Book Review: How to Create Lifelong Donors through Monthly Giving by Harvey McKinnon
The most important thing you need to know about fundraising is this:
Everything you do is about finding and stewarding three types of donors:
- Major (and mid-value) donors.
- Bequest donors.
- Recurring (mainly monthly) donors.
If you aren’t actively helping donors join one (or more) of those categories, your fundraising program is almost certainly unsustainable.
Of those three types, major giving and bequest giving are a challenge, because only a small percentage of donors can or want to do those things.
But any donor can become a recurring donor, and the percentage of donors who are open to it is much greater than the other two groups.
But don’t get the idea that getting recurring donors is easy. It’s not.
That’s why you need to read Harvey McKinnon’s latest book.
It is a simple, fact-based, no-nonsense guide, from one of our industry greats. Harvey knows what he’s talking about!
This book is a quick read — you can get through the whole book in one sitting — there are 40 chapters, but most of them are two or three pages long. But that doesn’t mean the book is thin on details. It has everything you need to know to launch a successful monthly giving program:
- Want to know what should you name your monthly giving program?
- Want to know how much should you ask people to give each month?
- Looking for the best ways to find and recruit those monthly donors?
- Can you ask monthly donors to give even more?
- How should you collect those monthly donations?
Just as important, Harvey equips you to make the case to sometimes-skeptical bosses or boards for why you should create (or improve) your monthly giving program:
- We will raise more money — significantly more.
- We will develop a more positive relationship with our donors.
- Our monthly donors will stay with us, giving for four years longer than other donors.
- We can rely on sustainers to keep income flowing in year-round and year after year.
- We’ll lower our cost of fundraising.
- Our income will grow over time.
Reading this book could change the financial future of your organization.
Whether you’re just starting to consider monthly giving for the first time, or a long-time veteran and you want to up your game, read this book!
When you join The Fundraisingology Lab, you get access to Harvey McKinnon’s powerful online course, How to Raise Money AND Change the World. You also can take our popular online workshop Matched Giving Magic, taught by Erica Waasdorp. And that’s just the beginning of what you’ll have available. Check out membership now!
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