focus is on monthly giving.
[00:01:17] Jeremy: So this is going to be a great episode. That's going to show you how to set up a monthly giving program. Also the value and the benefits of setting up a monthly giving program. But then we're going to look at how you can also increase the success of your monthly giving program through donor engagement. So tune in, listen up, break out the notepad and let's jump into it.
[00:01:38] Jeremy: First of all, let's just jump in with the basics here.
[00:01:41] Jeremy: What are the benefits of a monthly giving program, if you're listening to this chances are you work for a nonprofit or maybe you're a consultant that does a lot of work with nonprofits. And there's just some basic common sense things that a monthly giving program can do, like providing a predictable revenue stream.
[00:01:56] Jeremy: How important is that to the lifeblood of running a nonprofit, [00:02:00] if you're trying to plan resources and head count and fundraising costs, supplies, all of this, it really helps when you actually have somewhat of a baseline of money coming in each month that you can count on. And that's what a monthly giving program helps you to establish another benefit of a monthly giving program is that it helps to build longterm relationships with your donors because they're giving over and over. And when we look at the retention rates, Within the nonprofit industry, they are pretty terrible. According to the M+R benchmark report, a new donor that gives for the first time they have a 23% retention rate. Which means. Almost 80% of those new donors are not going to give again next year. This is a problem. Even your donors who are giving multiple years, if they're giving two or more years. They have a 61% chance that they will be your donors the following year, which is better six out of 10. But what that also means is like four out of 10 donors who have been given to you year over [00:03:00] year, will not give to your nonprofit next year. And that's a problem too, because of people have been giving to you year over year. Why are they not going to continue making that gift? Recurring giving really helps to close the gap.
[00:03:13] Jeremy: And if you have a really solid recurring giving program in place. You're going to see your retention rates increase significantly, and you're going to see your relationships with your donors increase as well. And you're going to just find a lot of value in people who are invested, not just financially, but emotionally within your organization as well. Also according to the M+R benchmark report. 31% of all online revenue are from donors who are giving monthly or recurring donors.
[00:03:41] Jeremy: Now, when you look at your organization, What percentage of your donors are actually monthly donors. And that's a question that you may need to do the research and find that out. But if it's not 30%, then you certainly have work to go. If it's more than 30%, then that's great. That means you understand this, and you're being very intentional about how you [00:04:00] are executing your monthly giving program.
[00:04:02] Jeremy: Let's get into setting up a monthly giving program. One of the things that you want to do for your monthly giving program.
[00:04:09] Jeremy: And when I say a monthly giving program, I don't mean just running a one-time campaign. I mean like an overall campaign, we're building a program here. That will be a part of your organization year over year, over year, this is not setting up like a one-time campaign that we're going to ask for people to become monthly donors.
[00:04:27] Jeremy: However, you will roll those campaign elements in to your program, but establishing a monthly giving program, internally, what you want to do is have a clear and compelling vision and value proposition as to why you're going to do a monthly giving program. And then you want to think about what are things that the donors would be willing to buy into? So you want to craft a strong value proposition for your program, and then you need to convey its benefits, its importance, and the impact that a regular donation will have on your organization.
[00:04:59] Jeremy: I want to talk [00:05:00] specifically about six approaches that are examples of an effective monthly giving program.
[00:05:05] Jeremy: These are different ways that you can approach how you'll communicate this and the value that you'll give to your donors. The first one would be impact driven statements. And just as an example, You may communicate something like your monthly gift ensures, consistent shelter, meals, and hope for individuals facing homelessness year round. This kind of message highlights, stability and ongoing impact, which can resonate with your donors. Another example of an impact driven statement is join our circle of care and provide vital medical respite for the most vulnerable, offering them dignity and support every single day. And this kind of message. Emphasizes specific programs that have tangible benefits. The second approach that you might take would be recognition of donors.
[00:05:51] Jeremy: For example, a statement like become a Paw Pal and join a community of compassionate Changemakers, helping animals like Cilantro find safe loving homes. [00:06:00] Yes. I came up with the name Cilatro, I think I stole that from will Ferrell, but what this does is that it recognizes donors are a valuable part of your community and you make them feel valued and connected.
[00:06:10] Jeremy: Another example that falls in line with this would be as a monthly hero, you'll receive exclusive updates showing how your generosity transforms lives. So offering updates, builds trust and reinforces their impact. A third approach that you can take would be convenience and consistency. For example, set it and forget it.
[00:06:29] Jeremy: Your monthly gift works automatically to deliver life saving resources for those in need. And this dress is the ease of participation that can encourage signups to your monthly giving program. It's just easy to do. You don't have to think about it and they're making an impact. Each month. A fourth approach would be scaling impact, and here's an example of a scaling impact type of communication. $25 a month feeds a child every day for a year.
[00:06:55] Jeremy: Imagine what your generosity can accomplish. So when you break down donations [00:07:00] into relatable outcomes, it helps potential donors to actually visualize their contributions. So you're scaling that you're putting in their minds. And I talk a lot about this. If you've listened to my other episodes about creating a dollar value that equates to some form of impact.
[00:07:14] Jeremy: And that's what a scaling impact type of offer would be. A fifth approach would be exclusive donor benefits. Something like early access to events and personal stories of transformation when you join our sustainers circle. And when you create. Exclusive content for your donors, it creates an additional incentive for your recurring donors to join because they get something that they wouldn't normally get. If they were just making a one-time gift. Another approach, and this is number six on our list here, creating that urgency and emotional appeal.
[00:07:45] Jeremy: Like these are two very crucial pieces to marketing and fundraising anyways. But if you center your whole monthly giving program around this, here's how that message might look
[00:07:55] Jeremy: Every month lives hang in the ballance, you, our monthly support ensures no one is [00:08:00] turned away in their darkest hour. So this evokes urgency and it taps into emotional giving people who are really drawn in by someone being left out or something being negatively impacted by you not participating in this story.
[00:08:15] Jeremy: And yes, you may say we're guilting people into giving and that's really up to you and your culture and the kind of messaging that you decide you want to be related to your brand. So I'm not saying it's right or wrong. These are just different approaches for you to consider. So those are the six different approaches that I would look at.
[00:08:31] Jeremy: If we're looking at different ways that we want to create messaging around a monthly giving program.
[00:08:38] Jeremy: Now let's let's talk about a framework for building a value proposition. We just went over six ways that you can communicate your value proposition, but here are four things that you really want to wrap up into your value proposition. One is you want to emphasize specific impacts or programs that are enabled by monthly giving.
[00:08:57] Jeremy: So what are those impacts each month that someone can have on your [00:09:00] organization? That wouldn't be possible if these people, these donors were not making a monthly gift. The second one is using emotion and aspirational language. You definitely want to communicate in a form where you are pulling on those heartstrings enough.
[00:09:14] Jeremy: But you're also aspiring people to create a better outcome than where the world is now or where the causes. Now, if it's homelessness, we're aspiring to provide shelter. So think about this. What are the emotional and aspirational? Pieces of your communication that you can weave into your monthly giving program. The third one is to make joining feel like it's an important and exclusive action that contributes to a broader mission. Again, when we look at what you can get as a donor, as being a part of this program, yes.
[00:09:45] Jeremy: We want to communicate the emotion, the aspirational language, but you want them to feel a little bit different than if they were just a one-time donor. And one of the things that you can do with that is actually create a separate communication track for people who are a part of your monthly giving [00:10:00] program.
[00:10:00] Jeremy: Maybe it's a separate quarterly e-newsletter or something like that. Or maybe it's. Advanced tickets or you get the sneak peek at the silent auction, whatever that case may be. You want to understand what that exclusive edge would be by joining this program? And the fourth part of the framework is really specific to your organization. You have a unique mission and a unique community that follows you could be a unique geographic community, your set of donors or target prospective donors could be unique. So you need to tailor your program to what your community wants and what resonates with them. And you can even find out these things by doing pop-up surveys on your website, or even sending out a survey via email once or twice a year.
[00:10:40] Jeremy: But these four areas are the different pieces that will help you shape the messaging of your monthly giving program. Now once you have your value proposition down, then you want to move on to naming your monthly giving program and then establishing a unique brand identity.
[00:10:55] Jeremy: This may mean a separate logo for your community and [00:11:00] also a separate tagline for your community. And you don't necessarily want it to be night and day from what your overall brand is. It should be something that uses the same colors as your overall branding and the language that you use needs to certainly fall in line with the way that you would talk for your overall brand.
[00:11:16] Jeremy: The tone should be very similar, but naming this and establishing a unique brand identity. Again, it. Gives that piece of exclusiveness to people who join your program. The next thing you want to do is decide on the giving levels and the benefits. Now let's take into a cab that the average monthly gift in the industry right now is $25 roughly it's it varies from 24 to $26, depending on what study you're looking at.
[00:11:41] Jeremy: I always recommend that if you haven't done a monthly giving program, let's start out with that as a baseline. So let's say a $25 gift, but not just $25. What are some other giving levels and what does that get you? Especially if you're doing premiums, maybe $25 will get you a koozie or something like that.
[00:11:58] Jeremy: And if someone gives that a [00:12:00] hundred dollar level, then they get an umbrella. Like I'm just saying random things, but, just assigning different giving levels of maybe certain welcome gifts or something like that may be included with it. And also maybe there are even exclusive updates for a higher tier of donors.
[00:12:14] Jeremy: If someone's giving you $500 a month, maybe there's something even more special that you're giving to those people. So you want to think through these things, as you're putting together your monthly giving program. And then you want to create your assets and your communication plan.
[00:12:29] Jeremy: And this may mean like where, when and how you're going to communicate your program and what you physically need. Do need flyers, banners, physical things, signage, swag, anything that has your monthly giving program name on it. You want to think through these. And of course we have to think about budget with this. And maybe there's a donor who will actually help you with the startup funds, if you will, to put this monthly giving program together, and then you're going to want to run like a whole campaign on this.
[00:12:55] Jeremy: As I mentioned, a few minutes ago, your monthly giving program is a program that will go year over [00:13:00] year, over year, but you do need to run some campaigns to make people aware of this. And you're going to do that from a digital perspective, a whole campaign that would work in email, hero images, a pop-up or light box on your website. Facebook ads, et cetera.
[00:13:14] Jeremy: Like you can listen to my episode where I talked about campaign planning and that will give you some ideas with what you'll need to do. Another way that you can help promote this would be on the thank you page. Once somebody makes a donation. Let's say someone comes to your website and it makes a $50 gift, a hundred dollar gift.
[00:13:32] Jeremy: And on that, thank you page, instead of just saying thank you for your gift and that's it. Maybe it says, thank you for your gift.
[00:13:38] Jeremy: If you would like to support our organization ongoing and help us do X, whatever the communication for your program is then consider becoming a part of our, whatever the name of your program is where you're a monthly donor. And this is all a numbers game. There'll be a small percentage of people that do make that one-time gift and turn around and join monthly because it's not [00:14:00] as high of a gift, but if you don't ask, you don't get so make sure that you're asking and you're working in ways. To connect with your donors or potential donors about your monthly giving program. The other thing you want to consider is on your welcome series for a new donor or for a new email subscriber. On the final email of that welcome series, whether it's a three-part series or five-part series that you're asking them to join your monthly giving program. Of course within that email, you want to thank them for being a part of your organization and affirm them, for their support.
[00:14:32] Jeremy: Let them know how they can make a difference month over month. These are the ways that you can work in your campaign messaging and connect with your potential donors.
[00:14:40] Jeremy: We have been talking all about monthly giving. I've walked you through how to set up your monthly giving program and even how to build out that campaign.
[00:14:49] Jeremy: And again, there's a whole separate episode about these different campaign elements. So I didn't go too deep into it here. I'm talking high level on that piece, but definitely check out the campaign [00:15:00] planning podcast episode to really get in deep and apply those same concepts to. To your monthly giving program.
[00:15:06] Jeremy: Right now, we want to talk about retaining and engaging monthly donors. Getting those donors on and joining your monthly giving program is just part of the battle. When we look at the overall retention rates that I mentioned earlier in this episode, we know there's plenty of work to do, and we recognize that monthly giving can help out with this, but it's not just going to happen by itself.
[00:15:26] Jeremy: There's certain things you need to do as an organization to ensure that you don't lose these donors once they become a part of your monthly giving program. So I want to go over 9 best practices of retaining and engaging your monthly donors. The first one, and this is so easy, just doing a welcome acknowledgement. Once somebody signs up and becomes a member of your monthly giving program. Make sure that you send them that email, whether it's auto-generated or if it's a personal email, thanking them for being a part of your monthly giving program, affirm that they have made a [00:16:00] great decision and how they can really make a difference with your organization each month.
[00:16:04] Jeremy: You might even consider if someone joins at a specific level. And I don't know what that is for you, maybe a hundred dollars a month or 500 that you actually write them a handwritten note and send it to them again, to acknowledge them and to thank them for joining.
[00:16:16] Jeremy: Along with this welcome, you may consider again for different levels doing an actual welcome kit that may include some different swag, like a t-shirt or something like that.
[00:16:25] Jeremy: If people give it a certain level. So consider a welcome kit for different levels of this monthly giving program. The second piece you want to do is really establish that strong connection you have already sent out that welcome kit or that welcome email. But over time you want that strong connection will be built through storytelling, sharing those impactful stories about the individuals, animals, or communities that are benefiting from their support.
[00:16:51] Jeremy: And with this you'll use videos, photos, testimonials, things like that. And doing this with some degree of regular frequency, whether that's every month [00:17:00] or every quarter, you just want to make sure that on a set basis. It shouldn't be a surprise when your monthly donors hear from you and you should really set that tone in your welcome kit or welcome series that you send them saying, thank you for joining.
[00:17:14] Jeremy: Here's what you can expect. And if you say you're going to email them monthly about updates, make sure you do that. If you tell them it's twice a year or every quarter. Make sure that you do that. . Ensure that you highlight how their recurring gifts are continuing to make a difference.
[00:17:28] Jeremy: The third part of establishing a strong connection is having that exclusive community for them. And by creating that name that you'll have for them that we talked about before the break, things like sustainer circle or hope heroes, whatever the name was that you come up with, it fosters a sense of belonging and it makes your donor feel like that they're a part of something bigger than themselves.
[00:17:48] Jeremy: As a bonus if possible, personalize the impact.
[00:17:51] Jeremy: And this is a part that I would love to see. Non-profits do, and this involves creating a personal dashboard or a portal that shows [00:18:00] quarterly annual or the lifetime impact from a donors donations. Wouldn't it be awesome if you are a monthly giver to an organization and over the course of 12 months, or if you've been with them for three years to show how much money you've given them or how that impact has translated. As a donor, like that will be incredible.
[00:18:19] Jeremy: And it would affirm that what I'm doing, my connection with this organization. I see the impact. So if you can create something like that, it will be extremely powerful.
[00:18:29] Jeremy: The third best practice I want to talk about is engaging donors through multiple touch points. Now, we've talked a lot about digital and there's a lot of touch points you can do with digital.
[00:18:38] Jeremy: You could also do direct mail, but let's just break out these digital touch points a little bit. If they're a part of your monthly giving program, you can communicate to them exclusively through email, social media, maybe you set up a Facebook group or something like that. And I know not everybody's on Facebook anymore.
[00:18:53] Jeremy: And people have left Facebook or maybe it's your own community. They have platforms like Circles where you can create an online [00:19:00] community. And then you can also send physical mail, just something where you're communicating with your donors in more than one channel. If you're only doing email. That's great.
[00:19:08] Jeremy: If you can only do one that's great. I don't want you to beat yourself up. If you can communicate and build community through multiple channels, then you're providing more ways for your donors to \ with you and feel more like they're a part of your organization. Some of these engagement tactics that you might be doing with your monthly donors could include surveys exclusively for them. Maybe it's a live Q and a session with beneficiaries or the staff, or it could be exclusive behind the scenes glimpses into the work that you all do. Certainly there could be special events for your donors, for your recurring donors or maybe a different private event for your upper tier monthly giving donors.
[00:19:44] Jeremy: Again, these are all different things for you to think about. As you're building out your monthly giving program.
[00:19:49] Jeremy: The fourth best practices to show transparency. You want to have clear reporting, provide periodic reports that detail how monthly donations were spent their impact, like such as how [00:20:00] many meals were served, how many individuals were housed, or how many animals were rescued, making sure that there is a report back and then having that financial accountability where you're publishing annual reports or financial summaries that highlight the program efficiency of your monthly giving program. You definitely will have to do that annual report anyways. But if there's a way within this annual report, you can highlight the importance of your monthly giving program. That will go a long way.
[00:20:26] Jeremy: The fifth best practices to foster those emotional ties. You want to add that personalization to your emails. People who are signing up for your monthly giving program, you definitely want to get their first name. So when you send your emails, it doesn't say, Hey friend, or hello supporter.
[00:20:42] Jeremy: It's actually saying, hello, Jeremy, or hello, whatever the first name is. And when you reference people by their first name, yes, we're marketers. You're listening to this so that you're probably a marketer to some degree, and we know how the technology works, but there's something about receiving that personalized email [00:21:00] on the other end.
[00:21:00] Jeremy: That just feels good. Like even. If you don't know me, it makes me feel like you do so I feel special. And then also giving special recognition such as anniversaries or birthdays and just thanking your donors for continued support. This is a great way to foster some of those emotional ties.
[00:21:17] Jeremy: The sixth best practice will be to offer flexibility. You want to have some upgrade options.
[00:21:22] Jeremy: So if someone's giving it. $25. You want to invite them to increase their monthly gift and have compelling reasons to do so such as expanding their impact, or maybe you have a new program that. Needs funded. And if they increase it to $30 a month, here's what that can do. So providing some options when it comes to upgrading and also an option to pause, sometimes your donors will go through some hard times and maybe they're just not able to continue monthly giving, but you don't want them to stop monthly giving all together.
[00:21:53] Jeremy: Instead of them canceling their monthly giving service, providing options for them to just pause it for 30 days, [00:22:00] 90 days or whatever the case may be. The fact that you're giving them options means that they can tag themselves back in and continue back up on that monthly giving program. Whenever they're ready. The other piece that makes it more flexible is to have multiple payment options, not just offering credit card or not just offering PayPal, but looking at all the ways that are available now that you can pay online apple pay, Amazon pay. There's so many ways to do it, make it easy for your donors, for the option that they prefer to give by. Let's lower that barrier to receive that monthly gift.
[00:22:33] Jeremy: The next best practice is a prompt follow-up for lapsed payments.
[00:22:37] Jeremy: And this is just going to happen. You're going to have people whose credit cards expire and rather than those credit cards expiring, and those people falling off of your monthly donor program, sending a reminder saying your credit card is about to expire, or if a payment fails because the credit card has expired. Making sure that you send out notifications and there's technology. Now that can [00:23:00] do this automatically send your credit cards expiring soon. Please update your credit card payment information. Or your credit card has expired. Please update it. Whatever the case, whether it's about to, or whether it did being able to send those reminders will really help to retain donors, also allowing a grace period.
[00:23:17] Jeremy: This allows donors time to resolve any issues before cancellation. Let's assume a credit card payment fails. You don't just cancel them, remove them from the program immediately. I would give them 60, 90 days, whatever works for your organization before you remove them from the program. And in the meantime, you're reaching out personally, whether it's a phone call or personal email saying, Hey, we noticed that. You were a monthly donor, but we haven't received payment.
[00:23:42] Jeremy: Is everything. Okay? Do you need a break? And just having that conversation with them. A lot of times, especially because it's recurring giving. People may not know that their credit card expired or they may not look at their bank statements and recognize that they're no longer a monthly donor or maybe their credit card was stolen and their [00:24:00] credit card had to be canceled. There's a lot of reasons that payments may fail. So reach out to your donors personally and find out how you can help them.
[00:24:07] Jeremy: The next best practice is to continually test and refine. This is like a theme through. Pretty much everything that I talk about with fundraising, which is testing. You want to test different retention strategies and regularly test these look at different incentives that you can give, look at the different offers that you have available to actually bring people on to your monthly giving program and then find out what recognition and what resonates the most with your donors.
[00:24:32] Jeremy: You're going to always want to test and then create feedback loops. Every three months or six months survey your monthly donors and learn how you can improve their experience. What's working. What's not, what would they like to see? And you'll learn that way from your donors, just by going directly to the source, as opposed to thinking.
[00:24:50] Jeremy: Here's what we think our donors want. Go and see what the data says.
[00:24:54] Jeremy: The last best practice is building long-term relationships. Now overtime, we [00:25:00] want to encourage monthly donors to consider other forms of giving such as a major gifts or plan giving. If you have someone who's been giving to your organization for several years, It's time to take that relationship to the next level.
[00:25:13] Jeremy: And one of the ways to do that is by asking them to become a major donor or let's talk about playing giving. You can also use them in other ways and deepen that relationship by encouraging them to participate in volunteer opportunities. So invite them to different activities that align with your mission. And you'll find that because they've been giving, they do have a relationship they're more likely to become a volunteer as opposed to just a donor. So these are some best practices to consider with your monthly giving program.
[00:25:41] Jeremy: By combining thoughtful communication, personalization, and consistent engagement. You can enhance your donor loyalty, reduce that churn and build a stable base of support for your mission.
[00:25:52] Jeremy: Whew. Okay. We just covered a lot on monthly giving. So when we reflect back on all the, we talked about today and it [00:26:00] was lightening fast, you might need to go back and listen to this a few more times, we talked about how to set up your monthly giving program, different approaches for creating a clear vision and value proposition, the different marketing channels that you can use, how to set up those campaigns for monthly giving, and then very important step that people overlook are how to retain and engage those monthly donors.
[00:26:20] Jeremy: We went over several best practices for how to do that.
[00:26:23] Jeremy: My goal for this podcast was to get you thinking about monthly giving. And yes, if you take all of this in at one time, it can seem a little bit overwhelming. So break this out into chunks.
[00:26:33] Jeremy: My advice is to set timelines around each of these, as opposed to just jumping in and doing all of it at once. Put some time on your calendar, meet with your staff. Think about what the vision for your monthly giving program will be. Come up with a name for it. Come up with how you're going to communicate with your donors, come up with how you're going to market and promote your monthly giving program and come up with how you're going to retain and build that. Relationship with [00:27:00] these donors over the years. You're going to see that a successful monthly giving program for your organization will transform your organization.
[00:27:09] Jeremy: This will provide so much stability in your planning and also allow you to just release impact 12 months out of the year. And it also takes some of the pressure off of this end of year finished line that nonprofits make where. November December. They're so heavy with fundraising and yes, you're still going to have to do that, but it's not like you have to generate most of the money for your nonprofit during that time, because you already have a stable amount of revenue coming in month over month. Now, if you're doing a monthly giving program, I'd love to hear from you.
[00:27:41] Jeremy: Feel free to reach out on Instagram @Jeremy.Haselwood or LinkedIn. Shoot me a message. Jeremy Haselwood on LinkedIn. I'm always eager to hear what other nonprofits are doing for their monthly giving programs, how they came up with it, what the success is, what are some tools and tactics that are working for them. But that's it. That's today's episode. [00:28:00] about monthly giving.
[00:28:00] Jeremy: And I always love hearing feedback about the podcast in general. So make sure you reach out to me. Let me know what's working for you. What's not what you'd like to hear more about.
[00:28:09] Jeremy: At the end of the day, if you're not doing a monthly giving program, I hope this is the little push you need to start doing it. Or if you are doing a monthly giving program, I hope that there were some nuggets that you were able to take away from this one to help enhance what you're already doing. So that's it for today's episode.
[00:28:25] Jeremy: I want to thank you for tuning in to the Jeremy Haselwood show. If you did enjoy this episode, don't forget to follow or subscribe so that you're always up to date when the latest episode drops until next time, keep following your dreams to find your purpose.
