Whether you want to call it social proof, a testimonial — it doesn’t really matter. Donor’s love hearing from other donors. It helps give them that "extra" little push or nudge if you will. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Erica Waasdorp
Donor advised funds are all the craze lately. Now is the time to motivate those donors who want to optimize their tax deductions this year to consider a gift from their donor advised fund. But did you know that you can ask donors to consider recurring gifts from their donor advised fund?
As recurring gifts have no end date, so this is not like your typical pledge where you get big amounts over a limited period.
What’s the first nonprofit you think of with a huge sustainer program? Did you guess your local public broadcasting station? Probably not. But yet, most public TV and radio stations are leading the pact when it comes to sustainer giving. They started asking for monthly gifts many years ago.
The theme of the exhibits at the Wright Brothers National Memorial visitor center focused on several wonderful motivational messages, which helped to motivate the Wright brothers. But those are also oh so true when it comes to monthly giving...
I especially like the magical approach that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children took instead of referring to the donor newsletter. It’s funny how something as simple as this can get the creative juices flowing. You indeed can create some magical experiences for your recurring donors...
I’m an avid scanner of mail samples. I’m particularly intrigued by how organizations approach the monthly gift option on their reply forms. If you’re at all interested in growing your number of monthly donors, planting the monthly giving seeds on your appeals has become a best practice...
Pledges have been around for a long time. They’ve always been used as a way for donors to spread out their gift over time. Recurring gifts have been around for quite a while as well, but they’ve gained more popularity over the past five years...
This new book includes a cool-looking USB drive that includes the 52 exhibits and 199 web links to which the book refers. And the book proceeds are going to charity...
It’s important to remember though that just because it seems easy, you, as the nonprofit, will have to make it easy for the donor to keep on giving.
A fundraiser asked me this question: “Do you need to send monthly receipts to monthly donors?”...
I love fundraising book recommendations and, as you probably know by now, I love reading (and writing) fundraising books. So here is a review of the book "Green Green," published by Civil Sector Press, written by Canadian David Love, who has been raising funds for more than 51 years...
Every nonprofit wants to attract younger donors. That’s why it’s very exciting that monthly giving is so appealing to these younger donors. Why? Because they can support those organizations, they care about in a very easy way with a small amount that absolutely fits their budget...
If you know that the typical number of people who finish a gift is only 21%, that means 79% do not give, even though they go to your organization’s page to donate. What’s preventing donors from making the gift? Is it something you do? Can you stop doing it?...
As someone who’s been working with and on monthly donor programs for almost 30 years now, the order of operations comes up a lot. It often creates a pause or a stop in the growth of monthly donors. Of course, we’re only human and, as fundraisers, we often tend to focus — and agonize — about things that are least important. But they’re easier. They make us feel we’re more in control...
