Establishing a monthly giving program doesn’t need to be resource-intensive. You don’t need a lot of money or staff. What you need are strong systems -- for processing gifts, acknowledging them, and renewing your donors.
Here are some of the basics you should consider. (And take a look at Oregon Public Broadcasting’s checklist for a starting a monthly giving program.)
Assign roles and responsibilities to your staff
Some experts recommend making one person directly responsible for the program.
“Someone must own the program,” says Erica Waasdorp, a fundraising consultant and author of Monthly Giving: The Sleeping Giant. That might mean someone has the primary responsibilities of recruiting monthly donors and managing the different players who have a role in the program internally.
Monthly giving should be integrated with other types of fundraising and marketing, says Harvey McKinnon, a fundraising consultant and author of Hidden Gold, a book on monthly giving.
Oregon Public Broadcasting, for example, has 11 full-time employees and one part-time employee involved in different aspects of its membership and monthly giving program, with staff supporting everything from email and direct-mail acknowledgements to the management of the donor database.
At World Vision, an international development group, there are three broad categories of staff involved in running its recurring gift programs, which involves 750,000 child sponsors and tens of thousands of additional monthly donors: those who support operations and technology, those who communicate with the donors, and those who cultivate additional gifts from the recurring donors.
Automate those tasks that you can, and then see what you can roll into what the organization’s already doing, says Anne Ibach, director of membership at Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Set up your gift-processing technology
Organizations must be prepared to process monthly payments through their database, a bank, or a credit-card processing system. Know your database’s capabilities, says Ms. Ibach. Many organizations already have the tools they need.
Because people frequently change or cancel their credit cards, nonprofits should process direct payments from donors’ bank accounts from the start, Ms. Ibach recommends. These payments are easier and less expensive to process.
Your best prospects for monthly giving are people who are consistent donors, says Mr. McKinnon.
“The most logical people who will become a monthly donor are people who are already donors,” he says.
But converting one-time contributors to monthly donors can be a challenge.
“They get quite habituated into how they give,” says Ms. Ibach. “It’s really, really important with sustainers to get them as a sustainer from the get-go.”
Greenpeace has found that older donors are more likely to stick around, says Zachary Riddle, the nonprofit’s interim monthly giving director.
“It’s maybe easier to convert college students who are passionate about an issue, but they could fall off a lot sooner,” he says. “The older the donor, the better they retain.”
Market the program aggressively
Recurring gift programs are most successful when nonprofits put them front and center, says Ms. Waasdorp. Make sure donors know this is a great -- and easy -- way to give, she says.
“We’ve made it a priority in everything,” says Ms. Ibach, of Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Through pledge drives and door-to-door canvassing, Twin Cities Public Television more than doubled its number of recurring monthly donors between 2011 and 2014, helping boost its donor-retention rate.
Greenpeace solicits the majority of its monthly donors through face-to-face interactions, mainly on the street and on college campuses. The environmental group’s more than 100,000 monthly donors contribute about half of its income.
Many organizations refer to their monthly donors as “sustainers” or “members.”
Other organizations give the group a name. At the ASPCA, monthly donors are called “Guardians.” At Doctors Without Borders, they’re “Field Partners.” Mercy Corps calls its recurring donors “Partners in Mercy.”
Keep in touch with your donors
Organizations thank their monthly donors in different ways.
Oregon Public Broadcasting, for instance, sends an acknowledgement when donors make their monthly giving pledge, as opposed to when the payment is processed. At most, it’s a couple of weeks between the time donors make their gifts and when they receive their acknowledgements in the mail.
At a bare minimum, Ms. Waasdorp recommends recognizing monthly donors in the following four ways:
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A thank-you message after a donor clicks submit.
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A thank-you email.
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A thank-you letter, sent through the mail.
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A tax letter, sent through email and physical mail.
Your group may not have to create new acknowledgements just for monthly donors.
“Organizations should take advantage of the communications they already do, using them as a touch point to recognize donors for being a sustainer,” Ms. Ibach says.
That might be as simple as using a distinct recurring donor letterhead for a communication piece sent out to all donors.
World Vision, for example, uses periodic donor statements as a way to engage monthly donors and report back on the impact of their gifts.
“The words you use make a huge difference,” says Kevin Conroy, chief product officer at GlobalGiving, a nonprofit website that matches donors with community-development projects. “Make sure you have a good story as to what the recurring donation will do and how you’ll use that steady stream to run your programs.”
Develop a process for canceled credit cards and lapsed donors
Because people change credit cards frequently, the attrition rate for donors who give via charge cards is growing, says Mr. McKinnon. This is a big hurdle for organizations with monthly giving programs.
“You need a system to capture them back, which probably involves phone, mail, and email,” Mr. McKinnon says.
Nonprofits should also be able to track their donors to get a sense of how many are canceling and why, says Karl Nelson, executive director of sponsorship at World Vision.
“That’s the only way that they can know if their operation is in trouble or not, and that’s the only way they can judge over time how much long-term donor value there is from each recurring donor,” he says.
For Greenpeace donors whose cards expire or are declined, the nonprofit will retry them again at another time. If the transaction still doesn’t go through, the group contacts the donor via email and telemarketing for three months. The earlier you call, the more donors you’ll get back, says Mr. Riddle, of Greenpeace.
The environmental group sends older donors a postcard, requesting they call to update their credit-card information.
Read about Oregon Public Broadcasting’s efforts to encourage donors to switch from credit cards to automatic payments from their bank accounts to help reduce attrition.
