Timing really is everything.
I’m a loyal reader of Fundraising Success Magazine’s daily newsletters as they are constantly packed with some great articles and current insights into the world of fundraising. As a marketer that works in the non-profit space, there is great information and opinions that can be collected from these articles and blogs. And, much like many who work in this space, anything revolving around monthly give programs always catches my eye.
So it was with great interest that on March 27th two headlines caught my eye: “The Next Big Thing in Fundraising: Monthly Giving Programs”, and the very next article titled “The Dark Side of Nonprofit Monthly Giving”.
Oooo, competing points of view?
On the surface it seemed so, but once you get past the eye catching headlines these two articles together create a fantastic two step guide in implementing a very effective monthly give program. So I thought I’d simply share them here for my loyal 8 readers.
Both are stellar articles. On the one hand, writer Taylor Corrado (head of Nonprofit and Education Marketing at HubSpot) writes about how to implement a very effective monthly give program and takes us through Charity: water’s innovative and impressive monthly give program launch. In dissecting the Charity: water approach we get a good look at what it takes to really set up a compelling appeal. Then to follow that with Pamela Grow’s article, we get to learn the importance of maintaining that relationship well beyond the initial stages. She makes a very strong point about looking at Stewardship as Fundraising, and implementing a long term plan for your monthly donors.
The monthly give program is extremely valuable (certainly already the Big Thing in Fundraising), and it’s easy to see why. The concept of a continuous, reliable stream of donations certainly would have any nonprofit wanting to implement. But it’s not as easy as you might think to set it up, nor to manage it, and these articles can give you some great starting points to consider.
If you’re considering implementing or improving your monthly give program, give these articles a read. Then give us a call to talk about strategies and tactics that will help you build a winning monthly give program.
