 All right hello everyone and welcome to our second webinar for Giving Tuesday 2020. This one is all about recurring giving. My name is Linda Gerhart and I am the Senior Community Engagement Manager here at Mighty Cause. I've been with the company since 2016 and I've been managing Giving Tuesday for a few years now for us. My email address is lindaatmightycause.com. If you ever have any questions specific to Giving Tuesday or running your campaign. And here's a look at today's agenda. We will be talking about why recurring giving is important in general and especially this year, then discussing why donors give and how to build and launch a recurring giving program. And just as a bit of housekeeping, I will be taking questions at the end of the webinar. So if you have anything that you want to ask, any burning questions while I'm presenting, just stick it into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel and we will make time for that at the end. And just to preemptively answer this question, yes we are recording this webinar and everybody's going to have access to it as well as the slides. You'll have them emailed to you and we'll also post them to the Giving Tuesday site under the on-demand webinars section. So the last bit of housekeeping before we get started is just some quick information about Giving Tuesday in 2020. This year it's on December 1st. So as of this webinar, it's September 1st. It's precisely three months from now, which means it's getting close. Time is moving differently for me and a lot of other people in 2020. So if you haven't registered yet, please make sure and go to do that at giving Tuesday.mightycause.com. So you can get that out of the way. And while we're all in this weird accelerated and slow time period, you won't wake up in November and go, oh, I forgot to register. You can just get that out of the way. Registering will grant you access to our fundraising tools if you're not already a Mighty Cause user, our training webinars, and our toolkit. And you'll be the first to get any announcements related to Giving Tuesday. I also wanted to note that we have a lot of other giving events happening on Mighty Cause this fall. It's a very busy giving season. So if you're here and you're participating in one of those other events, the content in this webinar is still accessible to you. It's still as relevant to your campaign. It's just Giving Tuesday themed. So if you're not participating in Giving Tuesday and you're actually signed up for another fall giving event, that's okay. You'll still be able to get something out of this webinar. All right. So before we dig into the particulars of starting a recurring giving program, I wanted to provide you with some context about why recurring giving is so important. So basically, there are two sets of reasons why recurring giving is important, and those are the evergreen all year round reasons that apply to nonprofits at any time. And then there are some 2020 specific reasons, which we're going to get to in a moment. But first, the evergreen reasons. Recurring donors are awesome. Recurring donors provide ongoing support for your work. They provide reliable and dependable income for your nonprofit, and these donors provide an ongoing investment in your work, which makes them basically your Gold Star donors. They are vital to building a sustainable nonprofit. Donors who give on a recurring basis also have a higher lifetime value, which is the amount of revenue a donor generates from their first donation to their last. And just as a bit of additional information, people who donate on a recurring basis tend to give in addition to their monthly donation. So if you send out an appeal or you're running a campaign, these are not usually donors who are going to say, well, whatever, I give them $25 a month. These are donors who are usually going to step up and give you a donation in response to your appeal on top of their monthly donation because they're engaged and invested in what your nonprofit does. So recurring donors are awesome. Hopefully, everybody knows that, but these are some of the specific reasons why they're so awesome and important. The benefits of having a recurring giving program are huge for your nonprofit. Basically, what it does is it diversifies your funding so that you have money coming in regardless of whether you're actively running a campaign. And that allows you to stop going from urgent appeal to urgent appeal and really move into building strong relationships with your donors. It also provides a structure for outreach, for tracking your donors and essentially creating a donor pipeline and then moving people through that pipeline. It just makes it easier to check in with a donor who gives on a recurring basis than somebody that you say haven't really talked to specifically. A recurring giving program helps you engage with your donors better and develop systems that will help keep them engaged and it provides more opportunities for engagement. So for instance, if you're using a CRM like Salesforce or even just Mighty Cause, if you notice that a donor's one-year anniversary is coming up and their recurring donation is about to renew, you can reach out to them and say, hey, we just wanted to touch base with you. See how you're doing. See what you think about what we're doing. Here's what we've got going on next and just talk to them. So it gives you opportunities to engage with them and it's a very cost-effective way to build support. Plus, you'll have a steady stream of money coming in each month that you can count on and do some financial planning around so that you can grow your programs and services. I did want to dig a little bit deeper into the point about recurring giving programs being more cost-effective than campaign-based fundraising. The truth is that nonprofits in general, this is not targeting any nonprofit in particular, but just as a sector, the nonprofit sector has a problem with donor retention. The AFP Fundraising Effectiveness Report, which is released every year, has shown for several years now that nonprofits are retaining less than half of the donors they acquire, which is a huge concern because it costs nonprofits more money to acquire a new donor than it does to retain an existing one. And this attrition of new donors actually offsets gains that nonprofits make in new gift dollars, so it actually lessens the value of the new donors that you gain. So failing to retain donors hurts your nonprofit's bottom line. It makes the dollars that you're bringing in with a full throttle fundraising campaign actually less valuable to your nonprofit because most of the new donors that you are getting through that campaign are not going to be retained. So it's well worth the time, the money, and the effort to work on sustainable ways to retain donors like a recurring giving program, and your organization will get more value out of that kind of effort and out of those donors. Excuse me. Recurring giving programs are also really great for donors. The main reason is that it's an affordable, approachable way to give more, which we'll talk about is especially important in 2020 in just a second. Donors who may not be able to give $200 at any one time can more easily give $200 over the course of the year in monthly increments. So it's easier for them to give more and do more and do a good deed without breaking the bank. It's also predictable giving. It comes out of their account on the same day every year. It's same month, I should say. It's automated and they have full control over that with Mighty Cause. So it's convenient and easy for them. And it also builds in rewards and recognition for donors. So the donors get to feel fulfilled and appreciated for their gifts if your nonprofit is doing a recurring giving program the correct way. So in 2020, recurring donors are especially important because in case you have not heard, the United States is in the middle of a recession, unfortunately. And experts are saying that that kicked in way back in February, which feels like a million years ago. So a lot of people are unfortunately facing some financial hardship and anxiety when it comes to money. But they are still giving to charities. I wanted to reassure you of that. They are still giving. But a smaller monthly recurring gift feels a lot more safe and approachable to donors right now especially. Nonprofits are also feeling some of that same anxiety because historically, recessions affect your income and operations as well. So having a steady stream of income is important. And a lot of organizations are feeling a little bit strange about asking for money right now. Again, I just want to reassure you that people are giving to charities and they're giving pretty generously. So we're not seeing yet that the recession has caused a decrease in charitable giving. But changing up your ask can make a big difference in how people respond. So making a different type of ask for giving Tuesday and perhaps focusing on setting up a smaller recurring gift can be a really great way to adapt to the current situation, be mindful of what your donors may be going through, and still make the day meaningful for your nonprofit organization. So how do you use Giving Tuesday to focus on recurring giving? Well, first and foremost, you want to ask directly for recurring gifts. Charitable giving is one of the few areas in life where people want to be told what to do. So asking directly is the best way to get the response that you want. You can also target past donors who are not currently making a recurring donation and ask them to set one up. And you can use either an automated approach or a direct personal outreach or a combination of the two. We're going to talk a little bit more about outreach later on in the webinar. You can also make recurring giving a focus of your Giving Tuesday campaign messaging. 2020 is a very weird year. So asking for ongoing support during difficult times is a campaign message that's likely to resonate with people because it's a pretty weird and difficult year for everybody. So they can relate to that and they will respond to that. And finally, you can also do what we're going to be talking about in this webinar, which is launch or promote a recurring giving program on Giving Tuesday. So one of the keys to being successful in building a recurring giving program is understanding why donors give, what motivates them, and that's what we're really going to be digging into in the next section of this presentation. The reason I wanted to go through the different reasons why people give is because when you're talking about recurring giving programs and how to get more donors giving on a recurring basis, it's really important to understand people's motivations so that you can understand why certain things work and why certain things are 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 charity and most importantly, make sure it's a rewarding experience for that 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. So the first reason and probably the most common reason that people give to charitable organizations is personal satisfaction. This is what we call warm glow giving, which is a theory that was created by an economist named James Andrioni. It's basically impure altruism. Altruism is of course doing things because it's right in acting out of selflessness, but warm glow giving is about doing something that is right because it feels good on a personal level. So doing a selfless thing basically for selfish reasons. And that's not a judgment because this is true for most of us and it may actually be hardwired into us. A study of the neurological effects of charitable giving versus being taxed showed that charitable giving actually causes a rush of dopamine in the brain and that's the feel good chemical that is released when you fall in love for instance. So personal satisfaction is a huge factor for most donors even if it's something that we don't talk about as much 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 and genuine concern or because it's the right thing to do and that is a factor, but it's not how people actually operate. So when you're thinking about charitable giving, it's really important to understand that making the person doing that giving feel good and feel that warm glow is really paramount to getting them hooked and telling them that they should donate that they should donate because it's a good thing to do. You want to make them feel good. It's all about how the donor feels and recognizing it and giving them a satisfying experience. Another huge motivator behind charitable giving is identity and this is what I find most interesting because it actually works in a few different ways. Identity is basically about two things. It's the story we tell ourselves about ourselves and also 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 attaching their name to things like wings named after big donors at universities, theaters named after donors, museums with donors names in their hallways almost as prominent in some cases even more prominent than 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 wanted others to know it as well. When we think of bequests, this is an especially big factor because people are thinking about their legacy and how they will be remembered. So the choices are very intentional and thoughtful and telling of how a person thought of themselves when they make a bequest. This is also one of the things the reasons things like t-shirts, 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 small ones to tell the world something about themselves. So for instance somebody who loves animals and they consider that a huge part of their identity might carry around a tote bag from say the ASPCA or someone who considers themselves an environmentalist. An environmentalist might drive around with a license plate on their car and that shows that they donated to a local environmental preservation fund and have a green piece bumper sticker on the back of their car. And identity politics if you want to call it that also play a huge role in what charities a person decides to support. A person's decision to support organizations like the NRA or PETA, that is a statement of identity. It's a statement to others and it's tied very intimately to how people view themselves. So this is always something you want to keep in mind when you're thinking about how to appeal to donors. Again this is another form of impure altruism. So the argument that people should donate to your nonprofit because it's such a great cause and it's the right thing to do. It doesn't actually reflect how people interact with nonprofits in the real world. You have to make an appeal to their identity. So moving on from impure altruism, one of the reasons people donate to charities is for a sense of community. People are social creatures. We like to be part of a tribe and find like-minded people. And with these kinds of donors, and there's a little bit of this in most of us, you'll also notice that they're pretty active on social media. They're very quick to like your posts and they're always happy to share a post and respond to a call to action. These people are also much more likely to become volunteers. Donor tiers are really effective for these donors because they like the feeling of belonging and donor tiers are basically like a clubhouse for your biggest supporters. So it speaks to that part of them that wants to be part of something bigger. Another type of donor you'll see is people who approach charitable giving from a business perspective and they look for ROI or return on investment. They really truly see their donation as an investment in your work and they are putting their money behind your programs and services in hope of getting a certain result. These are the donors who want to see the breakdown of how you're spending funds and pour over your annual report and the results of your work. These are also the donors who might call and ask you how much you're spending on overhead versus your programs and services. These tend to be donors who will get your hackles up if you're working in development because you might see it as, hey, you donate to our general fund and you donate about $300 per year. So why do we have to spend our time justifying our work for you? But this is what makes charitable giving really fulfilling for that donor when they know that they've invested their money well and the funds that they were providing you were used well and transparently. So they really are invested in your mission and they want to see the results from that. So these are donors for whom sharing statistics and infographics and other kinds of information that's results-oriented, impact-oriented is really effective. Okay, so this is the last type of, or the last motivation for donating that we'll discuss and this is pretty much a factor for everybody. Most people give specifically because of empathy and this donor or these types of donors are why at the end of the year you tend to see a steady stream of DRTV ads from big nonprofits that make you want to cry. They have sad music and sad animals and sad kids and they just make you want to turn the channel to something else. These donors give when they are motivated emotionally and their emotional state creates a sense of urgency. So these are the people who might have been involved in a big campaign or a text to give campaign and something that was very emotionally moving for them and that also puts them at a high risk of being lost to attrition because unless you can keep them feeling engaged and emotionally invested and share a steady stream of stories with them that grab them, they'll float away to the next cause or emergency or sad tale that they see. So this is also a form of impure altruism which seems a little bit funny given that it's based in empathy and it's really the other side of the coin for people who give for personal satisfaction. People who are based in empathy, they give because they feel bad and giving makes them feel better. So it's that dopamine rush. It's the same rush that the other donors are getting. Your email or commercial or Facebook posts made them feel bad. It stirred something up inside of them and they need that hit of dopamine to not feel so bad. And one thing that's really interesting to note here is that after disasters, you see a lot of these donors who are moved to act. So they will reply to campaigns. They'll donate constantly because they're trying to make themselves feel better. They have that empathy and then that core of empathy that's making them feel bad and donating makes them feel better. And we're actually seeing a lot of that right now because there's a lot of unrest in the country as most of us are aware and things feel really heavy with the pandemic and the recession. And so a lot of people are actually turning to charitable giving to make themselves feel better. So how do you utilize this information about why donors give? Well, basically what you want to do is build it into your campaign messaging because when you're making a donation solicitation, you're trying to encourage a behavior. You're trying to cause an action. And if you want to do that successfully, you need to start with what motivates people. This is also a really helpful place to start. If you've got a case of writer's block and you really aren't sure where to start with an email or a social media post, start with what you're trying to tap into, what motivations you're trying to speak to in your donors. These reasons should also inform the structure of your recurring giving program and how you promote it. If you want to hook someone, you have to understand what kind of bait they respond to. So these motivations can be built into the names of your donor tiers, the rewards you offer, and so on. And you can also test out different approaches and see what sticks with donors as a whole and with individual donors or segments of donors. Some donors are more strongly tied into giving for reasons of identity while others might consider themselves investors and respond really strongly to sharing results and reading an annual report that you've built for them. So you can experiment with different approaches and also incorporate a little bit of these motivations into your program. All right, so now I wanted to get into the nitty gritty of actually building and launching a recurring giving program. Recurring giving programs are essentially subscriptions, but instead of getting an item like a subscription box or a service like Netflix, they're actually just subscribing to your work. Donor tiers and rewards are essential to a recurring giving program and we're going to dig into more of what those can look like in the next few slides. But it's important to know that there are lots of donors who literally want to join your program for the rewards you offer. It's absolutely true. They don't need to be big rewards, but they can draw people in very successfully. So we'll talk about the things that you need to consider when you're talking thinking about rewards. And as we discussed, the whole point is bringing in a stable dependable revenue stream outside of your campaign based efforts so that you can sustain your nonprofit. And just as a little bit of a pro tip, you can use your donor tiers and rewards to appeal to different donor motivations. So basically offering different types of bait to hook different types of donors. So it's really important to know that recurring donations are baked right into the Mighty Cause platform. Donors can click on a little radio button to indicate that they want to make their donation recurring. It's super simple and easy, and it's built right into the checkout flow. And this is available to all nonprofits that are using Mighty Cause. So I just wanted to make sure everyone's aware that we support recurring donations and it's very simple and easy. Donors on Mighty Cause also have full control of their donation through their Mighty Cause account. So they can log in to view and manage their recurring donations. They can update their donation if they want to go up or down in the amount that they give. They can update the date their credit card is charged. They can replace or update the card. And yes, they can also cancel their donations, but you will get a heads up if they decide to do that. Nonprofit admins are notified when there's a new recurring donation that has been initiated. So you'll be able to reach out and get them into your funnel. And the donors are also notified if a donation feels as well so that you don't lose these donors just because their credit card was overdrawn or maxed out or it was expired. So they will be notified. We manage that for you so that you don't have to. On the nonprofit side, you can easily filter your donation report to view your recurring donors and recurring donations. You can see when to expect their donations and you can export their information and get their details. You'll receive a heads up when there's an issue with a donor's donation, like when their card is about to expire. And you'll also get a heads up if they cancel so that you can try to win them back. So I just wanted to emphasize that we've really built our platform to support recurring donations and that you can easily use the tools you already have on Mighty Cause to build your recurring giving program. Moving on from the platform side of things, there are really just five steps to creating a recurring giving program. So step one is gathering data, which is going to help you figure out how to orient your program. What is your average donation size? How many recurring donors do you already have? How much do your donors tend to give annually? How many times do they tend to give annually? And then when you have a good handle on how donors are actually giving to your nonprofit right now, you'll want to move into setting some goals for your recurring giving program. How many donors are you looking to have join your program? Especially for Giving Tuesday, you may want to set a goal of saying we want 50 new recurring donations. So take a look at how many donors it would take to sustain your nonprofit for a year if you had no campaigns. How much do you need to generate and revenue to keep the lights on each month? So take a look at these factors and come up with some goals for your program and set metrics that you can use to check in with your success throughout the year. So the more specific you make your goal and the more you set metrics that you need to hit in order to succeed, the more likely you'll be to actually hit those levels of success. Third, you'll need to create a name for your program. This is a program so it does need a catchy name that's easy to remember and gets the point of your program across. Like for instance, if you're a food pantry, you could go with food pantry heroes or pantry guardians, whatever works for you. Those are pretty silly. But think about your donors and your overall organizational messaging and come up with something that fits with your messaging and how you normally talk to donors. You want to generate a sense of belonging, so a club. And a lot of donors really respond to being heroes, guardians, champions, and feeling like they're becoming a protector of your nonprofit, which is kind of what they're doing when they join a recurring giving program. So that kind of language can be really helpful in choosing a name. And then you're ready to start talking about donor tiers and rewards, which is the basic structure of your giving program. And to start out with, I recommend having at least three tiers when you watch. And then the last step is just to start promoting it, which you can start doing with your Giving Tuesday campaign. All right, so donor tiers. Donor tiers are the levels at which donors need to give to belong to your recurring giving program and access rewards. So here are three tiers to start with. First, you'll want an entry level tier. That would be a lower amount, an approachable minimum donation per month. You'll offer them some basic rewards. So something simple like maybe a bumper sticker, access to some exclusive benefit. And the goal is really just to get these donors in the door to make it seem approachable and easy. And then you want to keep them engaged and develop a relationship with them, learn who they are, and then move them up the pipeline into becoming a higher tier donor and to making larger gifts. So that's what you want to do with the entry level tier is welcome everybody who can set up a recurring donation in, give them a few benefits, and get them in the funnel. Next, you'll have a mid-level tier. It's a higher donation threshold. So for example, $30 per month, some entry level or some intermediate rewards. So they get all of the entry level rewards and then maybe some extra perks and goodies, some additional access to your staff, depending on how you run your nonprofit. You can think of some ways that you can engage them and give them some additional access to your programs and services and your staff. The goal here is to deepen their engagement with your nonprofit. And you want to check in regularly with these donors. So you don't need to call them every week. You don't need to know everything about their lives, but check in regularly with them. Let them know what you're up to. Schedule some specific communications with these people. Invite them in for meetings, town hall meetings when we're able to safely gather again and think about how you can keep these donors engaged in your work and how you can deepen their involvement in your work. And then your highest tier is your highest donation commitment. So we're talking like 70 to $100 a month, depending on what levels people normally give out for your nonprofit. These are donors you really want to get to know on a first name basis. You want to check in often with these donors because these are important to your organization. They may have exclusive and maybe some personalized rewards. So think about what your nonprofit's like, what is valuable to people at your nonprofit. For instance, if you're an arts nonprofit, getting advanced notice for performances might be something that you could offer as a reward for the highest tier of donors. And then these donors, you really want to work to get them enmeshed in your organization when you talk to them. So for instance, if somebody's a higher tier donor, you could also talk to them about volunteering. You could also eventually usher them into your board or running for a board position. So there's a lot of things that you can do with these donors. You basically want to get them even more enmeshed in what your nonprofit does. And this will probably be the smallest group of donors. Typically, the entry level tier is going to be biggest and then you'll see it get a little bit smaller as you climb up the tiers. So a question that comes up a lot when people are building a recurring giving program is how all of this fits in with IRS requirements that no goods or services can be exchanged for a donation. And the answer is pretty simple and that you're really not giving gifts or providing services in exchange for donations because that's not what these rewards are all about. You don't want to offer like super monetarily valuable gifts or rewards because the value of those gifts should be much smaller than the amount of the donation, which you want to think of in annual terms. So for instance, if your lowest donor tier starts at $10 over the course of the year, that's $120. And the value of your rewards for that donor should be much less than that. So we're talking about little token gifts like keychains, notepads, address labels, that kind of thing. If you start offering extremely valuable rewards, like for instance, going back to an arts organization, if you were offering free tickets to the ballet, you may get your donors in a little bit of a bind because they may have to deduct the cost of that reward from the total amount of their donation before claiming their deduction, which is a pain for them. So keep their rewards small or even free based in gratitude and recognition. And if you're in doubt, always ask your lawyer or have them take a look at the structure of your recurring giving program. If you have any doubt whatsoever, and just keep it small, keep it based in gratitude. And you should be just fine as long as you're not offering huge gifts in exchange for donations. Most people and most organizations don't hit that threshold. You're just offering things, little tokens that make them feel appreciated and part of a club and recognition. Okay, so now we're going to go into rewards a little bit. On this slide, you'll see a photo of what a nonprofit that uses Mighty Cause actually provides as rewards. This is Homeward Trails. So they provide things like t-shirts, bumper stickers, tote bags, pins, notepads, and address labels. Those things are really great for rewards. And they keep your organization's name right in front of the donor on a daily basis because those are things that they can actually use. As we discussed earlier, these are really great for identity donors, donors who want to build a sense of community of belonging to a club, as well as those who are looking for personal satisfaction. And you might think, well, my donors would never want this stuff. And I can tell you in general that recurring donors do. When I worked for a large national nonprofit, people became monthly donors because they wanted the t-shirts, the notepads, and so on that broadcast to everyone that they were a supporter. It was really meaningful for them. And if those things were late, they would call us and say, I'm waiting on my address labels for this year. I'm waiting on my t-shirt for this year. So they do tend to be really effective with donors. Some donors don't want them until you also need to build in a way to make sure that donors who call and email and say they don't want any of this stuff don't get it. You can also think beyond stuff and offer rewards like recognition on your website, having their name displayed in your lobby when we're able to safely invite people into our lobbies again. Some sort of display with your donor's information. I've seen some nonprofits do some really cute stuff with that like having trees with donors that support them on an ongoing basis as the branch is. And a lot of really basic things like including their name in your newsletter. A lot of people just like to see their name included somewhere and things along those lines. So those things don't have to cost you really any money. And those can be a great avenue for people who maybe don't want a t-shirt, but they would like to see their name somewhere so that they can be recognized as somebody who supports your organization. And a tip here is that if you work with a direct mail company, a direct mail marketing company, give them a call because a lot of this stuff they can cut you a deal on. A lot of them already do this kind of thing. So if you are working with a direct mail marketing company, make sure you reach out to them because they may be able to make a good deal and they may already have some of this stuff built into their business that they offer. And if you're a small non-profit and these are out of reach, that is absolutely okay. You can think of rewards that would be meaningful for your donors that don't cost you anything. Tomer trails, for instance, sends out a picture, which you can see here of an animal that's being helped through their sponsor program and a sponsor certificate, which are not expenses at all. You could even do a computer printout. But these things make a donor feel valuable like they're part of something and that they're donating for an important cause. And things like a donor newsletter or exclusive video updates can be really appealing. So you don't just need to send t-shirts if you can't just work with what you've got and be creative and do the best you can with your resources. And a lot of nonprofits already have some of this stuff sitting around. So use what you've got. Do you have any t-shirts, any buttons, anything that you've got sitting around that you can offer as rewards? So think through that as well. A lot of nonprofits have a little cache of stuff that's just been sitting around for a while. So you can certainly take a look at what you've already got. And you can also think of creative ways to offer rewards that don't cost your nonprofit any money. So when you're getting ready to launch, you want to think about the groups of donors that you really want to market your recurring getting program to. First is your retained donors. So if you've retained a donor year over year, 2019 to 2020, you can be pretty sure that these donors will be open to joining your program. They're essentially low hanging fruit. And obviously if you have existing recurring donors, let them know about the program. And that's an opportunity to talk to them and see if you can bump them up to the next level of giving. And donors who've made a relatively large annual gift. And I'm not talking massive donations like thousands of dollars, although you want to include them too. But say if someone gave $200 over the course of the year through multiple donations in response to appeals, they could easily have split that up into smaller monthly chunks and committed to providing a monthly donation to your organization. Or if somebody made, you know, say a $500 donation in December before the tax deadline, you could reach out to them and say, Hey, you know, you still get the same tax benefits. If you meet this out over months, so that it's in smaller chunks, you still give the annual amount. But that gives us regular revenue that we can count on. So think about that kind of donor as well when you're thinking about who to who to market your your recurring giving program to other segments. You'll want to think about our surprisingly staff members. A lot of nonprofits actually do this because these people are natural supporters. And some nonprofits go the extra mile by having programs where their monthly donation is just automatically deducted from their paycheck. So obviously, nonprofit employees are often not paid very much. So you'll want to keep these amounts pretty reasonable in the neighborhood of like $5, $10 and talk to your HR department if you have one about setting this up, making that available to your staff members so they can just make a donation through a paycheck deduction. That's actually super common, especially with large nonprofits, they want their staff members to become members as donors. And don't forget your volunteers. Since these people are already sold on your cause, again, they're low hanging fruit. And they're a great group of people for a soft launch. You can ask them for early support. And when you're ready to fully launch on giving Tuesday, ask them for their help in spreading the word, since they're such natural champions for your cause. And obviously, when you ask them, you'll want to ensure that you're fully recognizing everything that they already do for your nonprofit by volunteering their time and just see if they're willing to get involved by donating some money as well. And there's a lot of overlap between volunteers and donors. A lot of people who volunteer are already donors and that's how they got into the process of volunteering. So don't forget about your staff members and your volunteers. So at the end of the day, I hope this has helped you see that starting a recurring giving program really isn't all that tough. And in most cases, you literally already have some members of your organization that are built into the infrastructure of your organization. So you have three months till Giving Tuesday. And that is plenty of time to start strategizing and thinking about launching a recurring giving program so that you can get some recurring gifts going for Giving Tuesday. And with that, I wanted to move into how to launch and promote your program on Giving Tuesday. So as I mentioned earlier in the presentation, pretty much all of the tools that you need to start a recurring giving program are already in Mighty Cause. But there are some specific places you'll want to customize to reflect your program. The first is probably the most important place. And that's your checkout flow, which catches donors at a crucial moment, which is when they are deciding how much to give and whether or not to make it recurring. On Mighty Cause, your checkout flow is customizable, so you can set suggested donation amounts that reflect your donor tiers. And you can also add descriptions that explain what tier that is and maybe provide some information about what that amount can help your nonprofit do. You can also update your story with some information about your recurring giving program. So people can learn more about how recurring giving supports your nonprofit, how it supports your work, and it can also benefit them at the same time. And you can make your case for joining the program and using some of the donor motivations we talked about earlier really make that a good case. And you can also add some branding for your program if you have some, like an infographic, a video, a logo, and so on. So you can really customize your Mighty Cause profile so that it reflects your recurring giving program and is pushing donors to give on a recurring basis. Once you've got some infrastructure in place on your Mighty Cause profile, you'll also want to set things up outside of Mighty Cause, like on your nonprofit's website. And then we do have some donation solutions that will help you capture recurring donations on your website. One of the most popular fundraising tools we have on Mighty Cause is our widget, which is an iframe embed code. So you can embed it on your website very easily. And users can set up recurring donations through the Mighty Cause widget. It'll basically pull in your checkout flow that you set through your profile with your suggested donation amounts and descriptions from your Mighty Cause page. So it's a very handy little tool and a big upgrade from something like a PayPal donate button. They can make the donation securely from your website within the widget. And it's available to all nonprofits on Mighty Cause, so we recommend using it, especially since you can capture recurring donations through the widget. You can also link directly to your donation page on Mighty Cause, which takes users to the longer form, the same one that you end up on when you click the donate button on your Mighty Cause profile. And now this is inside information, but you can preselect recurring donations for donors by adding some terms to the end of your URL. So in the little blue box in the corner of this slide, you basically take, you know, donate slash your org, which is your donate page. And then a question mark, the amount, and how much you're looking to. And there's just a little bit of HTML that will preselect that amount for them and also select that they would like to make it recurring. So if you'd like to set up a button on your page that links to your donation page, you can actually preselect that for them. And I'll make sure that everybody has access to that in the follow up email. And finally, if you're an advanced subscriber, you have access to a custom page which pulls in all the branding from your Mighty Cause profile, and you can fully embed that onto your site. So instead of a button that's going to mightycause.com, they stay right on your website. And you can actually direct them to a page on your website after they complete their donation. An advanced subscription is $99 per month. And in addition to the donation form, it gives you access to a lot of things like donation management tools or donor records so that you can manage your recurring donors even better. We also have integrations. So if you're using something like Salesforce, Constant Contact, MailChimp, any of these tools, we do have a Zapier integration so that you can actually create a little digital bridge between, say, your Salesforce account and your Mighty Cause account. So this may be a good option for you if you really wanted to kick things up a notch with your recurring giving program and your donor tracking. So once you've laid the groundwork so that your nonprofit can actually support recurring donations, you can start putting together a plan to reach out. First, you'll want to identify the segments of donors that are good prospects for your recurring giving program, which we talked about a few slides ago, like volunteers, retained donors, passgiving Tuesday donors, and so on. And then actually do the boring job of sorting those people into their respective segments so that you can get ready to reach out. You'll want to think about whether you would like to do personal outreach or automated outreach like an email, which really depends on your capacity at the moment. And you'll also want to maybe devote the most effort to the segments who seem most likely to sign on, like retained donors or people who give regularly and volunteers. You can make personal outreach a lot easier by writing a little script for the email and just personalizing the necessary parts for each donor and maybe adding some personal details for each person. But that'll save you a lot of time and energy. And then you'll want to think about follow-up and assigning a task and a time to follow up with people if they don't respond to your first attempt and invite them again to join your recurring giving program. All right, so basically what this is all about is incorporating your recurring giving program into your Giving Tuesday campaign. And here's how you can weave that in, which may be more applicable if you're not using recurring giving as the main event on Giving Tuesday. First, a little email segmentation is going to go a long way here. You'll want to make sure that you're specifically targeting people who are prospects for your recurring giving program in your Giving Tuesday communications. So include that in your messaging, in the stories you tell, in your ask. You want to talk to these prospects a little bit differently and think about a different ask for them. So people that are on your list that may or may not have given a donation and may or may not give on a regular basis, they might get a general call to action saying, please donate to our Giving Tuesday campaign. But these segments of donors may get a more specific ask saying, please set up a $25 recurring donation each month or whatever it may be. And plan to follow up with donors that you contacted earlier to ask them to join on Giving Tuesday. On social media, announce your campaign and recurring giving program. And pitch it to your followers is a great way to get involved and help out and plan some posts around explaining why recurring giving is great for your nonprofit, why it's beneficial to you and why it's beneficial to them. If you have donor tiers or rewards and you're launching that go into detail about that and using some of the talking points and donor motivations that we've discussed in this webinar. And finally, as we've discussed, make sure it's put up on your website as well. Okay, and we are in the home stretch. So before we move into the Q&A, here are some tips and best practices. Recognition and gratitude is essentially what recurring giving programs are grounded in. It's what they're made of. So make sure that you have a solid plan to recognize and thank donors who become recurring donors, whether that's a shout out on social media or inclusion in your newsletter, or even a special Giving Tuesday thank you video from your staff, which brings us to follow up. This is vital because when you're getting a donor to make a recurring donation, they can cancel. So your job is to keep them engaged and involved, and you do that through following up with them through checking in with them. An onboarding series of emails or a welcome packet that you physically mail to them is a great way to start the relationship off right, but also plan for continued outreach and engagement with these donors. And finally, Giving Tuesday is on December 1st. So this is also around the time you'd want to think about your end of year campaign. So how are you going to continue talking with these donors through the end of the year? How are you going to include them in your end of year campaign? And how are you going to engage with them for end of year? Because that's coming right after Giving Tuesday. So just think about these things as you're putting your campaign together for Giving Tuesday. How are you going to thank them? How are you going to follow up? And how are you going to segue into end of year giving? All right. So I wanted to make some time for some questions. So if you do have a question for me, please stick that into the questions box of your GoToWebinar panel. And I'm just going to take a look at what is, what's already in there. Okay. So when you say nonprofits are only retaining 45.5% of recurring donors, how do you define retain? In other words, more than one year, two years, et cetera. So it's year over year. So if I make a donation in 2019, I have a 45.5% chance of coming back in 2020. So that particular metric, it's from the AFP effective fundraising effectiveness report. And I believe that that is year over year. So if you are talking two years, you are technically a lapse donor. So if I gave in 2018, and I didn't come back until 2020, I would have been lapsed at that point. I would have been considered lapsed. Your goal is to get them donating or retain them from year to year, as well as campaign to campaign. But that particular metric is year over year. All right. Can Mighty Cause donation buttons be put on existing Facebook or website pages? So we did discuss how we can do that on websites. On Facebook, it's a little bit tricky because the Facebook has changed their requirements in terms of how many followers you need in order to install a donation app, because basically, they have their own peer-to-peer fundraising tool in their own donation app, and they want nonprofits to use that. So unfortunately on Facebook, there's no way to install the widget there anymore. There used to be, but Facebook changed some of their requirements. And so we're not able to offer that integration anymore. Because to be completely frank, they're competing with us a little bit. So unfortunately on Facebook, no, but you can certainly link to it on your Facebook page and get them to the right place. But Facebook is basically looking for you to set up payment information with them to reduce friction. And there are some downsides to that, like you don't get all of your donor information when they make donations through Facebook. So we're looking at that, but unfortunately Facebook's been kind of blocking us from offering that, unfortunately. So but on your website, hopefully the slide where we talked about the widget and donation buttons helped you out there. Let's see. Recommended ratio of cost to rewards for a monthly slash yearly amount of donations, how to calculate break-even versus coming out ahead, and also examples of rewards other than t-shirts and bumper stickers and so on. So those are really great questions. It's, you know, basically it's personal to hear nonprofits. So there's no real hard statistic that I can give you because it depends on your capacity, the resources you have available to you, and how far you want to go to market it. So you may want to have some, you know, some nice rewards like t-shirts for a recurring giving program that you've invested a lot in, but if you're very small and you don't have much to spend, the rewards may be small as well, like getting a shout out in your e-newsletter or something like that. But basically as we talked about in the IRS slide, you want to keep it pretty small. I don't think the IRS has a specific recommendation, but basically you want to think about rewards in terms of it's not like a wedding invitation where the gift should equal the amount of, you know, the cost for each guest. You want it to be much, much less than that because these are not really gifts. They are just thank you tokens for donors. So think about what might be meaningful and what you are able to reasonably and sustainably provide. So if providing t-shirts and bumper stickers is a stretch for your organization financially, then those are not really great options for you. One thing I did see that I thought was really cool was for an animal shelter, they were offering the reward of being able to name all of the kittens in a litter of kittens that cost them absolutely nothing. And it actually took some weight off their shoulders because lots of kittens come into shelters and they run out of names. So that was a cool opportunity that they were able to provide to their recurring donors is like you can name some kittens. So there's a lot of things that you can provide experiences like, for instance, pre-sale tickets. If you are a theater, you can get people an advanced notice and advanced ability to, you know, buy tickets before anyone else. That's something that arts organizations and theaters typically tend to do. So there's a lot of things that you can consider. Really, there's so many things that nonprofits do that it's kind of hard to wrap that up in a little soundbite, but basically they can be worth no monetary value. Like your rewards do not have to be based in monetary value. It could be, you know, you'll go to Giant, which is a grocery store chain near me on the east coast, and you'll see like little balloons for people who've donated to their program for children with cancer. So something as simple like that can be a reward is, hey, we'll put a little balloon on the wall, a little paper balloon that has your name on it that thanks you for your gift. And sometimes that's enough. So you just want to keep it small. You don't want it to even threaten to be more expensive than the cost or what they're bringing in donations. You want to keep it really small. They're just thank you tokens, basically. All right. We've got a lot of questions. I'm going to try to get through most of these. I just wanted to reiterate that, yes, you will be getting the slides and the recording. So keep an eye out for those. We have a basic website that accepts donations through PayPal with a click. How would that work to link to Mighty Cause? So the PayPal button, donating with a click, I'm not quite sure how that works. Typically with PayPal, you are directed to the PayPal API where the donor then completes their donation. Obviously, if they're a PayPal user and they're already logged in, that can be a very quick process for them. But typically with PayPal, they are directed away from your website. The widget is just an iframe embed. So what an iframe is, is it kind of pulls in a little bit of our website into your website. So the widget itself is secure and it connects to Mighty Cause. So when a donor makes a donation through the Mighty Cause widget, it's automatically put into your donation report and it's reflected on your Mighty Cause profile. So those two things are connected. You don't have to reconcile any reports. It's basically a direct connection to your Mighty Cause profile. And it's pretty simple to embed. If you have a webmaster or somebody who maintains your website, you can certainly just send them the embed link if you need to find out where that is or you have issues with it, you can contact support at mightycause.com and they can walk you through that. But typically it's just copying and pasting a little bit of code. And then you just need to make sure that you have enough space for the iframe embed because that is kind of a static size. So you wouldn't want to put it in like a side bar. You want to make sure that you have it on a page where it actually has room to exist. But it's just an embed code. And if you need help finding it, you can certainly contact support and they will direct you right to it and maybe even send you the embed code. All right. So just looking through the emails or the questions. If your website already handles recurring donations, is there a value to also using this platform? Well, yes, if you plan on using Mighty Cause. Then you can have all of your donations go to one centralized place if you plan on using our platform. Obviously, if you're participating in a giving event like Giving Tuesday, having everything in one central location so that you're not reconciling multiple different reports is really handy. Not all donation widgets are able to accept recurring donations. Ours is also designed to be mobile responsive. So it looks good on a tablet, a mobile phone, and you don't have to do anything extra or separate to get that going. And it's free. So basically there's a little bit of a fee, 2.9% plus 29 cents. I think if you opt into our pricing guarantee would be the most that you would be charged for a donation on Mighty Cause. And that's just dispersed on the back end. So there's a lot of benefits to using Mighty Cause. You also get a full suite of fundraising tools. You get donor tracking, you get peer-to-peer campaigns, event fundraising, which has an event-brite integration. You get a lot of tools that just as a payment processing ability doesn't begin to offer. So there's a whole suite of tools available at no additional cost. And then if you wanted to go a step further, we do have a subscription available to advance that has a CRM tool. It has some integrations. It has some additional things that you can do. But basically we offer peer-to-peer. We offer team and event fundraising. We offer you a custom profile donor tracking. So there's a lot that can be done at your checkout flow. So the process of making that donation is pretty customizable. So you can make sure that you collect the information that you need from donors in order to follow up with them and get what you need from a data point of view. And the other thing I want to mention is that Mighty Cause considers your donor data to be yours. So it belongs to you. We do not utilize it. We do not market to your donors. The only reason we'll ever contact a donor is what I mentioned earlier, like a transactional email, either sending them their receipt or letting them know that their recurring donation was not able to process or their cards about to expire and they need to update it. Those are the only reasons we ever contact donors. So we don't sell their data. We don't market to them. And we consider it to be yours. You get extensive donor data. And we make that easily available to you. Some platforms like Facebook, you don't have ownership of that. And their entire goal is to get your donor data. So on Mighty Cause, we're really here to serve you. The nonprofit and your donor data belongs to you. So that is really the benefit of using us. And if you would like a demo of our services, you can always get one contact support at mightycause.com. And they will give you a full walkthrough of everything we have to offer. Oh, this is a good question. Starter plans appear to be free. So is your revenue generated them by each transaction? Yes. So we basically have, we have multiple ways of generating revenue as a company. One of those is fees on each donation. If you opt into our pricing plan, you won't pay more than 2.9% plus 29 cents. Sorry about that. 2.9 plus 29 cents per transaction, which includes your processing fees. So there's the platform fee and the processing fee. We charge you less than PayPal. And that little bit taken off the back end is how we generate revenue. The other way we generate revenue is through subscriptions. So if you like our services, if you like what we have to offer, and you would like more fundraising tools like access to a CRM, some additional customization tools, donor management, those are things that you can access with a subscription to Mighty Cause Advanced. So you can subscribe to us. It's $99 per month. You do not have to subscribe to that to utilize Mighty Cause. We do make most of our revenue from the fees that are on donations. It's a very small fee, but we process a lot of donations. And we do offer the full fundraising suite as a subscription if you would like to subscribe to that, just so you can control a cost, especially some nonprofits that run really big campaigns. That's actually more cost effective for them. Oh, and text to give. I forgot to mention that text to give is an advanced option. So that's something that we also offer if you wanted to subscribe. But that's basically how we make money as an organization. We also host some giving events throughout the country, which have a little bit of a different fee structure, giving Tuesday a separate because we run it. But we have a side to our business that hosts giving events. So we work with community foundations who want to organize an event and bring in lots of nonprofits to fundraise together. And those have a little bit of a different fee structure. So that's basically how we generate revenue as a company. But we're all here to serve nonprofits. The company was founded in 2006 as Razu with the intention of serving and empowering small nonprofits. So that's really what we're all about. We do not have venture capitalists funding us. We are privately owned company. And we generate our revenue just from a small fee that is taken out of disbursements before we send you the money. But all of that is completely transparent. So you'll be able to see how much of each donation is being taken out in fees. And the other thing that I can't believe they waited this long to mention to you is that donors have the option of covering those fees. So when they're checking out part of the process for them is that there's a box they can check that will cover fees for your organization so that you get 100 percent of their donation and they cover the fees that would be taken out otherwise. And most nonprofit donors do actually opt to do that. So in most cases you'll be getting their full donation and they're covering those fees for you. And that is also tax deductible for them because they're processed through our donor advice fund. So the full amount is tax deductible for them. So that's really just how our business works. If you have any specific questions I'm always happy to answer them if you wanted to email me linda at mightycause.com. All right so that appears to be it for today. In terms of questions thank you all so much for spending an hour with me. We'll make sure that you get the slides and the recording. And it'll also be posted on the Giving Tuesday website so givingtuesday.mightycause.com. Thank you all so much for spending time with me and happy fundraising.