 Hi everyone. So we're just about 2 o'clock Eastern Daylight time here. So we'll get going in just a minute but before we begin I just wanted to do a bit of housekeeping and confirm with everyone that you can all see my screen and you can hear me. So if you can see my screen and you can hear me just pop into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel and just quickly confirm that for me just so I know that you guys can all hear the presentation. All right it looks like everybody can see and hear me which is great. So we'll just give everybody a few more seconds to get logged on and then we will get rolling. All right so it's 2 o'clock Eastern so I'm gonna go ahead and get started. Hello and thank you for joining me today for our webinar on how to get more recurring donors. I'm really excited about this topic and I hope you are too. My name is Linda Gerhart and I am the Senior Community Engagement Manager at Mighty Cause. I've worked for a lot of nonprofits, some very small, some very large. So this is a topic I'm really excited to dig into because a recurring giving program is a must if you would like your nonprofit to grow. So I'm really stoked about this content. If you have any questions about starting your recurring giving program or you have a specific circumstance you want to chat with me about you can always email me at lindaatmightycause.com. Part of my job is being available to you so I'm always happy to chat through any ideas you have any questions you have or any circumstances you need to talk through. Here's a look at today's agenda. We will be covering quite a bit of ground starting with the basics of why recurring giving is important and what inspires donors to give to quick wins that you can implement today to the longer game of actually building and launching a recurring giving program. Just as a note we will be taking questions at the end of the presentation. So if you think of something you want to ask while I'm presenting just type it into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel and I will make sure that we get to it at the end of the presentation. All right, so before we get into the specifics of how you can boost recurring giving at your nonprofit we need to really take a step back and understand why it's so important and why it's worth spending the time, the effort and the money on recurring giving. So to keep the mood light to start off with I wanted to start off with some alarming statistics. These are pulled from the Association of Fundraising Professionals 2018 Fundraising Effectiveness Report which is also where the graphic on the slide comes from. Across the nonprofit sector what they found is that it's estimated that less than half of donors are retained from year to year at most nonprofits which means that more than half of donors you gain are lost to attrition. This is especially alarming because across the board it costs more to acquire a new donor than to retain one you've already got. So when the revenue you gain by acquiring a new donor is sort of canceled by the cost of losing ones you already have you can see how a lot of nonprofits end up in a never-ending loop of acquiring donors and then losing them and then acquiring more and then losing those donors. So at the core of understanding why recurring donors are important is understanding that recurring donors are retained donors and they can help offset the cost of whatever natural donor attrition you might experience year over year because these people have made a commitment to help sustain your nonprofit month after month and year after year. Another key part in understanding the value of recurring donors is understanding donor lifetime value. Each donor that comes into your nonprofit has a value that you can estimate. You can do that on an individual donor level but most often and most helpfully this is something you can get an average for so you can evaluate the health of your fundraising. The equation for figuring out this number is here. I'm not a mathematician but basically you want to find your average annual donation amount and divide that by your donor attrition rate and that is your average lifetime donor value. Recurring donors individually have a higher lifetime value than other donors and by increasing the number of recurring donors you have you can increase the average donor lifetime value and the overall health of your fundraising. So basically recurring donors make all of your donations more valuable. Those donors are extremely valuable and knowing this rate is really important so take some time and calculate that. We'll be sending out the slide deck after the webinar if you wanted to get rolling on that but basically we're saying that recurring donors are legitimately more valuable. Okay so moving away from statistics and math which are not really my favorite subjects there are a ton of reasons why recurring donors are just awesome for your nonprofit. Number one they provide consistent predictable and sustainable revenue for your nonprofit. You can count on these monthly donations so that you can run your programs pay your staff plan fundraising campaigns and keep your lights on without constantly having to usher in new donors just to cover your operating costs. These people are also investors in your work literally they are investing their money in the good you do in your community and they're some of your strongest supporters. I really do hate to say that any donor is more valuable than another because of course they're all valuable and important but they actually are more valuable than somebody who donates once or donates sporadically or whenever you happen to run a campaign that they like and they're also more valuable and that recurring donors decreased your fundraising costs overall because as we mentioned it costs more to acquire a new donor than to keep ones that you've already got and these donors are also awesome because they can end up becoming champions for your organization and through stewarding you can get them even more involved in your work in your operations. A recurring donor may go on to become a major gift donor leave you a bequest do volunteer work for you or even one day sit on your board of directors so these are really awesome involved people and they're worth thinking about and setting up a program to capture them and keep them engaged. On Lighty Cause we've set up our platform to help encourage monthly donors. All donors who give on Lighty Cause have the option of setting up a monthly donation it's right there when they start the process of making a donation and it's just as easy as checking a box when they're choosing the amount of their donation. Donors can easily manage their donation which we'll talk about a bit more in a minute and Lighty Cause also makes it easy for nonprofits to manage recurring donors because we store the card we process the payment we send the receipt and we also send them an annual giving statement each year which eases the administrative burden on your nonprofit. We also allow you to easily track your donors and your donations through a few different systems which we'll get to in a couple of slides. So on the donor side managing a recurring donation is super easy and on this slide I just wanted to give you a look at what that actually looks like behind the scenes for donors. They can easily update their credit card information from their user profile and we'll also send them a notification when their card is about to expire so they can proactively go in and update it so that your nonprofit doesn't lose a donor to an expired card. Donors can also edit the date of their donation so if they have it set for a date that doesn't quite work for them anymore they can always go in and change that so that it comes out on a day that's a little bit more financially manageable for them and that makes them more likely to stick with the donation because they can schedule it at a time that makes sense for their lives and their finances. On the nonprofit side we've also tried to make it as easy as possible for you to track these recurring donations. You can filter your donation report to show your recurring donations and the donor information and you can also export that as a spreadsheet. You'll be able to see when to expect their donation and get their contact information so you can stay in touch with them and we'll also notify your nonprofit's admins if a card is about to expire as well when a recurring donation is initiated for the first time or when it's canceled which can help you take charge of contacting your donors and for instance trying to recapture a donor who's canceled their monthly donation. We also provide donor records through our supporters tool which is available to all subscribers on Mighty Cause. These records allow you to track your donors, view their complete history in one place and also keep track of their philanthropic activities outside of making monetary donations like peer-to-peer fundraising and event participation so that when you look at this donor record you have a full picture of the scope of each donor's involvement in your nonprofit and another cool thing you can do is message them in app which means that you can do it right from their donor record on Mighty Cause and you can also add offline donations you make so if they write you a check or they give you a cash donation that can be reflected in their donor record as well so that way you've just got a fuller picture of who this donor is, what they've contributed and how they're involved with your nonprofit. And to piggyback off of that you guys are actually getting an exclusive announcement on this webinar. We've recently switched up our subscription pricing so now it's simpler and it's more affordable than ever. We have just two plans the first of which is the free plan which is where most people start out on Mighty Cause and that one has zero startup costs and gives you access to all of our essential fundraising tools and then we are introducing our advanced subscription plan which is just $99 per month and gives you access to everything we offer including donor records, data integration and advanced customization and donation options. So if you want to start using supporters pages and keeping better donor records you may want to consider getting a subscription to our advanced plan it's more affordable than ever and we actually have a new pricing guarantee which you can find out more about on our pricing page which is at mightycause.com slash pricing. So this is really cool and I definitely recommend checking it out especially if you're looking to boost your recurring donors and your fundraising and keep better records of your donors. All right so with that out of the way first I wanted to move into some discussion of why donors give and the reason I wanted to go through these different reasons why people give is because when you're talking about recurring giving programs and how to get more donors on a recurring basis it's really important to understand people's motivations so that you can understand why certain things we recommend work and why certain things that are part of recurring giving programs are a little bit less successful. So understanding these motivations will help you find messaging that works by allowing you to appeal to the real reasons donors give to charitable causes and most importantly make sure that it's a rewarding experience for the donor and if you're thinking of building a recurring giving program you'll want to build these motivations into the very structure of your program which you'll see when we get to those slides. So the first reason people give and probably the most common reason people give to charity is what we is personal satisfaction and this is what we call warm glow giving which is a theory that was created by economist James Andrioni and it's basically what's called impure altruism. Altruism is of course doing things because it is selfless and right but warm glow giving is doing something that is right because it feels good on a personal level so it's doing a selfless thing for somewhat selfish reasons and that's not a judgment because this is true for most of us including myself and it may actually be hardwired into our brains. A study of the neurological effects of charitable giving which is voluntary versus taxation which is not voluntary showed that charitable giving actually caused a rush of dopamine in the brain and that's actually the feel good chemical that's released when you fall in love it's really powerful stuff. So personal satisfaction is a huge factor for most donors even if it's something we don't really talk about as much because it can be a little bit taboo and that's important to understand when you're thinking about a recurring giving program. In the nonprofit sector we like to think and hope that people will do things out of selflessness or because it's the right thing to do. So when you're thinking about charitable giving you have to understand the real motivations why people choose to give. You know feeling good is paramount to them and they're more likely to give to a cause when they feel good about it and you're reinforcing that feel good feeling rather than it just being a good thing for them to do. So that's really important to understand if you're interested there's a whole study that was written by James Andrioni about warm glow giving. I think this is really interesting and it really kind of gets to the heart of what makes recurring giving programs tick. Another huge motivator behind charitable giving is identity and this is probably the thing that I find the most interesting because it actually works in multiple different ways. Obviously identity is two basic things. It's the story we tell ourselves about ourselves and it's the story we tell others about us. And in the nonprofit sector the most common example of how you'll see this play out is people actually attaching their names to things that they helped build with their donation. So like wings that are named after big donors at universities, theaters named after donors, museums with donors names in their halls that are almost as prominent as the artists they showcase. And the reason that is done is because the people donating the money wanted to be known as philanthropic individuals. They wanted to know it internally and they also wanted others to know it as well. When we think of bequests for instance this isn't especially big factor because people are thinking through their legacy and how they will be remembered in the world. So the choices here are very intentional and thoughtful and telling of how a person wanted to think of themselves and how they wanted to present themselves to others. And this is also one of the reasons things like t-shirts and bumper stickers and other little gifts or rewards that broadcast someone's status as a supporter are so successful because they allow people who make donations even if they're smaller donations to tell the world something about themselves that they feel is important. So someone who loves animals and considers that a huge part of their identity might carry around a tote bag from the ASPCA or someone who considers themselves an environmentalist might drive around with a license plate on their car that shows that they donated to protect a local bay. And identity politics if you really want to call it that they also play a huge role in what charities a person decides to support. So a person's decision to support say the NRA or PETA is a statement of identity in some cases it's a very strong statement of identity to show people who they are what they believe in who they believe themselves to be and it's tied very intimately to how people view themselves. So this is always something to keep in mind when you're appealing to donors. Again this is a form of impure altruism so the argument that people should donate to your nonprofit because it's a great cause and it's the right thing to do doesn't jive with why PAC people actually make decisions about charitable giving you have to make an appeal to their identity because that is what motivates them to give. So moving on from impure altruism to a little bit of a happier topic one of the reasons people donate to charities is a sense of community. People are social creatures and we like to be part of a tribe we like to find like-minded individuals. And with these particular donors you'll also notice that they're probably really active on social media they're very quick to like your posts and they're always happy to give you a share or respond to a call to action on social media. They're also more likely to become volunteers down the line. Donor tiers are really effective for these donors because they like the feeling of belonging and donor tiers basically set up a clubhouse for your supporters. And another type of donor that you'll see and you've probably already interacted with are people who would approach charitable giving from a business perspective and they look for ROI or return on investment. They truly see their donation as an investment in your work and they are putting their money behind your programs and services in the hopes of getting a certain result. If you think about political candidates for instance and people who donate to them they're looking for a particular result they are investing in a political candidate who does things that they want done. These are the donors who generally want to see a breakdown of how you're spending your funding and pour over your annual report if you publish one and the results of your work. These are also the donors who might call you and ask how much you're spending on overhead and these also tend to be the donors who can get your hackles up if you're working in a development office because you might see it as hey you donated to our general fund and you donate about $300 per year so why do we have to spend our time justifying our work to you? But it's important to remember that this is what makes charitable giving fulfilling for that donor when they know they've invested their money well and the funds that they were able to provide were used well and transparently toward a certain end. Okay so this is the last type of donor we'll go over and to be honest a lot of people are a mixture of these different types of donors and this particular one is a factor for most charitable donors but people give because of empathy and this donor is specifically why at the end of the year if you watch tv you'll see a steady stream of dr tv ads or direct response tv ads from big nonprofits that kind of make you want to cry or just turn the channel off or leave the room until it's over. These donors give when they are moved emotionally and their emotional state creates a sense of urgency. So these are the people who might have been involved in a text to give campaign after a natural disaster but don't give to charity year round. These are the types of people those sad end of year ads are targeting because that emotional response is what gets them in the door it gets them to open up their wallets. Now unfortunately these donors are also at a pretty high risk of being lost to attrition because unless you can keep them feeling terrible and share a steady stream of sad stories they'll float away to the next cause or emergency or sad tale and this is also a form of impure altruism and it's really the flip side of the coin for the people who give because of personal satisfaction these people give because they feel bad and giving to a charity makes them feel better so it's that dopamine rush that counteracts the feelings that they have when they're triggered by an email or a sad video or an ad on TV. Your email or commercial or Facebook post made them feel bad it made them sad and they needed that hit of dopamine to not feel as sad. So before we get into the nitty gritty of running a recurring giving program I just wanted to briefly go over a few quick ways you can burst boost recurring giving for some quick wins. All right so if you're a mighty cause user there are a few things you can do right off the bat to boost recurring giving and the first is add it to your mighty cause page. A lot of people you know they wonder how they can get more recurring donors but they haven't actually made any effort to ask so on your mighty cause page talk about the value of recurring giving to your nonprofit discuss the impact of your work linked to an annual report and information about your funding and ask people right there to make a donation that's monthly. The easiest way is just to ask so take a look at your mighty cause page or your website or wherever you're currently soliciting donations and make sure that recurring giving is part of that conversation. A lot of people leave it off and you need to make sure that that is included. On mighty cause you can also insert it into your donation flow so donors are asked to give monthly when they're choosing their amount. Now they already have that option on mighty cause but you can make a stronger case by using your suggested donation amounts and your descriptions which you can customize. So if one of your you know custom amounts is ten dollars instead of explaining what ten dollars itself provides explain what ten dollars per month helps you provide in a year and then you can make a stronger case for recurring giving at this key moment where people are learning or deciding how much to give. The other thing you can do that doesn't require any big changes or any big shifts that your nonprofit is make monthly donation your follow-up ask. Now this may seem like blowing through several stages of the donor relationship but hear me out. Studies have shown that getting that second donation is an important factor in whether a donor is retained overall and by making a monthly commitment you're basically locking in their support. So if someone gives $15 once why not follow up with hey thanks so much for your $15 donation you're really awesome and if you're able to spare $15 per month here's all the great stuff that you can help us do. You can also crunch the numbers for them to make a monthly donation seem even more attainable. The approachability of a small monthly donation is a really important factor there are businesses like Planet Fitness and Netflix and Hulu that have made that small recurring charge part of their business plan. So your nonprofit should do that as well because it does work it feels doable to people and they're not as hesitant to sign up for a monthly charge on their credit card and then obviously you want to make it easy for them to set up their monthly donation by providing a link to your donation page and telling them precisely how to set it up because the easier you think you make things for people the more likely they are to do them. All right so now we're going to move into the meat of this webinar which is probably why everyone is here and that's starting a recurring giving program. So before we jump into it I just wanted to quickly go over why recurring giving programs are so beneficial to nonprofits and when I say recurring giving program I'm not talking about having some recurring donors I'm talking about a dedicated concentrated program that's focused on not only getting these recurring donors but keeping them engaged. And that's really important because when you run a small nonprofit especially it can seem like a lot of work for something with an unknown outcome and the limited staff power you have might seem like it's best spent elsewhere but one of the most important things that it does is it diversifies your funding which is the biggest sustainability tip I can give to nonprofits don't put all your eggs in one basket whether that's grant funding or recurring donations or campaign-based funding diversify where and how you're getting your money. Recurring donations are stable they're sustainable they're predictable revenue for your nonprofit and they can be the thing that really helps your nonprofit turn the corner and allows you to grow. As we've discussed it increases your donor lifetime value and also provides a structure for your donor relations. A lot of nonprofits can fail to retain donors because they don't have a pipeline in place or they're making unclear asks and they're not really sure how to approach donors aside from hosting another campaign where they ask for a donation. So this gives them a clear path forward and it helps your staff and your volunteers reach out to them and talk to them and gives them a way forward. It's more cost effective than just pouring all of your efforts into campaign after campaign or event after event and it gets you focused on getting people to sign up to support your nonprofit for the long haul and I cannot stress this enough it makes financial planning so much easier because it's funding you can count on month after month and that'll help you pay your staff run your programs and keep your lights on which is important especially to small nonprofits. Recurring giving programs also have huge benefits for donors the biggest one is that an affordable monthly donation they can have a bigger impact over the course of a year it's a predictable cost for them it'll always come out of their accounts on the same day and they have full control over that and we'll talk about that more in a minute but recurring recurring giving programs also have rewards built in so the overall experience of being a donor becomes so much more positive and fulfilling for them and it makes them much more likely to stick around but again just that affordability aspect of it is really important to a lot of younger donors or people who don't have a whole lot to give they may not be able to ever give you a $500 donation they may just not have that much to spare over time but over the course of the year in amounts that are affordable for them they can give you $500 and that can be really meaningful for them to be able to help in that way in a way that doesn't stress their finances so if you're sold on the idea of creating a recurring giving program the next question you have is probably where the heck do I begin with this and really with any sort of program you're thinking of creating the first step is really just data you want to look at where you are now so to start with pull your list of recurring donors which you can do on your donation report if you're a mighty cause user and also calculate your average donation amount because that will give you a sense of what is an amount that's popular for your donors to give out and you can use it as a guidepost as you're developing this program then you'll want to move into goal setting think about what your goals are for this program and not only in terms of revenue but also in terms of donor retention bumping up your average donation amount and so on and just as a note to people who have a mighty cause subscription your average donation amount is tracked for you in your advanced analytics so if you're not a subscriber that's another reason you can just you might want to consider subscribing just because that is calculated for you right there so you don't have to do any math whatsoever and I know personally that I live to avoid doing math so that's a big bonus to having a mighty cause subscription but these metrics are important to pull so that you get an idea of where you're at and when your goal setting you'll also want to define some metrics you can use to measure your success so that when you check in you can see whether your program is hitting the right marks and doing what you'd hoped it would do or if you need to take a step back and tweak your approach and then you'll want to define your audiences which we're going to talk about more in a minute in depth because this is a much more specific and intentional campaign than just blasting things out to everybody like when you have a new fundraising campaign and the type of outreach is a little bit different and finally use that data you've pulled as a guidepost as you're developing your campaign so organize that all into a spreadsheet or a google doc but that data is really going to help you figure out where to get started what numbers are appropriate what tiers are appropriate and so on all right so you don't necessarily have to have donor tiers but if you want to if it makes sense for your nonprofit you've got a smaller group of donors you can just have one big group of recurring donors but if you have the capacity and the size of your donor base to do this I do really highly recommend developing donor tiers and the reason is that you want to appeal to those reasons why people give that we talked about earlier and donor tiers work on a lot of different levels and it has the added bonus of creating a pipeline for people who enter your recurring giving program so that they don't just sit at the same level forever you're building incentive for them to move up the tiers and access more rewards more access to your nonprofit and so on I recommend starting with three levels if you're building donor tiers you want an entry-level tier a mid-level tier and a top tier and you'll want to refer back to that data about your average donation amounts to determine what the appropriate minimums and caps are for those tiers most likely you're probably going to have the most donors either at the entry level tier or in the middle if things are going well I really strongly recommend naming these tiers we often don't think about branding but that can really help you appeal to those donors identities and their need for community and you can also build some acknowledgement into them so things that have names like heroes champions and stuff like that are really great for donor tiers you can keep it simple but you want to make sure it's really flattering and makes the people who are part of these tiers feel super heroic and another thing to think about when you're thinking about donor tiers are rewards now if you're super small you it doesn't make good financial sense to go crazy providing massive reward packages for recurring donors if the end result is that they end up being more expensive than what these donors are bringing into your nonprofit so think about what you can provide in terms of rewards that make financial sense for your nonprofit and are likely to speak to your donors and give and their reasons for giving you want to find things that are meaningful for your donors and the simplest thing that you can do is use what you've got so if you have like a couple of giant boxes sitting around with bumper stickers or pins that you had printed a while ago and you can't get rid of them start there and use what's already at your disposal we're going to talk about rewards a little bit more I do recommend them for a lot of reasons that we'll get into but you don't have to have physical rewards that you mail out to people it's just something that if you have the capacity to do so we recommend doing all right and more on rewards so on this slide you'll see a photo of what a nonprofit that actually uses mighty cause has as part of their package for their sponsors which is their recurring giving program so things like t-shirts bumper stickers tote bags pins notepads and address labels are great rewards as we discussed earlier these are really great for identity donors donors who want a sense of community of belonging to a club as well as those who are looking for personal satisfaction because they get to think oh I did this really awesome thing by joining this recurring giving program when they look at the bumper sticker on their car and you might think well my donors would never want this stuff and I can tell you that generally recurring donors really do want this stuff I worked for a large national nonprofit that had a big recurring giving program and people literally became monthly donors just because they wanted a t-shirt they wanted the notepads and so on some donors it's true do not want them so you'll also need to build in a way to make sure that donors who don't want these things can opt out of them if they call an email and they say why are you sending me this stuff you can just say sorry just take the presence and we'll take you out of the the list to have these things sent to you so there are you know a small percentage of donors who will say I do not want these things please don't spend my donations on t-shirts and bumper stickers but the vast majority of donors especially as part of a recurring giving program they really do want this stuff you can also think beyond stuff if you're hesitant to do that you can offer rewards like recognition on your website having their name displayed in your lobby or in your newsletter and things like that if you work with a direct mail marketing company already give them a call and set something up with them because most of them can offer you really good deals on a lot of this stuff and manage the back end for you so you don't have to worry about sending these things out if you have a small staff so it's not really a great reason to start using direct mail if you don't use it already but if you are hooked up with a company that does direct mail marketing this is a lot of the kind of things that they offer so give them a call and see what they can offer you and just to reiterate if you're small and these are out of reach for your nonprofit to provide that is 100 okay you can think of rewards that would be meaningful for your donors that don't really cost you anything homework trails for instance you can see in the picture here they're sending out an animal picture that helps that was helped through their sponsor program and a little sponsor certificate which are not big expensive things that donors get but they're really meaningful to donors and it really speaks to why they became part of a sponsor program to help bring animals to homework trails to be put up for adoption from shelters where they may not have had a chance at being put up for adoption so that's like a low-cost meaningful thing that they were able to do in addition to providing the stickers so you know you don't have to go sending t-shirts you don't have to offer recurring donors the moon but just think through some rewards that might be meaningful for your nonprofit and keep in mind those reasons why people donate when you're coming up with these again they're not doing it necessarily because it's a good thing to do although it is they're doing it for their own personal reason so just think about that when you're thinking through your rewards if you're not able to offer physical rewards all right so when you've got all these pieces in place you'll want to come up with a launch plan and a big part of launching a recurring giving program is outreach to specific segments of donors key segments of donors to include are ones that you've retained year over year because they're low hanging fruit you've already retained these donors they've shown a continued interest in your nonprofit so you'll want to pull a list of your retained donors from 2017 to 2018 it doesn't really make sense to do it for 2019 since it's only March but pull a list of those retained donors and plan to reach out to them you'll also want to think about existing recurring donors of course and this can be a really great tool to bump up the amount of their monthly donations so they can maybe gain access to a donor tier that is appealing to them and you'll also want to think about donors who give once a year in larger amounts and you probably just had a bunch of them at the end of 2018 these are people who when they're coming up on their tax deadline at the January 3rd sorry December 31st give like $500 at the end of the year so you're targeting them to see if instead of making that one big donation they can split it up into monthly payments and the benefit here is that a they gain access to your awesome recurring giving program and b they're providing sustainable year-round support for your nonprofit in this case I do recommend doing the math for them and maybe using that to encourage them to bump up their donation a little bit so for instance the example I gave $500 over the course of 12 months that comes to around $41 in some change per month and that's a really weird number that's not really a number that anybody wants to give at so you can bump that up to $45 a month when you reach out to them and suggested donation it's not a huge leap but it does result in them giving more and in a monthly amount that is not painful for them if they can give you $500 at the end of the year they're perfectly capable in most cases of giving you $45 per month and the thing that happens for you is that you don't have to worry about whether you'll get that big donation at the end of the year you know you're getting $500 a year from them because they've signed on to do that each month other segments you'll want to think about are staff members a lot of nonprofits do that especially big ones because non-profit staff they are natural supporters obviously they do the work day in day out and some nonprofits if they have the capacity to do so give the extra mile by having programs set up through their payroll where their monthly donation is automatically deducted from their paycheck and they get a statement either at the end of the month or at the end of the year obviously non-profit employees are often not paid very much because that's just kind of how the the work goes so I'd recommend keeping these amounts pretty reasonable in the neighborhood of like five to ten dollars and don't forget your volunteers um the since these people are sold on your cause they're more of that low hanging fruit and they're a great group of people for a soft launch um you can ask for for early support from them and when you're ready to fully launch your program ask for their help in spreading the word about your new recurring giving program since they're such natural champions for your cause obviously when you ask them um you'll want to ensure that you're fully recognizing everything they already do for your non-profit if you have a volunteer coordinator work with them to talk to them about the recurring giving program just so you make sure that you are building in acknowledgement of their status as volunteers and thanking them for all their hard work all right and so once that is all done you're just about ready to launch um now most of the outreach I'm recommending here is personal so these are not email blasts this is um one to one outreach you're calling them you're emailing them personally so I recommend creating an outreach plan for each segment that you plan to contact so you're going to have multiple different lists and you just want to organize that so that everybody knows what they're doing um and since you'll need people to make calls and write emails you'll want to take some time to organize the manpower and schedule some time or woman power depending on what your volunteer base looks like or your staff looks like um you can get more help if you create some talking points and even write a script for people helping with this outreach um again phone calls and email are best whenever possible because that is the type of donor outreach that's more effective you're not just sending them a template email you're sending them a personal email from an individual at your nonprofit asking for their help that is really important and it speaks to those reasons why people give you're making them feel important you're making them feel good and you're appealing to them as individuals not as part of a group or a segment um and tracking your conversations here is also really important so that people don't get multiple phone calls and emails or if they say no to you you can include them in a plan to follow up at a later time but they're not being badgered um and if they have an important conversation or somebody learned something important about the stoner you can make sure that that is tracked so um what I recommend what's easiest and it's free is to just create a shared spreadsheet of all of the outreach so that people can make notes when they call someone or they email somebody and include any notes about the conversation that took place and uh while outreach is the key part here the other part of the launch is infrastructure so get it on your digital channels um you can add a custom tab to your mighty cause page story with the details of your recurring giving program get it up on your website announce it on social media and so on um and you can do an email blast I'm not saying that you can't do an email blast but what's more effective for actually getting those first recurring donors in the door is that one-to-one outreach but certainly plan an email blast as well once you've started that outreach process um you'll want to prep your development staff or your development volunteers for the launch and also create welcome packets to send to new recurring donors which volunteers can be a huge help with that's something that's easy and fun for them to help with um basically get all the logistics and the technical details in place get your people in place and then you're ready to launch your new recurring giving program all right so once you've launched and you've got some new recurring donors that's not the end of the story since people can easily cancel a recurring donation or a recurring charge on their credit card it's important to keep them engaged and we're going to go through some ways you can do that so first and foremost you've got to stay in touch with these donors um sometimes what happens is that when you've got a recurring donor nonprofits actually end up contacting them less because they've sort of been one over already and that's the opposite of what you should do give these donors an early heads up about events program launches send them exclusive pictures and updates and check in with them regularly since these are high value donors i recommend doing this a couple of times a year just have somebody email them say hey how are you doing here's what's going on at our non-profit thank you so much for your support and every donor is an individual so get to know them get their feedback send surveys to find out how they're feeling about what you're doing and then also make sure that if someone calls and says hey email me less or please don't call me email me or don't send me stuff in the mail it's recorded and you can honor those wishes so work on your communication with these donors communicate more with them and give them additional peaks behind the scenes updates and exclusives so contact them more unless they specifically say don't contact me we talked about this a little bit earlier but something you should get in the habit of doing if you don't already do it is publishing an annual report now you may already get something like this together when you're looking at your what you accomplish in a year at the end of the year and making plans for the new year but the kind of report i'm talking about is donor focused so you're not reporting back to the city or somebody who provided a grant on your results you're reporting back to your donors this annual report is really all about transparency how much did you spend how did you spend it what's the breakdown includes some graphs includes some numbers what did you accomplish you're not only showing them like hey we want to be totally honest with you about what we're doing with your donations you're showing the impact of their donations by also reporting on your successes at the same time your annual report should have a section that looks ahead to the next year and impresses on them the importance of their support so this is a tool to reach out to donors to get their support report on your results as well but this is a tool you're using to make your appeal to these donors and you may want to send nice printed copies to the top donor tier and then pdf copies to the lower tier that's absolutely fine you don't need to break the bank doing this and definitely list your sustainers your recurring donors in your annual report even if it takes up 10 pages get those names in there this is an important tool to communicate with your sustainers so definitely put it on the agenda for the year and again if you're small this does not need to be worn piece on hand woven paper it's just an accounting of what you've been doing specifically written for your donors one thing that lots of nonprofits do and I think is a really great idea is host donor meetings once or twice a year this is a meeting where you can invite donors to come out and you basically give them a progress report on your work in person this gives them the opportunity to meet your nonprofits leaders your executive director your board chair and so on and it gives your staff the opportunity to make connections and start building these in person relationships with your donors one thing that's cool and goes over really well with donors is having a town hall portion of the meeting excuse me where donors can ask questions or share their thoughts directly with your nonprofits leaders you can handle that however you want you may want to do it like a political town hall where you submit the questions beforehand or you can have it more opening open you know your donor base you know it works best but this makes donors feel heard and it lets them know that your nonprofit takes them seriously as stakeholders in your nonprofits work it's really great for deepening the relationship with your donors and getting that important feedback and you can also do stuff like have your volunteer coordinator on hand and help them help your donors get set up as volunteers if they're interested have a little booth a sign-up table where they can learn more about volunteering and you're getting them into your nonprofits inner circle so gratitude for your donors is especially and especially your recurring donors is a year-round thing it should be a fixture in your nonprofits communications there's really seriously no such thing as thanking your donors too much unless someone has specifically said hey stop thanking me so make sure you're grieving you're weaving gratitude for these donors into your communications at every opportunity on social media at events on your website and so on use your donor records to note donors preferences here if someone did contact you and they say I don't want my name published or may want less communication as we discussed earlier you'll need to document it and respect those preferences and you can also keep notes about the things they like so if they love getting t-shirts or seeing their name somewhere make sure that that's in their donor record too but just definitely make expressing gratitude for your sustainers part of your message as a nonprofit think about pbs pbs does a great job of this they have basically turned because of you into their slow into their slogan viewers like you displays every time you watch ann of green gables or dowden abbey and that is the perfect messaging this awesome thing was done because of you so that's the kind of attitude and mindset you want to have toward expressing gratitude to your sustainers and finally you'll want to build community so being a recurrent recurring donor really does feel like being part of a really awesome club this can mean organizing a happy hour once in a while wine and wags are always really great for animal rescues and animal shelters it's just where everybody comes out drinks wine and brings their dogs get them to come in for volunteer days host talks or lunch and learns at your nonprofit if you know your executive director has a pal coming who does you know connected line of work have them come and give a talk and invite your recurring donors to come see that person for free there are actually celebrities in the nonprofit world so if you make contact with one or your executive director knows one you know see if you can bring them in for a talk and invite your donors out to come hear them get creative here and just think about the different ways you can pull recurring donors into your nonprofit to meet you and meet one another one thing you can also consider is starting a closed Facebook group for donors in your recurring giving program you just want to make sure that you have the bandwidth to moderate it properly by having a staff member or volunteer on hand to start conversations so people do actually use it and deal with any conflict that might pop up because with online communities you just need to make sure that someone's there to see what's happening and to moderate it at events having a VIP lounge or a sustainer's lounge makes people feel special and drives home the idea that they're part of an exclusive club and it's just a nice touch that can get your donors talking to one another while giving your staff an opportunity to meet them in person and make that personal connection all right so we are in the home stretch and before we wrap up I just wanted to go over a bit of the maintenance of a recurring giving program once it's launched and once it's active so as we discussed earlier you want to consider your recurring giving program a pipeline so try not to let donors sit dormant year after year you want to work on getting them to bump up their monthly donation incrementally that doesn't mean reach out every month but definitely once a year is appropriate or when you get a notification that they need to update their credit card information and as we discussed you want to try to get them involved more deeply at your non-profit so getting them to volunteer getting them to start a peer-to-peer fundraiser for their birthday getting involved in an event or even if you have a board election coming up consider whether some of your recurring donors might be a good candidate for your board of directors and you'll do much better at stewarding donors and keeping them moving down the pipeline if you keep good records so if you don't have a good system for that the supporters tool is a really great solution that's very cost effective again it's $99 per month for the subscription and the supporters tool is just one small part of all of the benefits that you'll get when you have a mighty cost subscription and lastly you'll need to regularly examine the health of your recurring giving program launching one is really not enough because you can launch one and have it be great but it may not do what you need it to do so track your metrics meet regularly to discuss your program at least quarterly if not more frequently and keep tabs on where donors are so for instance if you have donors stuck at the entry level you may have a clog on your hands and you need to examine whether you should rework the middle tier to make it more appealing to donors or if donors are leaving at a certain level you can do some detective work to figure out why they might be leaving and work on correcting that problem you'll also want to monitor your program's growth and whether it's doing what you want at your nonprofit so launching it and creating it those are you know probably the most intensive parts but you just need to check in regularly and make sure that you're maintaining your program and it's doing what you need it to do for your nonprofit all right so we're just at the end of the the slides and I just wanted to leave some time for questions so if you do have a question for me just put that into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel and I will make sure I'll try to get through to everybody all right so the first question is do we integrate with Razor's Edge? Razor's Edge we don't we do have an integration with Salesforce Razor's Edge is unfortunately one of those programs where there's really not much integration it's kind of all kept in that house so there's not a lot of interlopers who are allowed to go in and offer integrations so we do offer a Salesforce integration but unfortunately with Razor's Edge they just kind of keep that proprietary so we are not able to offer an integration with Razor's Edge however on Mighty Cause you always get spreadsheets of the information you need and you're able to export things so you can certainly make it work if you'd like to use Mighty Cause for some of your fundraising activities were definitely the place to be if you want to host a fundraising campaign and you want something that's easy to use for both you and your donor you don't need a full-time Razor's Edge database person on staff to use Mighty Cause so you know there's definitely ways you can make it work if you're interested in more you can definitely email me and let me know but we just aren't able to offer a direct integration with Razor's Edge because of the way Razor's Edge works all right so yes we are going to be sending a video of this presentation as well as the slides so you can expect that in your email inbox before the end of the week there's a question here this is a pretty good question I've used Mighty Cause before are you a CRM platform or more defined as a fundraising platform so we're both we're definitely not as heavy as like Razor's Edge in terms of being a CRM we're kind of what I would call a CRM light we have a lot of tools if you're looking to make your fundraising activities more sophisticated you can certainly use Mighty Cause to as a CRM are we a dedicated CRM platform no we're really designed to be more of a place where small nonprofits can come raise money get their fundraising organized get their house in order but we're not a full CRM like a Razor's Edge or illuminate we're not that intense because we're all about being approachable so anybody with no specific training can come in use Mighty Cause make sense of it you don't need a full-time person to manage your database with Mighty Cause because it's all meant to be user-friendly and entry-level so I hope that answers your question we do have some CRM features but we're not really a CRM at this point but we are adding more and more features all the time to you know offer more to nonprofits that are looking for more CRM tools to use and again we do have a Salesforce integration so you do need a subscription to access that but we've partnered with a company called Zapier it sounds more complicated than it is but Zapier acts as like a bridge between two digital channels two digital programs so Zapier allows you to integrate with Salesforce if you're using Salesforce it also allows you to integrate with constant contact MailChimp there's just a lot of different cool things you can do with Zapier and we do integrate with Zapier so that bridge is there and you can get linked up to a lot of the different programs you're using so there's not as much manual exporting and importing information all right so this is a question about recurring donors in different countries what do you suggest for reaching out to them is there anything in particular that works better for international recurring donors so that's a really great question we are planning on Mighty Cause right now everything's in US dollars and you do need a US bank account but we are planning on adding more countries like the UK and Canada to our repertoire so that is coming down the pike in terms of international donors it really depends on the culture so I'm not sure if you're talking about something a little bit more familiar to us like Canada or if you're talking about like China because those are very different cultures in terms of how they view charitable giving I have a giving day that has lots of donors in different areas of the world in Asia and Africa and the attitudes toward charitable giving there are just completely different not not better or worse than ours they just approach it extremely differently than we do so I'm happy to chat with you offline if you wanted to email me linda at mightycause.com and talk to you about some strategies to reach out to international donors who give on a recurring basis it kind of just really depends on the culture and the specific country we're talking about because Canada not so different from us they're very similar to us and how they view charity in Indonesia very different than how people in the United States tend to view charity so I'm definitely happy to help you troubleshoot that offline so oh this is a good question it's a really really easy question if you receive offline donations and you record them online are fees deducted from those donations absolutely not it's really just for your record keeping we can't take anything from money that we don't have and we would never do anything like that so if you just want to record your offline donation there's definitely no platform fee taken from it there's no transaction fee because we did not do the transaction so you don't have to worry about fees with offline donations we really just offer that as a way for you to get all of your information in one place so that you're not going back and forth all right so oh this is a great question for national nonprofits do you recommend in-person town hall meetings over town hall phone check-ins or does a conference phone call work for this model so it really depends on your capacity if you're a big nonprofit you probably are doing what we often called roadshows where you're going in your meeting donors in certain areas of the country one-to-one definitely a phone call can work that in-person contact though is really important because at that point you're not building the relationship with a name or a person on the phone you're meeting them you're looking them in the eye you're shaking that their hand and you're becoming a person to them you're building that personal relationship and when it comes to donor relations that's what it's all about they're building a relationship with your nonprofit but they're also building relationships with your development staff that's how major gifts happen that's how sponsorships happen they don't happen between nonprofits and businesses they happen with individuals so if possible i recommend in-person town hall meetings however if you don't have the budget to travel around the country doing town hall meetings that's totally fine do you know do a webinar do a conference call do something digital that's absolutely fine if you're able to swing it so that you can go around and do some town hall meetings where you have a large concentration of donors that's awesome and that's totally recommended if not just make it work do what you can do get everybody involved digitally because at the you know at the end of the day they're still having their voices heard they're still meeting your leaders and they're still getting involved and they know that you're taking them seriously as stakeholders in your nonprofit so it really just depends on your capacity i say in-person contact is always best just because we get so much out of it as people and as nonprofits but you just got to make it work for what you can what you can manage all right so have one more question is your new pricing paid annually or per month it can be whatever you want so the $99 you can make that a monthly fee if you want to just pay it all at once and not have to worry about seeing that charge on a monthly basis on your credit card you can pay it all at once so it's whatever you choose to do when you upgrade your plan it's both options are available to you so it either or works there's no contracts no commitments not to sound like a t-mobile ad but you you can choose whatever you'd like and you can also get a 30-day free trial so if you're curious about the supporter's tool and you want to see sort of the behind the scenes lay of the land you can get a 30-day trial for free no credit card needed nothing upfront needed so you can always email me at linda at mightycos.com and we'll get you hooked up with your free trial so that you can start looking at mighty cause advanced and see if that is the best plan for you and let's see there's one other question where should I start if I don't have a huge donor base and I want to get more recurring donors so definitely if you don't have a bunch of donors already I would start with those quick wins we talked about you know different ways of asking for recurring donations and I see it's just about three o'clock so if you need to sign off no worries but I'm happy to continue talking for just another minute you know start small with just making sure that recurring giving is part of the conversation working on your mighty cause page and incorporating recurring giving into that so those are the small steps that you can take if you're not really ready to launch a big recurring giving program and the other part is that you can still start a program you can still give it a name you can still put it on your website and on your mighty cause page without really the outreach aspect of it if you have a smaller donor base so you can always make it available to people and see how they respond do some outreach to the people that you do already have on board but yeah you can totally create one the push might be a little different the launch might be a little bit different but you can still absolutely make it happen and definitely concentrate on just those smaller wins making sure that it's included in your ask and it's a follow-up ask getting that that sustaining support from people so yeah that's definitely what you can try but there's no reason why you can't do it and that seems to be it for questions so just to reiterate again I will be sending out the recording of this webinar as well as the slide deck so keep an eye out for that in your inbox and that is it for this webinar thank you so much for spending so much time with me and good luck with your recurring giving program I'm available if you ever need to chat about it thanks