Your Time to Prepare for Monthly Gifts Is Now

By Erica Waasdorp

I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving! It’s a great time to reflect on the small and large people and things in your life.

I always find myself making my resolutions for the new year early. Why? Because there’s never a moment to waste. Because there’s something magical about resolutions. It helps you be better prepared for the next phase in whatever it is you’re looking to be prepared for.

Just think about it: Giving Tuesday is tomorrow, and you probably started preparing for this at least a month ago, right?

Well, you should consider getting ready now if you’re looking to launch or relaunch your monthly donor program come January.

Here are just five key items you need to do to prepare:

Review the monthly donor road map. (You can download here.)
Have your monthly donor payment pages ready to go.
Test your pages and your thank-you messaging
Ask your existing monthly donors for a testimonial, upload it on your website and use it in your e-newsletter and wherever else you think it makes sense.
Draft your email invitations, and test them out.

I’m all for keeping things simple and easy. It doesn’t take that long to check off these five key items. An hour a day can do so much. Just think of the time you spent preparing for your Giving Tuesday and holiday/year-end mail and email campaigns.

If you take a little time now for a monthly giving focus, come January, you’ll be that much farther ahead. And you’ll be able to reap the rewards. Many of those new donors or existing donors who made a gift at year-end are ready to be asked to give monthly.

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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.