Times Are Changing

By Erica Waasdorp

I recently traveled across several time zones, and it’s amazing how it impacts you — your body, your mood, your sleep pattern and your ability to concentrate.

They say it takes one day to recuperate from a one-hour time change.

So, with Daylight Savings Time around the corner, we’ll lose one whole hour, 60 minutes, 3,600 seconds.

The good news is that the adjustment will be on a Sunday for most people, but the Monday morning after the clock changes is typically the hardest.

What will you not do because you lose that hour?

I hope it doesn’t keep you from jumping right in on that Monday and focusing that one hour on your monthly donor program.

As you can see from last week’s blog, if you’re doing a spring appeal, now is an excellent time to add a monthly giving tick box to your appeal reply form (or at least test it if you have the quantity).

Now is an excellent time to add a “Give Monthly” button to your email or e-newsletter and see what happens.

If you have a giving day planned in the spring, now is the time to create a little welcome email series to all donors and ask them to consider giving monthly.

Make every hour count, and use it to implement at least one small change to your overall fundraising program by adding in a small, but mighty, monthly donor ask. Then start tracking the results. You’ll be that much farther ahead.

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Monthly Giving

Erica Waasdorp Author's page

Erica Waasdorp is one of the leading experts on monthly giving. She is the president of A Direct Solution, a company serving nonprofit organizations with fundraising and direct marketing needs, with a focus on monthly giving and appeals. She authored "Monthly Giving: The Sleeping Giant" and "Monthly Giving Made Easy." She regularly blogs and presents on fundraising, appeals and monthly giving — in person and through webinars. She is happy to answer any questions you may have about this great way of improving retention rates for your donors.

Erica has over 30 years of experience in nonprofits and direct response. She helped the nonprofits she works with raise millions of dollars through monthly giving programs. She is also very actively supports organizations with annual fund planning and execution, ranging from copywriting, creative, lists, print and mail execution.

When she’s not working or writing, Erica can be found on the golf course (she’s a straight shooter) or quietly reading a book. And if there’s an event with a live band, she and her husband, Patrick, can be found on the dance floor. She also loves watching British drama on PBS. Erica and Patrick have two step sons and a cat, Mientje.