Monthly Giving

Small monthly giving changes are becoming big winners by Erica Waasdorp

Thank you so much to Erica Waasdorp for sharing her thoughts here! Erica is an internationally recognized expert on monthly giving and annual appeals. She is a sought-after webinar presenter and writes, edits, and advises various direct marketing and national and international fundraising publications including Nonprofit Pro. If you’re searching for advice, look no further and check out her website https://adirectsolution.com, which has a ton of resources, such as a free monthly giving starter kit, and make sure to sign up for her blog and her tweets!


By Erica Waasdorp, Monthly Donor Motivator

As you know I’ve been advocating for a while now to make small changes to your overall fundraising program and to start including monthly giving wherever possible.

I know that you simply may not be in the position to go after monthly donors in a big way or you may be hesitant.  (For some reason I’m still puzzled about that, so I hope you don’t mind me to continue to motivate you to try it).

You probably also know that monthly giving takes a while to take hold so it’s really a matter of adding monthly donor appeals in small ways.

The good news is that the wins can be in small changes.

What are some examples of those small changes?

  • A monthly giving tick box on the front of a reply form
  • A monthly giving button in an email or an e-news
  • A monthly giving ask in an email p.s.
  • A home page takeover
  • A special email appeal focused just on monthly gifts

Let me share a few wins with you:

An organization added a monthly giving p.s. to their 4 year-end emails and they generated 10 new monthly donors (for them a big boost to their overall program).

An organization did a simple email appeal with two follow ups in January to acquire new monthly gifts and they’ve now already generated 35 new monthly donors, annualizing at almost $6,000 a year! 

An organization tested a monthly giving tick box on the front of their appeal reply form and their thank you letter reply form and they’re chipping away at adding new monthly donors. In fact, what was interesting is that the test group with the tick box overall raised more money and had a higher response rate, so even more of a win-win.

Remember to annualize the new monthly donors so you’ll see the impact of your small changes very quickly. These small changes don’t cost you anything to do, a laser variation, an extra button linking to your monthly giving page. All of these are in place already.

Which small monthly giving changes are you planning to make next?


Erica Waasdorp is an internationally recognized expert on monthly giving and annual appeals.

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