You Choose
Two emails arrived today in my in-box, competing for attention.
The first was the first exhortation I’ve received so far to get ready to participate in this year’s Giving Tuesday. It was from MobileCause (who usually sends cool stuff) inviting me to a webinar titled “Supercharge #Giving Tuesday”.
The second was my regular ‘fix’ from fundraising creative maven Jeff Brooks, titled “How to move your donors to monthly giving — and why it matters so much.” He was passing along advice from the Charity How To blog: “The 7 fundamentals of Monthly Giving”.
Guess which one I read and which one I tossed!
Here’s a hint: “The retention rate of monthly donors is typically higher than 90%!”
Forced to choose this morning, which one would you have read?
Are you with me on this?
Tom
P.S. Here’s another hint. If you use “monthly giving” as the search term to browse The Agitator archive, you come up with 318 entries. Use “Giving Tuesday” and you’ll find 33, half of those rants questioning fundraisers’ distorted priorities.
8 responses to “You Choose”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]
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I’m not aware of any in-market tests specifically comparing recurring vs. gift frequency language. I suspect the answer might not be the same with all gift frequencies, nor with all people. It sounds like a great opportunity for you to test and find out what works for your audience. Based on the literature, here’s a couple […]
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Based on what we know from existing data, those renewal notices can actually be pretty effective in getting people to donate. They tap into our psychology – creating a sense of urgency, reminding us of past support, and using personalization to make the message hit home. They’re playing on our natural tendencies to feel obligated […]
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Interesting question. I had a quick look at the testing done on this topic. On the positive side, in all cases, over half of donors decide to cover the fee. In some cases, it goes as high as 65%. Not a negligible percentage at all. Here’s another test from iRaiser showing consistent results (see point […]
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There’s just one thing to consider when designing a supporter journey: the supporter. More specifically, you need to take into account: Who the supporter is i.e. their identity, which is the reason they support this cause, and their personality, which describes the way they “see” and process the world. These will determine the kind of […]
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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Couldn’t agree more. I advocate using GivingTuesday to thank your donors! Give to THEM.
Back in 1989, I wrote an article announcing that every charity in the USA would have a monthly giving program within five years. I was wrong, very wrong. I shouldn’t have been wrong but, clearly and sadly, I was.
So, Tom, I certainly agree with your post.
As for #GivingTuesday, I’ve done my share of rants about it. However, let me just say here that there is ZERO evidence that #GivingTuesday is worthwhile for the nonprofit sector as a whole.
Ah Tom, you made me chuckle so early in the morning.
I think the really big question is: Why don’t NGOs (and their fundraisers and bosses and boards) pay attention to research? This is sad, bad, risky and dangerous.
Great question Simone, sad and scary indeed!
How about creating #MonthlyGivingMonday ?
… that may be just the new next shiny big exciting thing so many nonprofits seem to want to do… and it actually fits within an overall strategy of keeping our donors
what say you?
cheers, erica
I LOVE that idea, Erica! By the way, we have a subscriber coming on Motivate Monday, my new free weekly training, on October 3rd to talk about how she brought in 2,000 new monthly donors in 2015.
I’m with you! And off to read Jeff’s piece after this.
Giving Tuesday has always seemed a lot of effort and noise – without results to match. I love the idea of using it to thank donors, instead! I’d bet long-term results from that could be better.
Is there research about the hesitancy in the US to commit to monthly giving? Is it credit card trust? Are we just not in that habit? Why is it so successful elsewhere, while we’re having a tough time here?
Or is it because US nonprofits are simply not making a persuasive case for it?
Just my theory – we bear responsibility for conditioning too many donors into an annual giving mindset.
The Annual Fund (the single worst name in marketing history), the Annual Appeal (some orgs proudly tout this as the title of their main direct mail piece, the (ugh) Annual Report where the agate type explains that the report only recognizes gifts for the long past Fiscal Year (about which no donor cares) which began on this date and ended on that date so please don’t ask us why your fabulous gift of a couple of months ago isn’t honored. We’ll get around to it in 18 months or so.
Undoing what we’ve done and reconditioning folks who we’ve trained to respond to our stimuli for an annual mindset is going to take a lot of time and a focused campaign to move toward making sustained giving the new norm.
Meanwhile the sustained giving successes will remain outliers with the occasional enlightened organization getting on the bus where there are still loads of seats available.
So many excellent responses today!
Giving Tuesday at least forces many charities into some form of proper planning, which should not surprise them, leads to better fundraising results.
Just think what that proper planning could mean for major gifts, donor stewardship, and planned giving just to name a few areas that are often neglected.
Now for the bad news on Giving Tuesday, some things to consider:
1. The massive amount of emails make it hard if not impossible to differentiate your cause if for nothing else the sudden flooding of in boxes!
2. The massive releasing of emails strains email sending services and sparks spam filters into warning activation mode, thus reducing deliverability and open rates! (Check your open rates on any mass emails sent earlier in the year with those sent on Giving Tuesday…)
3. The strain produced on on-line donation processing systems caused by the heavy one day influx. (Just check the message boards for the outages happening to several key vendors in the last year or two on Giving Tuesday and Give Local Days)
Too much of anything can sometimes prove to be bad…