Why do you want more monthly donors?

Well, they’ll give you lots of money. Right?

Sure. Monthly giving increases revenue. The annual value of a monthly donor is many times that of other donors.

Chances are, most of your donors are “episodic” – they donate now and then, based largely on the timing and quality of your asks. They give when you ask them to do something they love, in the right way, and at the right time.

For most well-run fundraising, it comes out to somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 gifts per donor per year.

That’s fine. It can make your fundraising program a sustainable source of income. But the amount you spend to get that (and the amount of time you spend) makes it a pretty inefficient way to fund your organization. The ROI on episodic donor activity (not counting major donors) is generally somewhere around 2:1.

For some organizations, the overall return on investment is closer to break-even. They spend all that time and budget, and end up with the same amount of money as they had before!

That may sound like failure, but it can work.

One of the reasons it works is monthly donors! If you work to find and keep them, you’ll really up your revenue. And at a much better ROI. Some of those episodic donors will upgrade into major donors, and a few will include you in their wills – that really makes the whole thing work over the long term.

But those monthly donors start paying off immediately. And any donor can become a monthly donor, while only a small percentage of donors have the capacity to become major donors. And while charitable bequests can be a HUGE source of revenue, you have to wait years or even decades for those bequests to come in.

Better yet, monthly donor revenue is stable, predictable, and provides year-round cash flow. That really helps, especially if you are a small to mid-size organization.

It costs less to keep a monthly donor than to keep other donors. You shouldn’t just ignore them – they need to be cultivated too – but the cost is very low.

But here’s the best part: The year-to-year retention of monthly donors is dramatically higher than that of other donors. Depending on how you recruited them, it can be well over 90%. That is a big deal: now, next year, and for many years to come.

That continued loyalty has a couple of extra high-value features too: Because they tend to stick around for years, monthly donors are among your best prospects for bequest donations. They also have a high rate of upgrading – increasing the amount they give per year.

But there’s another reason to seek monthly donors: It’s a service to those donors.

It’s a convenient and easy way for donors to give. They can just “set it and forget it.” No reminders, no forms, no extra effort. It’s an option some donors just choose to do, even when we don’t bring it up. But you’ll get a lot more of it if you sell them on the ease and convenience. And throw in some wonderful feedback for them.

Beyond ease, it also gives donors a way to make a bigger difference with their giving. Twelve donations over a year really add up. When you show monthly donors the tangible difference their ongoing gifts make, you reinforce their sense of purpose and satisfaction. Many of them see those automatic donations not as mere transactions, but as the progress they are helping make possible.

Monthly donors also become part of a special community: A sort of elite among donors. If you give monthly donors special recognition, stories, and insider updates, you can really strengthen their emotional bond with your cause.

Monthly giving is a lot more than a “nice to have” in a fundraising program. It is a cornerstone for sustainable fundraising.

Want to know how the big-time fundraisers with big budgets and lots of staff do it? Download the Moceanic ebook, 4 Little-Known Strategies the World’s Top Charities Use to Smash Their Fundraising Targets. It doesn’t take big bucks are a lot of time to connect with donors and build meaningful relationships that pay off – both short-term and long-term.

Related Blog Posts:

• Social Media Win: How One Organization Recruited a Lot of Monthly Donors
• The Donor Survey that Can Shape Your Annual Fundraising Plan
• Monthly Giving: Your Secret to Long-Term Success in Fundraising