Summary: In today’s podcast guest Erica Waasdorp from A Direct Solution speaks with Stephen Halasnik from Financing Solutions about monthly gifts. The benefits of monthly donations can have a tremendous impact on the success of your nonprofit organization.
Summary
The Benefits of Having Monthly Donors
A nonprofit organization can drastically benefit from having a monthly fundraising model. If there is anything that Covid-19 has taught us, it is that our financial situation can change quickly. At any given moment uncertainty can come about and affect the economy and your nonprofit finances. When we take a deeper look at this, we can really see the benefits of how having a monthly “subscription” service can create stability.
Just like any other subscription service in businesses, it provides companies with a predictable and steady amount of cash flow. Each month, if you receive predictable and steady amounts of money, this can help your fundraising directors and executive directors delegate your money more effectively.
When you don’t know what your expected monthly income is going to be, it can make it quite difficult for operations to run accordingly. In return, this can impact your nonprofit’s ability to achieve its mission statement. Therefore, having this set of predictable income can greatly improve your nonprofit’s ability to reach your targeted community and purpose.
Building Strong Relationships Through Grants and Fundraising
Fundraising for nonprofits can oftentimes come as a challenge for many organizations. Keeping up and in contact with annual donors can become challenging. The less you are in communication with your funders or donors, it can be difficult to keep strong, genuine connections going with them.
Each time your nonprofit contacts your donors, you don’t want to just seem like you are needy for their help. So how can monthly donations help improve this? When your nonprofit has monthly donors, it automatically allows your organization to contact your donors due to their investments in you.
When you create a relationship with your donors that operates with communication every month, it shows that your donors care and are committed to reaching your goals with you. As an organization, you don’t want to come across as too overbearing, so simply sending a monthly email to your donors each month keeping them in the loop will show your gratitude for their generosity. Depending on how much or frequently a donor give can also change the amount of communication necessary.
To help your nonprofit keep track of communication and donors, it can be helpful to look into CRM for nonprofits. Software that keeps track of communications and donations will allow you to reach maximum productivity. Also, improving email communication with Bonjoro for nonprofits can help increase your profits. Simply improving the quality of emails with video technology can help you stand out, and increase donor engagements.
Monthly Gifts to Create Long Term Stability
Having monthly gifts coming in comes with a mindset alongside it. When you begin to focus on the smaller and medium-size monthly donors, nonprofits can begin to see their numbers double and triple. Many nonprofits tend to focus their attention on the major gift donors to neglect the smaller donors. However, when you shift your attention to the number and quality of smaller, more consistent donors, you can see major shifts.
When you build monthly donors, even if they started with a small monthly gift of $15.00, over time they will give more. From this, your multiple smaller donors can shift into all being deeply invested medium or large size donors. This work does not happen overnight, but it is all part of growing that strong relationship with your donors. The effort that you put into building these relationships increases the chances that donors will leave your organization in their will.
Also, when you have monthly donations coming in, your donor retention rate increases and your organization has to worry less about running around looking for new donors every month. This relates to improving the efficiency of operations. When your fundraising team is less stressed about finding donors, it opens up more flexibility. When there is less stress and pressure to find new donors all the time, it can allow your organization to take a step back and reflect.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, having a model that uses monthly donations can create big change for a nonprofit. Through the use of a monthly subscription, you can allow your donors to feel deeply invested in your organization while creating space to achieve your mission.
Overall, your nonprofit’s goals are going to be focused on anything that will help achieve your mission. Using monthly gift-giving can be a great starting point that leads to a greater long-term impact. Perhaps start by using social media to direct your donors to your website to get them started.
About the Guest Erica Waasdorp from A Direct Solution
Bio: Erica Waasdorp is President of A Direct Solution, located on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, working with non-profit clients nationally and internationally on appeals and monthly giving.
Erica Waasdorp published Monthly Giving. The Sleeping Giant and her second book Monthly Giving Made Easy came out in early June 2021.
She created the Monthly Donor Road Map and several e-books to include the Top 7 Questions about Monthly Giving, the Monthly Donor Retention Play-Book, and more.
Erica is a Master Trainer for the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the former International Fundraising Congress US Ambassador. She regularly presents in-person and virtually on appeals, direct mail, and monthly giving.
About The Host Stephen Halasnik, Financing Solutions
Stephen Halasnik is the host of the popular, The Nonprofit MBA Podcast. The Nonprofit MBA podcast’s purpose is to help nonprofit leaders. Stephen is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Financing Solutions, a leading provider of loans for nonprofits in the form of Lines of Credit to nonprofits. Stephen is a best-selling Amazon author and is considered a leading authority on building great, purpose-driven businesses. Stephen lives in New Jersey with his wife, Gina. Mr. Halasnik’s number one purpose is raising his two boys, Michael and Maxwell, to be good men.
10% of profits from Financing Solutions is donated to charity.