What’s Driving Recurring Giving — and What’s Still in the Way

I have done a lot of organizing, tossing, scanning and archiving these past few months. I still had binders filled with research and conference sessions from 30 years ago. In those days, when you attended a conference, you’d receive a book with hard copies of each presentation.

Looking back through those binders, I can clearly see which organizations were early monthly giving evangelists: ASPCA, Food for the Poor, Greenpeace, International Fund for Animal Welfare, PBS, Save the Children and World Vision, to name just a few. 

Most of these organizations had international offices, so they knew monthly giving was far more prevalent in Australia, Canada, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. With fewer donors and thus smaller ponds to fish in, finding ways for donors to give on an ongoing basis was key. Banking systems also made it easier. 

Even organizations like Charity: water, which leaned into monthly giving later as online giving became more prevalent, have now been doing it for more than a decade. 

What Has Shaped Recurring Giving

Over the past two decades, fundraising tools and donor habits have shifted dramatically. Here are some of the biggest changes shaping recurring giving today:

• Online giving has made it much easier to make a recurring gift. 
• Subscriptions are now everywhere, making the concept of recurring payments familiar.
• Checks have nearly disappeared, while electronic funds transfer (EFT) is easy to set up online. It doesn’t get much easier than that. 
• Many more payment options and payment providers mean donors can pay however they prefer. 
• More communication channels  — emails, social media, video, text — are available now, and donors are everywhere, so consistent messaging and repetition are key. 
• Smartphones and artificial intelligence make reaching your donors easier — just be sure you’re authentically you. 
• Remote work, especially since the pandemic, has reshaped many people’s lives. 

What Is Holding Back Sustained Giving

Despite all that progress, some stubborn barriers remain.

1. Silos and Overthinking

Remote work doesn’t help with internal communication, nor does it help streamline donor communication or improve those critical relationships. Blackbaud mentioned this back in 2008. With more channels and approaches, there are more cooks in the kitchen — and more overthinking.

2. Lack of Focus on Sustainers 

Too many organizations fear long-term evaluation. This is why I have gray hair. Shifting the mindset is hard, but there are plenty of examples of nonprofits reaping big rewards from recurring giving. The longer you wait, the further you fall behind.

3. Unclear Donation Forms

It’s still too easy to confuse donors with complex forms and too many options. They don’t necessarily know what the distinct colors mean in a form that toggles between a one-time gift and monthly gifts. And they may struggle to decide how much to give when there are too many options on donation forms. Test your forms and ask some folks to test them too. 

4. Lack of Focus on Lapsed or Declined Card Donors

Retention is the new acquisition. This is the single biggest area where nonprofits can gain a lot of traction at minimal investment. One charity recently calculated that keeping a monthly donor costs an eighth of the investment to acquire a new one (across all channels). That’s real savings.

5. Lack of Stewardship and Personalization 

Even with better tools, many nonprofits aren’t personalizing enough. Vendors now make it easy with handwritten fonts and digital printing. The challenge is prioritizing the time. These relationships are critical, so hopefully we can change that.

A Look Back

Online monthly giving has been growing for a while. Back in 2017, for example, Blackbaud reported 20.4% growth in sustainer revenue, while overall online revenue grew 10.2% that year. Nonprofits inspired 15% of their email list to donate, but even in those days, open and click rates went down.

M+R “Benchmarks” found that the average one-time online gift was $104, while the average monthly gift was $23 in 2013. Fast forward: the average one-time online gift was $126, and the average monthly gift was $24 last year, according to M+R “Benchmarks 2025.” Movement is minimal — largely because so few nonprofits ask current monthly donors to upgrade.

Additionally, monthly giving revenue grew 25% and accounted for 16% of total online giving. By 2024, monthly giving revenue increased by 5% over the prior year, but faster than the average online revenue increase of 2% Meanwhile, one-time giving was flat.

What Does This Mean for Recurring Giving? 

Donors now have many more choices and ways to give. For fundraisers, it’s harder to balance it all. It should be much easier to invite a donor to consider a recurring gift — and the cost to do so should be much lower than before (when it was just mail and phone). 

The statistics show the impact. Donor relationships can flourish. Donor retention can improve — at least among sustainers. 

Don’t overthink it. Pick one channel and one tactic, then expand as you grow. Recurring giving is a strong path to long-term donor relationships, but you do have to want to grow it. 

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of NonProfit PRO.