Monthly Giving and the Next Generation of Giving Lynne Boardman, Managing Director, Harvey McKinnon Associates, lead us through the data on how different generations of donors engage differently with monthly giving and what you can do to ensure success with your monthly giving program.

1. MONTHLY GIVING
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2. What’s a Monthly Donor?
• Someone who agrees to give every month via small gifts transferred
straight from their bank account or credit card
• Benefits Include:
Who are they?
•
•
•
•
•
Donor longevity (10-12 years)
Predictable revenue
Lower costs
Income growth over time
Convenience
- Single Gift
Donors, converted
by phone or mail
or online
- Recruited straight
to monthly via site
or street
fundraisers or TV,
or mail
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3. What’s a Monthly Donor?
The two most important reasons to recruit monthly donors:
1. About 3-4 times the value of a Single Gift Donor
2. Fantastic source of charitable bequests (gifts to a charity in donors’
will)
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4. Greenpeace
#
Annual value
Average
Annual
value
Number of single gift
donors
190,000
$3,500,000
$ 18
Number of monthly
donors
52,500
$6,000,000
$ 114
63% of income comes from monthlies
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5. HAVE MADE A MONTHLY DONATION IN LAST 2 YEARS
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6. CURRENTLY ACTIVE IN A MONTHLY GIVING PROGRAM
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7. What can we do?
• Still room to grow:
• 20% of Canadians say they give monthly
• 18% of Americans
• 36% in the UK
• Target Boomers and Civics for higher retention
• Work to do to embed monthly giving deeper in our culture of
philanthropy
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9. Monthly Donor recruitment channels –
what do donors prefer?
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13. What’s okay?
Generally acceptable to all donors:
A friend approaching you about a cause or a charity
A friend’s child or grandchild approaching you
A direct mail appeal from a charity you know personally
An email from a charity you know personally
TV, radio ads
check-out “add a donation” option
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14. What’s not okay?
Not popular:
X DM and email from an unfamiliar cause
X Telemarketing and robotic calls
X Text or SMS solicitations unacceptable to most generations, even if
the donor has subscribed to get text updates
X Street and door-to-door disliked across all generations. REALLY
disliked by Boomers and Civics
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15. What can we do?
• How can we use friends and family more creatively?
• As channels?
• As askers in existing channels?
• Indspire example
• How can we make our charity familiar before we ask?
• How can we age profile our donors to keep them out of
‘highly unacceptable’ methods of fundraising?
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16. PUBLIC RECOGNITION FOR DONATION
Boomers
0%
Mature
2%
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17. Copyright Harvey McKinnon Associates 2013

18. What data do we have on donor behaviour?
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19. First, a word on retention ….
# Monthly
Donors
Net Cost
per Donor
Total Net
cost
Gross Year
One
Income at
$15/mo
Profit or
Loss at the
end of Year
1
Attrition
Rate over
Year 1
# donors
going into
Year 2
Annual
value of
remaining
Profit or
Loss at end
of Year 2
donors
1,000
$250
$250,000
$180,000
($70,000)
24%
760
$136,800
$66,800
1,000
$250
$250,000
$180,000
($70,000)
50%
500
$90,000
$20,000
1,000
$250
$250,000
$180,000
($70,000)
70%
300
$54,000
$(16,000)

20. Case study
Direct Mail acquired
TM acquired*
Online acquired
% of donors whose first gift was
Monthly
5.70%
43 %
8.30%
% of donors whose 1st gift was OTG
but converted to Monthly later
9.80%
15.50%
11.70%
Copyright Harvey McKinnon Associates 2013

21. Case study
Direct Mail acquired
TM acquired*
Online acquired
% of donors whose first gift was
Monthly
5.70%
43 %
8.30%
% of donors whose 1st gift was OTG
but converted to Monthly later
9.80%
15.50%
11.70%
Number of monthly donors currently
2,428
842
102
Value of monthly gifts over last 7 years
$7.5 million
$1.2 million
$675,000
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22. Conversion channel
35%
63%

23. Conversion channel
35%
63%
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24. Conversion channel
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