Studies released annually by Blackbaud, which tracks giving trends over thousands of nonprofits, are showing that monthly giving is the fastest growing segment of giving today. For many donors, it's easier to make a gift if they can spread it out across 12 months of the year.
If you don't currently have a monthly giving program, it's time to get started. Or maybe your current program needs some retooling. Follow this checklist of nine fundraising ideas for nonprofits to build monthly giving programs.
Give your monthly giving program an exciting name so it'll stand out as an important part of your organization. Names I've liked recently include Hunger Core, Partners for Change, Investigations Fund, and Rescue Partners.
Make sure that the main donation page on your website includes a monthly giving option. Most online donation vendors include this as an option, so be sure to make it visible to your donors.
If you want to be a bit more aggressive on your donation pages, you could have the monthly giving option preselected or shown first before the single, one-time gift. This is sure to grab the attention of your donors as they consider their giving choices.
Build awareness by adding monthly giving language to all your email fundraising appeals. Put it in the body of the message, in the postscript, or both to show your donors that it's always an option for giving.
Add a monthly giving request to your new email subscriber welcome series. New subscribers are often very motivated to learn what your organization does, and they may be interested in making a small monthly donation.
A few times a year, email your recent donors and invite them to become monthly donors. Your recent donors are some of your most passionate supporters, and they're often the most receptive to becoming monthly donors.
Create a month-long campaign to recruit and upgrade monthly donors. Pick a month when you're running an exciting campaign and invite your community to become monthly donors to help support your work. You could consider using a recruitment goal ("We need 50 new monthly donors this month!") to encourage signups.
You can promote your month-long campaign on your website home page, launch a series of three emails in your chosen month, and mention it in your social media channels. Your email campaigns could be targeted at recent donors, nondonors in your file, lapsed donors, and lapsed monthly donors. During this campaign, current monthly donors would be encouraged to upgrade their monthly gift, but only if they've been in the program for at least four months.
Send a special biannual email update just for your monthly donors, so they know they're part of a special group of donors whom you appreciate.
Use other communications channels and activities that might be good places to promote your monthly giving program. Events, newsletters, and print mailings are important venues to get out the word.