Establishing a Successful Monthly Giving Program: Part Two 

“If you read Part One of the Establishing a Monthly Giving Program series, you learned how to segment your donors and determine who the best prospects for a monthly giving program are.” You are now ready to reach out to these prospects and see an increase in sustainable monthly giving. Your next step is going to be optimizing your giving infrastructure to encourage recurring gifts. 

Step 2: Optimize Your Donation Experience for Monthly Donations  

The latest in marketing and engagement research continues to show that globally, consumers are more likely to engage with a brand if the brand makes it simple for them to make their purchase decision* and complete their transaction (*A Purchase decision is the thought process that leads a consumer from identifying a need, generating options, and choosing a specific product and brand). 

At this point, you are probably thinking to yourself, what does this have to do with establishing a monthly giving program at my small nonprofit? 

Think about it: if people are more likely to make a purchase because the seller made the purchase-decision process easier, they will be more likely to complete their donation if you make their donation-decision process easier.  

A frictionless online giving experience will make it easy for people to opt into your Monthly Giving Program.  

You will want to start by weaving monthly giving language into all your communications and branding—especially your website. Make sure your monthly giving program is prominently displayed on your homepage. The easier it is for someone to find your Monthly Giving options—the more likely it is that they will sign up to become a monthly donor.  

Here are some GiveSmart customers that have done a great job incorporating Monthly Giving into their websites and making it a seamless experience for their donors to choose monthly giving: 

In addition to making monthly giving a prominent option on your website, make sure monthly giving is front and center on your donation forms. By making it easy for people to choose monthly giving and providing transparency about how their gifts will be used, more people will make the choice to join a monthly giving program.  

GiveSmart forms are easy to optimize for recurring giving. You can set“Monthly” as the default gift frequency. You can also add graphics and images that illustrate the impact of recurring gifts on your mission. See the sample form below: 

Would you like to learn more about how GiveSmart can help you set up an
online giving form with recurring giving options for your organization? Request a Demo

Even organizations with smaller staffs and limited capacity will see their monthly giving grow by making these simple tweaks to make recurring giving more prominent in their forms, website, and communications– without developing a targeted outreach campaign for their monthly giving prospects (as determined in part one of this series).  

But, in order to really see your monthly donor numbers increase, you will need to develop a targeted communications plan. Missed part one of this series on establishing monthly donors? You can read Part One of Establishing a Successful Monthly Giving Program here.