Monthly giving: your nonprofit sustainability plan

Dani Cluff: As people start to come in, we’ll give it a second. Welcome, everyone. Good afternoon, and thank you so much for joining us today. I’m super excited to have Chad joining us to talk about monthly giving, a super important topic. I know it’s a busy time of year for a lot of nonprofits. We’re getting into the heat of event season, so if you have any exciting events coming up, either that your organization is putting on or conferences you’re attending this time of year, feel free to drop them in the chat. Drop in where you’re coming in from today, too. I love seeing where people are joining from. Sometimes we have people from Canada, and we’ll have it coast to coast. It’s super fun to see.

My name is Dani Cluff, and I’m on the partner team at Bloomerang. I’m joined today by Chad Barger, our wonderful speaker and a longtime partner of Bloomerang. We’re super lucky to have Chad sharing his expertise with us.

Before we get started, a little housekeeping. We are recording today’s webinar, and we’ll be sending out a link to the recording, the slides and a few resources from Chad. We’ll do a Q&A session at the end. You can put your questions in the Q&A area in Zoom or in the chat, and I’ll try to keep track of all of them, but the Q&A area is the best place. We’ll also launch a poll at the end of the webinar where you can choose to learn more about Bloomerang or connect with Chad for more information.

For those of you who might not be familiar with Bloomerang, we’re a giving platform built for purpose, created to help nonprofits build stronger relationships and grow their impact. If you want to learn more, we’d love to connect and see how we can support your organization and your mission. You can find out more by opting in at the poll at the end of today’s webinar.

And of course, our wonderful speaker, Chad Barger. I know he has a lot to share, so I don’t want to take up more of your time. Chad, I’m going to hand things over to you.

Chad Barger: Great. Thank you, Dani. It’s a pleasure to be back with Bloomerang, one of my favorite partners. Thank you for what you do for the sector. You have great tools: the CRM, volunteer management, online tools. You all know this, but you’re not here to learn about that today. You’re here to learn about monthly giving, so I’m going to hop right in.

Monthly giving: your nonprofit sustainability plan. Why do I call it that? Let’s take a look.

I’m going to take you back to the unfortunate time that was March of 2020. Sorry to do it, but that’s where we’re going. I’m going to give you two of my coaching clients. I do fundraising training and coaching, and these were two of my groups. Client A raised 40% of their money from special events. They had six events, so basically every other month they were in event mode. Thirty percent came from grants, 20% from direct mail, 10% from person-to-person, and less than 1% from monthly giving.

Client B had 60% of their funding coming from monthly giving. They were a fairly new startup organization, and from the beginning they got people to commit to monthly giving. Fifteen percent came from mail, 10% from grants, 10% from person-to-person, and only 5% from special events. They had one big event, in the fall.

So I have a question for you. You can throw your answer in the chat. How long did it take each of them to call me? Let’s start with Client A. The world shut down, what, March 13th or so? How many days until they called me? Give me a number. Three days, two weeks, one day. I’m getting a lot of threes, and your threes are right. It took them three days. They were concerned. Their next big event was two weeks away. What are we going to do? We canceled that event, and we did a non-event: would you donate your ticket price? It all worked out, but they were super concerned.

Now Client B. How long did it take them to call me? Two months, one month, three months. Jen nailed it: they did not call. We didn’t talk again until our regularly scheduled quarterly coaching call. Why? Well, they were fine. Once we chatted, they said, “This really sucks, and we’ve had to adjust our programming, but the money’s still coming. We’re okay.” They had planned to hold their event in the fall, and we all know how that worked out. They didn’t hold it, but it was only 5% of their revenue, so we adjusted, and they actually made more money through it.

That’s why I call it your nonprofit sustainability plan. It ensures that no matter what happens, you still have revenue coming in.

Today we’re going to look at monthly giving. I’m going to give you some statistics about why it’s important. You all kind of get it, since you’re tuning in for a monthly giving webinar, but I understand that you have to sell it to your executive director, your development committee chair, your board chair, whoever it is, and the statistics will help you do that. We’ll briefly talk about how to launch a monthly giving program, which isn’t hard. The hard part is marketing it and getting people to actually do this, so we’ll spend the bulk of our time there. I’ll give you a couple of tips for optimizing, and if you’ve ever been to a Chad Barger webinar, you know I have tons of extra resources for you. We’ll have a little time for questions at the end. Use the chat or the Q&A, but Q&A is preferred on a Bloomerang webinar, and Dani will help me with those at the end.

Why monthly giving? If my first example didn’t tell you, here are some more. Monthly donors give more. The average one-time gift is $125. The average monthly gift is $25. Do the math: that’s $300 versus $125, and I want the $300.

They’re more loyal. The average donor retention rate for all nonprofits in the US is 42.6%, from the most recent Fundraising Effectiveness Project data. What’s way better than that? I’ll take 80%, which is where monthly donors are as soon as they sign up, and 95% after five years.

They make more estate gifts. They’re extremely loyal. If they support you on a monthly basis for ten years, they’re very likely to include you in their estate plans. How much more likely? Six times more likely.

I get pushback. I work primarily with small to midsize nonprofits that are under-resourced, where there’s usually one person doing the fundraising. They say, “Chad, I asked my donors to give monthly, and they just don’t do it.” No, they do do it. Forty-five percent of donors are already enrolled in a monthly giving program somewhere, just not with you. You’re just not asking enough, and you’re not asking consistently. That is usually the key.

Monthly giving also provides budget stability and eliminates pledges that aren’t fulfilled. Those are your five key things. Who can’t buy into that? Now, how do we do it?

Bottom line, organizational sustainability matters more now than it did in 2019. We’ve seen a lot since 2019, including the global pandemic. My Canadian friends, you’ve seen postal strikes repeatedly, where you can’t even mail your donors, which makes it hard to fundraise. Recent political changes have caused grant freezes and even agency eliminations. There are lots of things getting in the way of our typical sustainable revenue sources, so this is even more important.

I had a twenty-year frontline fundraising career before I became a trainer, consultant and coach, and the relationship with the finance team was always a little weird. I don’t know why. They should love us. We provide the revenue, and we raise the money to pay the bills. But they were always questioning things and creating issues I had to deal with that prevented me from raising more money. Alas, I’ll get off my soapbox. What does monthly giving help with here? You have steady, predictable, recurring income coming in. That is exactly what the bean counters want. They don’t want to have to do cash transfers to meet payroll. The more steady, predictable, recurring income you can provide, the more likely they are to love you and buy you lunch. That was always my goal, to have the bookkeeper buy me lunch.

And the time is now. Right after all of that happened in 2020, monthly giving increased 26%. The next year it increased 24%, and it has continued to accelerate. In 2024, monthly giving revenue increased 5% and accounted for 31% of all online revenue. So it’s a big piece of the pie. Some of you are saying, “Wait a minute, it’s not 31% of my online revenue.” Okay, let’s give you the tools to help you do that.

This is from a recent recurring giving report. It has a small sample size, so the giving is much higher than normal. The key thing I show this report for is the last stat: 50% of recurring donors give additional gifts, if you ask for them. That is the key. We’ll touch on that a little later, when we get to optimizing.

But first, let’s give you a monthly giving program. You may be saying, “Chad, we don’t have this in our shop.” Well, it’s super simple. Even if you use PayPal for accepting gifts, which is the simplest option, and we’re just launching and just new, it is an option. You just have to go into settings and turn it on.

I really hope you’re using other tools like Bloomerang, along with many other tools that have incorporated giving features. I love Bloomerang’s online fundraising tools. One of the things they’ll do is customize the ask amount based on who the donor is, which is super optimized. It’s a great tool. I know many of you are Bloomerang users, so make sure you’re fully using the functionality you have.

There’s an interesting stat below the PayPal option. Twenty percent of donors prefer PayPal, and 9% won’t give if you don’t offer it as a payment option. Who are these PayPal people? They’re people who doubt the security of giving online, and the only thing they’ll do is create a PayPal account. They trust their PayPal account. They’re not going to enter their credit card info. If you have PayPal as a giving option, they’ll give that way, and if you don’t, they won’t. So make sure you have a way to accept it.

Let’s move to an optimized giving form. Here’s one. It says, “Would you consider a recurring gift? Ongoing monthly support lets us focus more on supporting our child advocacy centers and helping kids in need, and less on fundraising.” Right on the form, we’re telling them why to give, and monthly is highlighted as the preferred option. I like this one too. For each option, it says exactly what your monthly gift funds. You can do this. You can edit your giving forms. You have full customization ability. Tell them why to give.

Let’s look at some best practices for our giving forms. Include a line telling them why they should give monthly. Don’t just ask for monthly. Say why: sustainability, ongoing support, all these key things. Make it the default option. Research from the late, great Jon Hayden says that if we make monthly giving the default option, we’ll get up to 35% more conversions. Wow, 35% more.

Twenty-eight percent of all online donations are made on mobile. What does that look like? Have you checked out your online giving form on your phone? Here’s a great homework assignment: as soon as we get off here, make a $10 donation to your nonprofit on your phone. Was there any friction? How did it work? What did it look like? Eighteen percent of all monthly giving enrollments come on phones, so make sure there’s no friction. If it’s weird, if I have to scroll or zoom in, people just stop. They don’t go to their laptop and complete it. They’re frustrated, and they’re done. You have to re-inspire them to give all over again.

Make sure your organization’s name shows up on their credit card statement. Depending on who your processor is, sometimes the name of the processor is listed first. I have a sample on the screen. Credit card statements only have around 20 to 25 characters, and then there’s usually a star, and then it says who it is. If I get a weird processor name, a star, and then three characters of your name, I’m more likely to dispute that charge, because I don’t know what it is. It’s usually in the settings, so go in and check it. I know Bloomerang’s transaction processing team gives you functionality and control there, so go check that out.

Add a checkbox to your print donation forms as well. People challenge me on this one. They say, “Chad, who signs up for monthly giving by sending in a piece of paper?” Well, there’s a select group of people who do, and we’ll talk about them in a minute. I don’t really want people to check this box and write their credit card number on a piece of paper, because now I have a security issue to deal with. But I want you to see that monthly is my preferred option. Right here, it says, “I want UPMC patients to be able to count on my support. Please make this a monthly gift.” I need to reiterate over and over and over again that monthly is our preferred way of giving.

Make it easy to ask for help. Have a page on your website talking about your monthly giving program. Maybe you have a club, a society, whatever. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Explain the importance of monthly giving. Why should I give monthly? Also give me a person. I have questions. Who can I talk to? A lot of times the questions are things like, “Do you process all the monthly gifts on a set day of the month, or is it on the day I sign up, and it keeps repeating?” They have weird questions, so give them a name to call.

Include a downloadable form, because some people actually want to do that. There are still donors who won’t enter a credit card number or, especially, bank account info online. They somehow think it’s more secure to fill out a form than to enter it online. Typically it’s older donors, and I don’t want to be stereotypical, but that’s what happens. You need to have a policy or procedure in place for what happens if one of these shows up with a credit card number. It should immediately be hand-entered into the system, and then either blacked out or shredded. In no situation should it be lying open on somebody’s desk while they’re not there. Who knows what could happen? It does still happen, so have that procedure in place.

You think we’re done. You’re saying, “Chad, we’re set up, I’ve got the functionality, let’s market this thing and sell people on monthly giving.” No, we’re not ready, because I need you to keep these monthly donors. Once they sign up, they need to have an amazing experience. They need to feel special. They’ve made a big commitment to give to you each and every month, and we need to set that up first. So let’s do monthly donor stewardship before we even talk about marketing.

First off, the post-click experience. What happens as soon as I click to sign up as a monthly donor? I’m going to go somewhere, and you have control over where I go. It’s some kind of redirect page you can enter in the form. Where are they going? Here is my favorite redirect page I’ve ever seen. You’re not going to hear the audio, but there’s a little nice music playing in the background. Look at that. There are waving kids, and the GIF makes a difference. Over here, we’ve got “thank you,” the organization name, and a smiling kid. It’s a twelve-second video made in-house in Canva using stock photography with brand colors. It’s nothing that fancy, but it looks nice, with soothing music in the background. That was one of their optional tracks. It’s an embedded YouTube video on an unlisted page on their website, and that’s the redirect. Right below it says, “Thank you again. You’ll promptly receive the gift acknowledgment in the mail. We couldn’t do this without you. Thanks so much.”

That’s a much better experience than what typically happens when I’m rerouted to some page that says, “On behalf of the board of directors of ABC Nonprofit, we hereby certify your donation of $10 per month that will begin on…” It’s very transactional and doesn’t make me feel good. The first one made me feel really good.

Then I get an email, and that email is also typically very transactional. I love this one: “Dear Lynn, because of you, countless children and their families have a reason to be thankful. Because of your recurring support, patients at Children’s Hospital Colorado can celebrate health and healing and look forward with hope and strength and all the good things.” It’s from a real person. Yes, it’s auto-generated, but I have a photo of a real person, and I can contact them if I have questions. It’s a much better start to the relationship. You have full edit control, so go in and make it human, from a person, and make this relationship start off great.

What happens after that? I have a good start. Now make me feel special. I do all of my giving monthly, and I’m going to tell you a couple of examples about that throughout the presentation. Only a couple of organizations make me feel special. What are some ways you can do it? Maybe a month or two in, I get a handwritten welcome note that acknowledges that I signed up to be a monthly supporter.

I always get the question, do we need to send them gift acknowledgments every single time they give? Do we need to mail them something? No. Please don’t mail them something. They’ll get mad that you’re using twelve stamps and twelve pieces of paper. They’re going to get the automatic transaction receipt from Bloomerang, or from whoever your processor is, and they’ll know their gift has been processed. Your job is to make them feel special throughout the year. Then in January, send them a summary of all their gifts throughout the year. If you don’t send that, then come about April 10th, right about now, you’re going to get thirty emails asking, “Do you have a tax statement for me? I need to file this.” So go ahead and send it out. Bloomerang and other online giving tools have built-in template functionality to help you with that. That’s why you subscribe to awesome tools.

What I really want you to do is flag them. Mark them as a monthly donor, using something like donor groups. Have a tag for “monthly donor.” Then when you’re doing routine email solicitations, just remove the monthly donors and get them out of your standard flow. Yes, we can ask them for additional support from time to time, but I don’t want you to be tone-deaf.

There’s an organization I support that is tone-deaf. Want to know how bad it is? They process my monthly donation, which is a leadership gift. It’s $84 a month, which makes me a $1,000-a-year monthly donor. They process it on the 15th of every month. Guess what they have their system set up to do on the 16th of every month? An email solicitation. So every single month, I give on the 15th at a leadership level, and on the 16th I get solicited as if I’m not even a donor. Just pull them out of the routine flow. Yes, we can have a conversation about an additional gift once or twice a year, but don’t solicit them monthly as if they aren’t even giving. It’s not a good situation. If they weren’t the primary nonprofit in my region supporting folks on hard times, I’d be looking elsewhere, but I don’t have a ton of options. So I’m just annoyed every single month. Don’t annoy your donors every single month.

Do a few things a couple of times a year to make them feel special and recognize them as monthly donors. Maybe send a quarterly monthly donor update. Send a personal email from the executive director: “Just the other day, I was walking down the hall and stumbled across something amazing. Can I share a little two-paragraph story? Thanks again for being a monthly donor. You helped make this happen.” Done, send. That’s great stewardship and helps retain them. Be creative a couple of times a year.

I used to say you need to send your donors something quarterly to make them feel appreciated. It’s now more like monthly, because it’s hard to get donors’ attention and make sure they actually see things. So reach out and send something on a regular basis. Here’s an example of that welcome note: “Thanks for stepping up to the plate and helping to provide support for our guests as a new monthly donor. Your commitment is a beautiful reflection of the passion we have to help our neighbors in need month to month and day to day. You are a blessing to every person who walks through our doors.” I love that line, “month to month and day to day.” It’s perfect for monthly donors.

This is my favorite donor stewardship piece of all time that I’ve ever sent. It’s a die-cut postcard, so the pink line is actually cut out. I mailed it in, and yes, you can actually mail shapes. On the back it says, “Because of you, 283,000 residents had an arts experience last year. Thank you for your ongoing support.” There are companies that can do this for you. Your local printer probably doesn’t have it, but reach out. Die-cut postcards are awesome, and it’s something creative to make them feel special.

We’re just about ready to talk about converting donors to monthly. But before we do, there’s a final step that 90% of organizations don’t do, and it’s why they don’t have that many monthly donors: they don’t set a goal. Set an annual monthly donor recruitment and retention goal. It can be super simple. For small shops, it might be: we’re going to attempt to get two new monthly donors each month and retain 90% of our monthly donors. It’s that simple. The mere fact that you set a goal matters. It’s the old Peter Drucker quote: what gets measured gets managed. So set a goal. Just aim for slow, steady growth. Don’t say, “We’re going to get fifty donors through our monthly giving campaign this year.” Break it down. I want steady growth, because the great thing about monthly donors is that once they’re on, they stay on. So even small incremental growth month to month has a huge impact on your organization over time.

Alright, we’re ready. Let’s sell this thing. How do we market a monthly giving program? You all instantly think, “What am I going to call it? It has to have an amazing name, it has to be super creative, and when you join, you get stuff, like a coffee mug or a T-shirt, and then you get these ongoing benefits.” No, no, no. Donors don’t care about that. What do they care about? They care about the impact and the stories. That’s what they want. They want insider access to know more. So focus more on the why. Tell me why I should be a monthly donor, and tell me over and over and over again.

We have a law in fundraising called the fundraising law of seven. The typical translation is that donors want to hear from us at least seven times between gifts when we’re not asking for anything. There’s another version of the law of seven, which says donors need to be asked to do something at least seven times before they do it, and monthly giving definitely applies in that situation. At least seven times. Tell me all the time why I should give.

What are some of those reasons? Here are the three most compelling that I’ve seen work. First, “Your monthly financial support provides ongoing sustainability for our programs.” Sustainability is a keyword these days. It just works, and it’s a COVID impact. Second, “Your monthly support allows us to spend more time serving our neighbors in need and less time on fundraising.” Donors don’t like the admin. They want us spending more time on programs. I personally don’t love this one, because I don’t find it to be true. We’re not going to spend less time on fundraising. We’re just going to fundraise in different ways. But it does resonate. Third, “We primarily share stories of impact with our monthly donors rather than requests for more support.” That’s a better donor experience, as long as you’ve taken the time to remove them from the flow. Don’t say you’re going to do that and then still mail them everything.

Let’s look at a few key reasons in action. This is Sparrow’s Nest, I believe, in the Hudson Valley of New York, a cancer care organization. “Giving monthly matters. Your commitment to Sparrow’s Circle, our monthly giving program, helps us deliver comfort each month while funding our mission for future generations. Sparrow’s Circle provides sustained support for our programs, including our supplemental food program, aftercare program and Camp Sparrow, and enables you to join a community of supporters who understand the importance of making a long-term commitment to families facing the uncertainty of a cancer diagnosis.” Right there on the giving form, we’ve explained why you should do it. All the reasons are in there. You’ve got the benefits, and you’re joining a community of supporters who understand the importance of making a long-term commitment. Put it right there on the form.

How do you get more monthly donors? You talk about the ones you already have. Social proof is key. Once you have a few, feature them. Put them on your social media, in your annual report, and in your email blasts. Use things like, “My monthly support allows me to go to bed each night knowing that I’m doing my part.” “Becoming a monthly donor at ABC Nonprofit has been such a rewarding process. We know that we are part of the solution.” Get those testimonials.

My good friend, the great Lynne Wester of donorrelations.com, says your first ask should be for a monthly gift, always. Your donors pay for everything monthly: their mortgage, their car payment, piano lessons, all the stuff. Our younger donors do it all electronically. I’m right on the border between older donor and younger donor, and I’ll show off the lovely gray beard. Even I pay everything electronically and monthly. I don’t want to deal with the paper and the hassle and all of that. Our donors are already doing it, so let’s just ask them to do it with us as well.

With that in mind, all channels should encourage monthly donations first. All channels. Okay, an easy one: the website. We saw that monthly is the preferred option, the default. In our email blasts, it is also the default. How do you make monthly the default in an email blast? I love two buttons. When you get to the bottom, the button on the left, the one you see first, says “Give monthly.” The button to the right says “Give once,” or “Make a one-time gift.” The “Give monthly” button is highlighted in the brighter color. It’s the default.

In our mailed appeals, I already showed you that checkbox is always in there, “Give monthly.” It’s the first thing you see. They’re not going to do it, but it just reiterates that that’s what we want you to do. For peer-to-peer campaigns, where people are asking their peers on our behalf, rather than have them get one-time gifts, why don’t we ask them to get monthly gifts? Ask your friends for a $10-a-month commitment. One-time donors from those campaigns are very hard to renew, so let’s get them in as monthly donors.

For live appeals at special events, such as a fund-a-cause during a live auction: “Folks, we understand that we only had twelve items up for bid tonight, but we recognize that many of you want to help support this cause. By raise of your paddle, who will make a commitment of $100 a month to this nonprofit? $50 a month? $20 a month?” Normally we do, “Who will give $500? Who will give $250?” Let’s get them in as monthly donors. Monthly first in everything we do. And especially when we’re trying to renew lapsed donors, those who have already lapsed, let’s try to get them back as monthly donors. I would much rather have a low-level monthly commitment than somebody who sporadically gives $50 every couple of years. That ongoing monthly support really adds up.

How do we further incentivize donors? Especially at this time of year, it’s hard to fundraise, especially with donors who typically make most of their gifts in December. Thirty percent of all giving happens in the last six weeks of the year, so if we’re fundraising outside of that time frame, we really have to tell them why. I love a match. Matching gifts always help. Eighty-four percent of potential donors are willing to give if a match is offered. We like it because our dollars go further. So make the ability to have my donation matched available only if I give monthly. Any new or increased monthly donation gets matched. That also lowers the requirement of your match pool. You’re not matching the whole amount, just the first month or the first quarter, something like that.

Here’s a great example from Feeding America of how this works. In the second paragraph: “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.” They’re just matching the first month, so I’m matching $20, $50 or $100, whatever. I can have a very low match pool, like $2,000, $3,000 or $4,000, that could really go a long way and incentivize monthly giving.

One other place is social media. Social media is great for raising awareness, but usually not great for raising dollars. So how do we use it to raise dollars? We reinforce the behavior that we want and talk about the monthly donors we already have. This is probably my favorite nonprofit social media post of all time. It’s from Project Somos Children’s Village, I believe, which does English-as-a-second-language training for recent immigrant children. Here’s their post: “Last week, our monthly supporters had the opportunity to do a live video chat with six of our students. The Somos kids got to practice their English, and the donors got to ask questions. Thanks to all who participated. We look forward to our next visit.”

I love this on so many levels. First off, the picture. You see the kids right in there. The donors are on Zoom or whatever they’re using, and they’re connecting. The staff member is just quietly supervising in the background. The benefactors are directly connecting with the kids, and this is a benefit only if you are a monthly donor. What do our donors want? More connection with the mission, more stories, all of that. This gives it to them directly. That’s what they want. They don’t want stuff. They don’t want a T-shirt or a coffee mug. They want direct connection, interaction and exposure to the mission. Make me a part of it. Make me a trusted partner and not just your piggy bank.

Those are some basic marketing guidelines, things you can do. Now we’re going to get personal. Every monthly donor guru has a process that they’ve seen work for multiple nonprofits, and here is mine. You can go watch other nonprofit gurus. I love the work put out by Erica Waasdorp and Dave Raley, and there are tons of them out there. They all have their set process. Please watch them. I don’t need you to do my process. I’m just telling you what mine is. This is what I’ve seen work for nonprofits. Take it, adapt it, and combine it with other people’s ideas. This is all a giant test lab. What works for some people, and what works for my nonprofit, may differ, so you need to test things and try them.

I’m going to walk you through my process. Everything’s set up and optimized, and you’ve got a million other things to do. So who do you ask? How should you do it? And when do you do it? Those are the key questions.

First off, who? I start with the donors who are already kind of there. They either already give by credit card, which 95% of nonprofit donors do, or they already give more than once per year. Yes, that works. Also donors who give through multiple channels, because they’re already used to the idea that you ask multiple times and they give. And younger donors: 52% of millennials are interested in monthly giving, and it goes up the younger you get. I’m a late Gen Xer, and I do all my gifts monthly. So basically anybody under fifty is who you’re qualifying for.

Like I said, I work primarily with small to midsize nonprofits. They are busy. Even getting them to have a major gifts program is a huge challenge. So I’m usually saying, can we just focus on the top 10% and have individual relationships with them? Then who do I want to go monthly? Everybody else: donors who don’t give enough for us to give them personal attention. In an ideal world, every single donor would get personal attention, but we have to prioritize our time, and the bigger donors tend to get more attention. So everybody else. That applies to about 90% of your donor base.

How do you actually do it? I’m going to get the most pushback right here, because I do it in a very non-traditional way. Almost every other monthly giving webinar you watch is going to give you a big email sequence for how you do this. I don’t like the email sequence. I use email, but I don’t start that way. I start with direct mail. This target audience, the donors who are younger and giving multiple ways, gets a ton of email. What do they not get a ton of? Actual postal mail in their mailbox, because they do everything online. In my area, the only thing they get in their mailbox is the junk newspaper with all the ads that you just pitch, and maybe a postcard or two from the people who want to replace your windows or your roof, and no real actual mail. If you send me a piece of personalized, actual mail, I’m probably going to open it. That’s actually how I became a donor for 90% of the causes I support: they sent me creative mail that got my attention.

What does this creative mail look like? It makes the case and says why monthly giving is good for both the donor and the organization. It includes a specific monthly ask. I usually do a third of their last gift amount, so if they gave $100, I’m asking for $33 a month. It’s a little high, and they’ll probably do less, but I want to raise their sights. It’s hand-signed and has a personal note on it. I go and get prints made, at Target, Walgreens, whatever you have in your area that actually prints photographs, those things we had in the nineties. I paperclip one of them to the letter, and on the back I write, “Your past support has made this happen.” It’s a photo of our program in action, and it screams that somebody hand-assembled this.

There’s a QR code in the letter that says, “Scan here for a personal message from Janaya.” Janaya’s story is the one we shared in the letter, and the code goes to an unlisted page on our website. It has an embedded YouTube video of twenty seconds of Janaya saying, “Thank you so much for supporting this cause. You helped me rebuild my life. I hope you consider becoming a monthly donor so that we can rebuild the lives together of so many other families.” Right below that is the enrollment form. It’s super simple. Bloomerang gives you the tools to do both of those things.

Then it is hand-addressed. We want to make sure it’s opened, so maybe it’s bright or big, something different. It’s hand-addressed, and it has that crooked stamp. You all know the crooked stamp rule. There’s a 9% increase in open rate if the stamp is just slightly crooked either way. Why? Because a human did it. People think a machine can’t put on a crooked stamp. It actually can, but they think it can’t. So that’s the personalized mail packet.

We send that out, and then about two weeks later we send an email follow-up. They’re probably not going to respond to the packet, because we’re not in the right channel. I’d have to handwrite something, or go to a link. So give them the link. It’s a great use of personal video. You all walk around with these at all times. Here’s an example: “Hey, Jan, it’s Chad from ABC Nonprofit. Thank you so much for your ongoing support of our cause. Last week we mailed you a packet asking you to consider joining us and becoming a monthly supporter. I’ve got a link right below here. I hope you’ll consider doing that. It would make a huge difference to the kids, and you’d join our community of people making a huge difference. Thanks so much.” It’s super simple and took ten seconds. You could send it by text or by email, in all kinds of ways. Make it personal. That is what I’ve found works for monthly giving conversion.

A personal ask is key, and a lot of this is hand work. You may have volunteers who want to help with administration. They say, “I’m not a kid person, I don’t want to run the program, but I like paperwork.” They want to touch the computer. Don’t ever let them touch your donor database. But what can they do? They can hand-address envelopes, write these notes, and assemble materials. All of these things are key.

I’m including my sample conversion letter in the resources. I’m not going to go through it, but take it and make it yours. Make it fit what works for you, and include that QR code that gets them right to your page. I’m also including a sample of a fully optimized donor letter so you can see what that looks like. As you can see, it’s personalized, things are bolded, there are photos of the story in action, and it’s two pages. And here’s a sample outer envelope. What do you see? It’s bright and hand-addressed. The stamp is not crooked, but you can easily take care of that.

Final part: when do you send these? I really like February and March. Thirty percent of all giving happens in the last six weeks of the year. We send a prompt gift acknowledgment in early January. In late January or early February, we send some kind of stewardship piece, like an impact report, so they’re kind of queued up and ready for something. When we look at statistics, May is actually the most popular time. I think this is because a lot of organizations only solicit by mail at the end of the year. I like to do more than that, but that’s there. Another time that works really well is August and September, right before we get into the end of the calendar year, when people start paying attention to mail again and are done with vacations. The bottom line is that two to three months after a major appeal usually works pretty well, as long as you’ve met the prerequisite that impact-based stewardship has happened. You’ve told them what you’ve done with their last gift before you ask for this conversion.

This is one of the toughest slides I ever present. Fundraising professionals are not good at math. We’re good at raising money, not counting it. But we’re going to look at a little math here, so bear with me. Suppose you could send five of these packets every day, forty-five weeks out of the year, not the week of your gala. You take vacations, and self-care is important. I see about a 10% conversion rate on these. The average conversion rate of randomly asking is 1 to 2%, so these do much better. That would give me 1,125 asks and, at 10%, 112 new monthly donors. At an average monthly gift of $19, that gives me $2,100 in new monthly income each and every month, or $25,000 a year. That’s big money.

You say, “Chad, there’s no way in the world I can do five of these a day.” Okay, can you do five of these a week? Every Friday at 3:30 p.m., can you crank out five of these mailings for me? Yes, you can. Can you get a volunteer to help you do some of the work? Yes, you can. That gets me 225 asks and, at 10%, 22 new monthly donors. Twenty-two times $19 is $418 in new monthly income, or $5,000 per year. And they stick around, so it keeps coming every month, and you’re just growing that number. That is the key to monthly giving: sustained monthly growth. It doesn’t have to be huge. A little bit of growth every single month to make that number bigger and bigger is essential.

Final section: let’s optimize this. What are a couple of things you can do to take your monthly giving program to the next level? You may be saying, “Chad, I’ve done all this. I’ve got everything optimized and we have steady growth. What else can I do?”

Well, when is the last time any for-profit company asked you for an updated credit card expiration date? It doesn’t happen. Amazon doesn’t ask. Hulu doesn’t ask. Why? Because it’s built in. Optimized processors have built-in credit card updating, so use a credit card updater service if you have access to one. Bloomerang works with Stripe on credit card processing in its newer functionality, which takes care of it automatically. But make sure you’re getting fresh dates. Don’t let monthly donors go away simply because you don’t have their updated credit card information. It’s a super simple one: just use good tools.

Next, after a certain amount of time, maybe two or three years as a monthly donor on a credit card, you can ask them to convert to EFT, meaning they switch to using their bank account. It saves you a lot of money on fees. Industry research says the average fee is 6.3%. I think that’s really high. I don’t know what tools they’re using. They’re not using Bloomerang if they’re paying fees that big, but they’re definitely getting hit with fees. Credit cards are expensive. Even if you use the cheapest processor possible, you’re paying around 2.5% plus 30 cents per transaction, and it adds up. If you switch to bank accounts, fees drop dramatically and are much cheaper. But you have to earn trust before you get them to connect you directly to their bank account.

The final thing you can do to optimize is to not forget, or, more commonly, not be afraid, to ask your monthly donors to increase their support. Every once in a while, ask them to increase it. However, you don’t do it this way. This is a true example: “Your monthly contribution will increase $2 beginning in March 2020.” No, we don’t do it automatically. We ask for permission. What happens when we ask for permission? Twelve percent of monthly donors will upgrade their monthly gift if asked, once a year. So ask. Just ask from time to time.

Matching gifts are another great use here: “Any new or increased monthly donation will be matched dollar for dollar.” And just like before, make the ask personal. It’s a great use for that personal video: “Would you consider increasing your monthly donation, just like I just did? We really count on your ongoing support.”

I’m going to highlight my top example in a minute, but I want to point out that in the chat there’s some great commentary from people who have trouble converting donors to EFT, and maybe it’s more headache than it’s worth. Take it as a donor-by-donor situation.

So, my top example. Who do I think does monthly giving better than anybody? I’m going to Charity: water. It’s a great cause, and everything is just fully optimized. Their monthly giving group is called The Spring. Here’s the giving page: “Join our community of monthly donors bringing clean water to people in need.” Forty dollars is already highlighted. “Your $40 monthly donation gives 12 people clean water every year.” It just grows. It took me seven clicks to get off of this page and figure out how I could make a one-time donation. She’s fully optimized. Viktoria Harrison, the cofounder of Charity: water, 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. Wouldn’t you love that? Wouldn’t you love a passionate and determined group of monthly givers on a mission to solve your mission in their lifetime? That’s what growing monthly giving can do. It builds you this coalition of key supporters who care deeply each and every month. It goes deeper than just the dollars.

I’m going to share a few additional resources with you, and then we’ll hop into your questions. Dani, my friend, please get those queued up. We’ll be ready to hit them in a second. First, I always share additional experts. I already mentioned Erica Waasdorp, my favorite monthly giving expert. Her most recent book, Monthly Giving Made Easy, is available on Amazon and everywhere. It’s a great book, with screenshots of optimized giving forms and all kinds of good stuff. The resources page I’m going to share with you, which we’ll make sure is emailed to you, has her monthly donor roadmap for the conversion process. Every single expert has a different conversion process. Your job is to pick the elements of each that are going to work with your donors, test them, and see what works.

I go by Fundraiser Chad online, and I’m most active on Facebook and LinkedIn. Please feel free to connect. I’m always sharing research, free webinars, resources, and all kinds of good stuff. I do a free webinar every month on a different topic. Coming up next is a good one: Igniting Board Engagement for Fundraising Success. How do we get that board to actually participate and raise dollars for us? That’s on the 27th at 1 p.m. Eastern. Dani’s going to post a poll in a little bit. If you want to connect with me, I’ll put you on the list, and you’ll get all kinds of information on all of this. There’s that poll. And if you want access to everything I’ve mentioned today instantly, you can scan this QR code, which will take you to a page. It’ll ask you a couple of questions, like whether you liked the presentation, and give you instant access. If you don’t want to do that, no problem. We’ll make sure it’s emailed out to you within the next twenty-four hours or so. With that, I’m going to call up Dani, and we’ll take some questions.

Dani Cluff: Perfect. Thanks so much, Chad. Before I get started, I have to say I chuckled a little at your note about sending younger donors direct mail, because I was just telling someone how excited I get at any mail that isn’t a bill or a local ad at this point. So I love that. It’s something we talk about a lot these days.

Chad Barger: I was the same way. I really got no mail until my children started taking the SATs, and then every single college in the country sends a jumbo postcard every single week.

Dani Cluff: Absolutely. I saw a couple of people, when you were talking about live events and making a solicitation there, mention that they’ve tried that and run into some issues finding a good way to do it. Do you have any tips for doing a live event, bringing up your monthly giving, and making that ask in that setting?

Chad Barger: I would have people who are trained on how to do that enrollment. We could just capture who it is and follow up after the event, but they’ve lost the momentum. So I’d almost have people with iPads, or a QR code that takes you to a page already preloaded with that giving amount. Anything we can do to take the friction out. And even if you don’t get that many, it was another time you asked people to give monthly. They’re hearing it over and over again, which is essential.

Dani Cluff: Absolutely. There are a couple of people in the Q&A who shared that they’ve run into issues setting monthly giving as the default, with some donors accidentally signing up for monthly giving and then having some rough interactions. Do you have any tips for dealing with situations like that?

Chad Barger: Research shows it works. We have that stat of a 35% increased conversion rate if it’s the default. I find that you have to have multiple points throughout the checkout process where you reiterate that you’re signing up for a monthly donation. So it’s on that page at the bottom: “This is a monthly gift,” and maybe it’s real tiny, “If you want to give one time, click here.” And then each time throughout, “This is a monthly donation.” You’re always going to get some complaints, but can we cut down on them just by telling people three or four times throughout the checkout process? Whether they read it or not, who knows, but I’m telling them that they’re signing up for a monthly gift.

Dani Cluff: Absolutely. I know we talked a lot about going after different donors depending on where they sit, whether they’re one-time donors or sporadic donors or give at different cadences. When you’re looking at a donor database, are there any markers you look for specifically to decide which donors to reach out to for this sort of solicitation, or would you say you look at your entire donor database and make these asks?

Chad Barger: More commonly than not, it’s the entire donor database minus those I know I’ll be able to meet with and have personal interaction with over the course of the year. My $10,000-a-year donor, I’m not eyeing up for conversion to monthly, because the fees get a little ridiculous. But everybody else, yes. Then it’s a matter of prioritization. That’s when I start looking at who’s already acting like a monthly donor. Who gives by credit card? Who gives frequently? Who gives multiple ways? Those are the indicators I use to rank-order the list for something like those personalized conversion packets.

Dani Cluff: Absolutely. For organizations that don’t have a monthly giving program set up yet, but have some larger campaigns throughout the year and want to start launching one, do you have any suggestions on timing? Say they have a big spring campaign. Should they hold off on launching a monthly giving campaign until after the next major campaign, or how would you navigate that?

Chad Barger: I would add monthly. Make sure monthly is mentioned as part of that campaign, so it’s an option and shows up there, and they start hearing about it. But I usually put monthly conversion campaigns in the gaps. Don’t sabotage something you’re already doing that’s working well in favor of a monthly conversion campaign, because I guarantee you won’t raise the same dollars. Do that campaign, then some good structured stewardship and reporting, and then maybe a monthly ask before you get into the next big campaign.

Dani Cluff: Awesome. For organizations that are more membership-based, do you have any different suggestions for how they can approach this?

Chad Barger: Membership and monthly is tough. I spent a lot of years working in the museum field, and we ran into this. You have to separate them in the donor’s mind: my membership is benefits for me, and my monthly gift is benefits for everybody else. Sometimes I’ve seen organizations target the monthly giving program specifically to a set program, usually something like educational outreach, like a school field trip or bus voucher program, something I don’t benefit from but care about, so that I have two separate transactions going to two different things. When the monthly giving program is just “Support the museum at a higher level,” it’s less attractive. I hate to make it restricted revenue for you, but that seems to resonate a little more.

Dani Cluff: Makes sense. We did have somebody ask if you would take a different approach for somebody who hasn’t given before, a lead for the organization, versus somebody who has already given.

Chad Barger: Our typical situation is that somebody needs to support us somehow first. Monthly giving is usually not first. However, going clear back to the beginning of the webinar, I mentioned the organization that had 60% of its funding coming from monthly giving, because from start-up that was their lead ask. It was pretty much the only ask they made: “Sign up as a low-level monthly donor, $10 or $20 a month, and go from there.” So you could structure it that way. And looking at our lead example at the end, that’s what Charity: water does. It’s very hard to give to them as a one-time gift. So you can make low-level monthly donor onboarding the primary path. It’s a little bit of a risk, because maybe I’m losing some one-time donors, but is the long-term benefit worth it? Probably. You have to weigh the pros and cons.

Dani Cluff: Absolutely. We are at the top of the hour, so I want to be respectful of everyone’s time. Thank you, everyone, so much for joining us today. Thank you again, Chad, for putting all of these resources together. It was super wonderful to have you. Do you have any final words before we go?

Chad Barger: Folks, just find a way to implement monthly giving. Make it an option, put it out there, and start marketing it a little more. It’s baby steps. You’re not going to convert half your donor base to monthly giving in one month. It’s ongoing, consistent effort. What can you do to work toward that? That’s my key takeaway and challenge for all of you. Thank you for all you do, thank you for how you serve your communities, and thank you for stepping up.

Dani Cluff: Absolutely. With that, we’ll sign off for the day. Thank you again, everyone, for joining us. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day and the rest of your week. Bye, everyone.

Chad Barger: Take care.

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