Monthly Giving
Over the past few months, I hope I showed you how monthly giving has become so much easier for nonprofits to organize and then actually start. That’s because so many payment processors and donor bases now have built-in tools to create giving pages, add the recurring/monthly option and capture new monthly donors without a lot of jumping through hoops...
At the recent Bridge Conference, I enjoyed several wonderful sustainer sessions. During one of those, someone asked about the automatic sustainer upgrade process some nonprofits are apparently using. My hair immediately started standing up straight! What happened to being donor-centric?...
My first experience with a hurricane came in August of 1991, when “Bob” hit Cape Cod. I was actually still in the Netherlands, but I watched video of my then future in-laws wade through chest-high water near their beach house. Power was out for many days. Life came to a screeching halt...
While online giving is growing, it’s our assumption that donors are comfortable filling out their personal information into an online donation form and hitting the submit button. Then, where does that information go? For donors, that can be unnerving...
I’ve been a monthly donor for many years. Two years ago, I did a little experiment: I joined 20 organizations to see what they would do (10 small and 10 large organizations). I wanted to experience their “thank you” process, their subsequent communication stream, tax letters, emails, lapsed recapture (if any) and upgrade process...
As fundraisers, we deal with people all the time—those who work in, those who serve by or those who support your organizations. Some of them may have been born and raised here for many generations. Others may have emigrated from other countries, like myself. Differences in culture and new impressions have formed our experiences...
While large national organizations typically have bigger budgets for fundraising and larger numbers of donors and emails to begin with, that does not necessarily mean that they’re more successful than local organizations...
My husband introduced me to the series, “Lost in Space,” many years ago. Growing up in Holland, I had never heard of it, but it’s a wonderful show. (This was before Star Trek, of course). So, why am I bringing up this series? Because it’s what I think about monthly donors and crowdfunding...
Account updater (also called account recycling or account recovery) is becoming more and more popular. Some donor base systems have started offering it for a small fee. Some systems charge a flat fee every month, and some charge a small fee based upon the amount to be recovered...
Two weeks ago, I was checking my credit card statement and noticed several iTunes charges on it. The charges were going up in value. Believe it or not, I don’t have an iTunes account, so that was an immediate flag. I called the credit card company right away to dispute the charges. They, of course, canceled my card and sent me a new card...