0:04 Hello, hello, we should be live. I am just going to confirm that in terms of the main stage. See my Yep. All right. Well, folks, I'm so excited. Thank you for continuing to join us. We have hundreds of folks tuning in right now. And this is going to be an awesome session. Now. Erica and I have something big planned. In Erica, that email is coming next week to lock it all in. It's happening. We're going to be doing a lot on recurring giving between Erica Waasdorp and Neon One in 2023. Big stuff, but I'm going to read out our bio, because you folks, we have the foremost expert in recurring giving in the world, right here with us. Erica Waasdorp is president of A Direct Solution located in Cape Cod, Massachusetts love it. Working with nonprofit clients nationally and internationally on appeals and monthly giving. Erica has published Monthly Giving: The Sleeping Giant and her second book Monthly Giving Made Easy, check it I got both, I'm just holding up this one. Which came out in mid 2021. She created the monthly donor roadmap, which actually, you can see on my desk, it's right there. Look at that. I'm a big Erica fan folks and several ebooks to include the top seven questions about monthly giving the monthly donor retention playbook and more. Erica is a master trainer for the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the former international fundraising Congress US ambassador, we'll talk about that another time. I actually didn't know that. She regularly presents in person and virtually on appeals, direct mail, and monthly giving. And we are so thrilled to welcome her to the main stage of Generosity Xchange. So I'll be here Erica, if you need me, we have some polls to folks. So this is going to be interactive. Otherwise, there you go. Erica stage is yours. 2:09 Alright. Thanks, Tim. Alright, so welcome to How to Make Your small donors make a go recurring. So I love this quote, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now that's what we're talking about here when it comes to monthly giving, right? Um, so a couple of highlights why monthly gifts will prepare you for a better future. Especially now, right? You know, there's this like cost of living crisis going on. So how can we get donors to still continue to support you, right? How to Build an asks to in what you're doing to grow your monthly donors, right. I mean, as as Tim shared the book monthly giving made easy, it's not that hard. You just have to get donors to consider it and then make the ask. And then also, how do you keep your monthly donors once you bring them in? How do you keep them happy? How do you keep them giving? Right? So a couple of definitions and feel free to use the chat, as well. And I know Tim is going to take it keep an eye on that. So just what are monthly donors that I love seeing monthly donors, because when somebody gives monthly, they typically give the most amount of money, even though they're small donors, but they will give you more money if they give monthly. But yes, there's absolutely quarterly yearly fees. So here are just a couple of definitions, recurring donors sustainers, committed givers regular givers, and then you may see some specific names. So I'd love to know in the chat, if your program if you if you have monthly donors, do you have a specific name for your recurring donors? And then I'll ask Tim to shout that out. But before I asked him to do that, I want to also have him launch a poll. Just to get a feel for who's in the room. How many multi donors do you have now? So Tim, if you'd like to launch that poll, let's see if that technology works. 4:24 Oh, that tech is working. We are we're having a good show so far when it comes to that stuff. So please go ahead and go for it. We also have Dana saying we call our prep ours preservation partners. She's a dinosaur organization. Okay. Fantastic. Yeah. Key Club sustaining donors. Better Together monthly giving community here I'll put some of these up on the stage so you can really see them. Yeah. 4:56 Excellent. Awesome. So that's, that's really it. Key Club. Yeah, great. 5:02 That's Skyland who's one of our super fans, and she's with interfaith partner. Oh, no. IPH they just rebranded IPH. So, there you go, 5:11 Judy. Yeah. Great. 5:13 And then happy to Kaylee. Oh, I bet I have a feeling what organization you are? 5:21 Yeah, I'm sorry, I had to take my cat outside, because otherwise she would be meowing up to me. So you know, I'm a big cat person here. 5:29 Oh, and somebody did say monthly or recurring. Yeah. Good. So 5:35 all right. So how was the poll doing? 5:38 Let's show the results. So we have 55%, say, have said fewer than 100. Then followed by between 100 and 1000. We do have more than 1000 Great votes for that, which is really, really impressive. Not sure. And don't have any yet also, we're coming in. But I would say the vast majority are fewer than 100. 6:04 Yeah, great. Well, that's again, that's typically what happens, right? So the only thing you can do is go up, right? You can grow right to go to higher levels. So why are monthly donors so important, because they will give you that reliable revenue on restricted money that comes in to keep your lights on. So it's reliable revenue, it's more money, they can give in a way donors can give it away that's comfortable for them. And what we found is that younger donors also like it, they can make a contribution, right from their mobile phone, right? So. So it's really, really a great opportunity for them to participate as a donor, it's an efficient use of resources for you as an organization, they're six times more likely to leave you in there well, so maybe smaller gifts now, but ultimately, you're going to get that, that final gift from them, right. And, you know, and this is so crucial as those retention rates will improve. And that's what we'll all focused on as well, we want to keep our donors, we want them to continue to give, and monthly giving does all of that and more. Who would have thought that we would be in the middle of a pandemic still, right? We're in a war, we had just had hurricanes. And you know, I mean, I've got a big storm going on right now in my backyard. So so there's lots and lots of disasters that could possibly happen in your you know, in in the world, and you know, monthly donors, that money keeps coming in, no matter what happens anywhere. The number one reason why donors give monthly is because they want to help. So the monthly giving us almost like a secondary thing. The first is they want help, monthly is just an easier way for them to do that. So, so in essence, monthly giving is really very donor centric. The gifts fit their budget, they're easy to make no matter what time of day where they are, no matter what their age is, no matter what their background is, you know all of those things. So it's very, very donor centric. It's literally can be for anybody. So just like a question, this is not really a poll, but it's a question like, What is the annualized value of your monthly donors? I heard some of you said, you have 1000 monthly donors. Well, do you know what the annualized value is of that number of monthly donors? And if you don't know, right now, that's totally fine. But go after after this session, take a minute and say, Oh, I have so many monthly donors. And this is what they're worth. I mean, when, when Tim and I started talking, what was it a year and a half ago, I think about the the wonderful analysis that that you had done on Nyan one groups. And what was the average monthly gift was $64. dollars 9:25 on one client base, and this is so a lot of money, 9:28 that's a lot of money. Just think about it's like that's like 750 something or whatever. A year, right. So, so I highly recommend that you go back and and identify those multiorders and what their value is, so to create your benchmark after today, and then again, see what it's worth because even if you have 100 Multi donors, it may be worth a lot of money, you may not have any idea so I often talk to organization and then they're blown away. by the number by the amount of money that they're seeing there. And again, you know, just think about even if you're $100 million now, industry wide in this country, the average monthly gift is about $25. So and what you will see is, as you're growing to higher levels, you may not be getting the $64 a month, you may be getting $50 A month or $25 a month, right? Because, again, you want to give the donor the opportunity to make a difference in an amount that is comfortable for them. But if you think about it, $2,500 a month, $30,000 a year from 100 monthly donors, if you then take that over a five year period, now it becomes worth $150,000. And again, I'm seeing those organizations that started with monthly giving programs are what you know, a while back, I mean, I've been doing this for 30 plus years, those organ, those organizations that started a while ago, they're seeing monthly donors that have been giving monthly for 20 years, some even 30 years, right. So just think about the tremendous value there. So the power of the giving is huge. So if you you still struggle with somebody that says that these monthly donors are not worth anything, like show them that just this one slide. Monthly norms are also your mid level donors. They're worth like I said more than $300 a year. They're your future bequests donors. And this is also very important when I started in monthly giving. We were like, oh, we can't touch our donors. You know, they're like, We have to be really careful with them. Now, I'm thinking owners want to be engaged, they want to be involved. And they are going to support additional projects. When you ask them, they're going to give to Giving Tuesday, they're going to support you're giving day, if you have a match, they're going to support your match. Right? You must give them the opportunity, of course, right? Unless they tell you no, I don't want to hear from you. Right. So but if they didn't tell you that, by all means, give them some additional opportunities to make a gift. They and they will know what are some of the key elements for growth. Start with commitment. And I highly recommend that if you haven't done this already, join your own program, even if it's five or $10 a month, start there, and then look at a couple of other organizations that, you know, that might be very similar to yours, that might have more monthly donors that, you know, are some organizations that have been doing this for quite a while. And I know like a lot of people like say let's look at Charity Water, right? But these like, and they're totally digital, right? So, but they made that commitment in 2015, to say, hey, we want to really focus on monthly gifts, right? So it starts with commitment. So start with yourself, and then it will grow because you're asking your donors to make a commitment to you as well, right? systems, you know, there's a gazillion systems out there, you know, so including, obviously, Neon One, and all of the great tools that they provide. Tangible amounts are important, and storytelling, all of these other things systems tangible menstruating, you need that for one time gift fundraising as well, right? So what I'm asking you is not to think differently, but just give donors the opportunity to give in amounts that are comfortable for them by asking them for a monthly gift using everything else that you already have in your toolbox, right, that you know, works for front for general fundraising. 13:59 Again, you have the donor base, you have the website, you have the payment processor, and you also have the thank you processes, I highly recommend that if you haven't done that, or if you haven't looked at it in a while, because again, these systems are changing constantly, will always trying to look for for better ways to present it right to make it easier for the donors. So make sure that you test this every now and then is your thank you message correct on this, you know what, what happens? How do you get the information that a new multi donor has has arrived, right? So make sure that you you test all of those tools. So one of the recommendations I make and again, it does depend a little bit on the systems but always when you want to try to generate monthly donors, I recommend that you create a special monthly donor page. So that way you can drive donors to go there. And this is just one example. So um So you have your one time donation page. And that has recurring always on there. That's like a sort of a second piece, but also create a monthly donor only page, that way you can drive people to go there for specific purposes. And, again, I'm showing you a couple of different systems, right, so but if you have like a toggle forum like this one time and monthly, make sure that monthly stands out, you see a little nudge here. And monthly donation is the most effective way to help families year round. And also, the amounts on the monthly giving page on a monthly giving, our toggle should be lower than the one time amounts. And again, most systems can handle that now. And why again, we want to give donors the opportunity to make a difference within amount that they're comfortable with, right. So we don't want to come across too greedy, right? So and typically it's like 1/3, or one quarter of the of the one time giving amounts. And again, there's there's lots of testing that you can do with that. But but just those are just a couple of the basics. And then you've just created that monthly donor only page, then use your homepage, come January, for example, take over your home page, I wouldn't do it right now, I would say white now you're totally focused on one time gifts, but but come January, February, take over your homepage, and then start linking to the donate now give monthly, right and see what happens. Buttons are very, very good tools. Again, you can link right through to your monthly only page, then add an extra button to your emails. I'm seeing it more and more. Why? Because it works not just because they recommended but because it works. Because, again, you're starting to plant the seeds with the donor saying, Okay, make a gift, give monthly, you know what? Yeah, I can make a monthly gift. He right now this is actually much easier for me. So add an extra button to your emails. And then add some monthly giving pop ups if your system can handle it. Again, I would recommend as we're getting into the busy season, hold off, put this in your toolbox in your on your list to do in January. Because right now you want to get as many one time gifts as possible. And then come January, you're going to try to convert them to give monthly, but consider a month of giving pop up this will give you some time to actually put this in place. And what does how does that work? The donor says yes, I'm gonna give a one time gift and then make a and then it asks like, Are you sure? Would you like to consider a monthly gift instead? Here's why. And and then you can the donor can decide to make a one time gift or their donor can decide to become a multi donor. And this works really, really well. Again, and the donor has a choice, right? So so with this, you make that very clear. Then use some example amounts to help the donor set the price. This again, it's not something that's different from what you're doing in your one time giving in your one time fundraising. But you want to customize translate those big amounts to smaller amounts to say How was $25 a month or $50 a month or $10 a month? How can that make a difference. So take a look at what you're doing in fundraising in your in your one time gift, and then convert that to monthly giving. Now I know that not every organization is able to do this. But if you can, it just helps the donor understand how their gift can make a difference. If you can do it, you know, $10 a month $20 You always will have multiple options on your form. And again, don't worry too much. I know sometimes people say well, yeah, you know, I'd love to test to see if $25 and $50 will work for me. And I don't want to worry about those $10 A month people and the reality is like again specially right now, if you can get a donor to go to your page by asking for $10 a month and they see how their gift of $25 can make make a difference. Then they will actually choose that option if they can afford it, but you'll get more people to go there and click the button to give monthly so just like love to answer ask the question in your in the chat like and I know Tim is going to look at that. Like what's your biggest challenge when it comes to growing your monthly donor program? So what are some of the challenges that you're seeing? I'm with monthly giving 20:05 I was answering some questions about Neon functionality. Yes. Which pop ups covered folks? Yeah. Very, very exciting. All right. What are the challenges? 20:18 Yeah. Or maybe nobody has a challenge. I 20:21 don't know. Everybody's just doing great. Yes. 20:30 By the way, I love Tim always has the best shirts, don't you think? He always says the best jurors. 20:35 Okay. Thank you, by the way. I've been waiting to notice and we'll just we don't want to delay too much. Yeah, but but I have been waiting to notice or see if anybody noticed that I've changed my shirt for every single session so far. today. Okay, let's put Kristin up here on the main stage for us. 21:01 And what's your money goes towards? Yeah, provide grants to teachers. Okay, so yeah, you're, you're still impacting teachers. And that's impacting children. Right. So yeah. So but yeah, so you can say, with your monthly gifts, we can help, you know, put more teachers or help teach more teachers to do whatever it is that you're you're doing, right. Okay. And again, at the end, I'll have my email address. So you can always send me a question I'm very good at. I'm very responsive. I love 21:34 this stuff. And we're gonna be Pat, we're passing these on to all the speakers. And don't forget the session feedback folks that we've been doing. Here's a good one, actually. Oh, no, not the shirt thing. Thank you, Dana, for noticing. But this is actually a good one that I think speaks to what you you talk about? 21:50 Yeah, okay. People are not responding to the monthly gift I'm interested in, they continue to make a one time gift even when asking is for monthly they choose one time. Hmm, interesting. Yeah. So again, this is where you know, like, the form needs to be really, really clear, you're asking for monthly gift, but you always going to get some people that are not going to want to give monthly. So that's why I like to whenever we ask for a monthly gift, I like to have that separate form. So then they cannot it's really, really clear that they make a monthly gift, right? But yeah, okay, making the time to look through our data ID people we should target to become a sustainer. Okay, 22:30 well, and actually, you know, this is kind of one of those things that that I want to source that to our product team, because when Anna was talking about intelligent segmentation, that we can help with this type of thing. So, you know, yep, we're getting there. And Erica has strategies on regardless of your database on how to ID people. 22:54 Yeah. Okay, one more. And then, 22:57 yeah, I'll just put this one up in terms of 23:01 lead monthly donor. Yep. Great. 23:04 So just a little positive reinforcement there especially loved the small rural community element there, because I think this is a program that can be really, really powerful. But what Andrew did put one and then we'll move forward. But here's another challenge, 23:18 keeping long term engagement, new ways to thank them and sharing the 23:22 very similar data, right? Yep. Okay. Yeah. Excellent. 23:25 And I'm going to touch a little bit on storage, obviously, we only have one hour, right. So but I'm going to touch a little bit on on stewardship. So great. Okay, so So growth and retention that requires accountability. So just the fact that you're here, your focus on this, you're going to drive this forward, right? And, and guess what, if you want to grow in you will, it takes that commitment, it takes that moving forward, and it takes that driver, right? You know, you got to be put in the in the driver's seat. Also, like, once again, it's not just like, oh, we'll just do it in January, and then we're forget it for the whole year. No, it's like it really permeates everything that you're doing. And again, I'm going to show you a couple of things, simple things that you can do in your organization that almost become best practice because they work. Now again, are they going to create oodles and oodles at the same time? No, but it's a constant feeding of, of planting of the seeds, if you will, right. So messages in in, you know, like social media is great. So if you're doing social media, make sure that you go to that monthly donor only page. So don't go on Facebook or whatever else, but just make sure that you direct them to your website, because otherwise you go crazy, but a simple image, a simple message, a multi guarantee, multi gift guarantees, nourishing meals and smiling, warm smiles for a frail aged, give monthly, right so click right there and go to the monthly only page Use Google Grants, a lot of you probably have Google Grants went try a couple of things with as little as $10 a month as little as 90 Nozman. I've seen recently a couple of tests where again, the smaller you ask for the smaller amount they ask for, the more monthly donors you will get. So again, everybody's in a cost of living crisis. So we don't want to be coming across too greedy, we want to give the donor the opportunity to make a difference with an amount that they can afford. But monthly giving is great indirect mail, and it's like, there it is, this is on the back of a reply form, give them the option again, plant the seeds, make this a month a gift, make a one time gift. So in your appeal forms, you can add the monthly giving option there. If you're a little bit more daring, then you can actually have two lines on your reply forms on the appeals. And this is a membership renewal package. one time gift, you see that 35 Is there is the lowest amount for one time gifts. And then monthly gifts are smaller $5 710, my best gift of So again, here you are using the smaller amounts. And again, a lot of monthly donors come from this opportunity. And this can literally be a laser line on your form. I would not recommend you do this with your big donors typically look at anybody that's given $250 or less so, so the big donors, you still want them to write the big checks. But in this case, if you can add it on your appeal form, you will get some monthly donors to do it just again, planting the seeds. But how about using your email signature? Right, you've got that monthly donor page, click right through there every time you send something to a donor or to a board member, you have that email signature right there. Alright, so those are just a couple of ideas that you can start with to generate new monthly donors. Now how we can keep those monthly donors and you won't have you asked that question and I can remember your name. Retention starts with stewardship. How do we engage those zones, as I mentioned, in the old days, we didn't touch those Monday donors now. They want to hear from us they are engaged, they want to they're investing in the organization, they want to do things they want to hear from you, they want to get updates. So one of the things that and again, you know, I literally I'm wearing a shirt here that says, Hold on, let me overthink this. So I only have one of those shirts. But hold on, let me overthink this because we as fundraisers tend to overthink things all the time, we want to have everything perfect, we want to have all of the benefits, like spelled out. And the reality is, start simple. Start with something you can do. For sure, no matter how busy you are. And then you can always add some surprising things. So no matter how a multi donor joins, if it was like mail, phone or email online, I always recommend that you send at least something in the mail as soon as possible that the donor can hold on to and the more personal you can make it the better off you are. So this is like a just a simple personal note and the donors that the information is on there, you know the their the name of the organism of the of the Executive Director, so you know that you have somebody that you can contact if you have questions. So keep it simple and doable, really key. Then think about some of the things that you can do in your organization that will engage them. Maybe it's a town hall, maybe it's a phone call slash video call with the executive director, maybe it's somebody who's standing in the field with a smartphone and talks about like, look at look at, you know, we're serving so many meals for Thanksgiving, whatever it is, right? And then offer that for donors to participate in. Just the fact that you're inviting them makes them feel special doesn't mean that they're going to actually do it doesn't mean that they're going to actually participate. But you can then send them the the recording of that afterwards. So again, this don't, you know, don't promise that this is going to happen every quarter. Just do this as a surprising opportunity. So that's a very low cost way when you gauging your donors, right? So invite them to Townhall. If you can do a virtual tour, great if you can do a real tour, great, right? So think about some of the things that you can do in your organization that don't cost an arm and a leg, but are ways to engage your monthly donors. Because guess what, they just want to see that the gift is making a difference. Right. And this is a great opportunity to do that. Then I mentioned earlier, like, include your monthly donors a couple of times a year in some of your appeals, but make sure that you recognize them, make sure that you say Thank You for Your monthly gift. And it's giving Tuesday soon, or we have this special match opportunity, will you participate? And a lot of donors are gonna say, yeah, 6% of monthly donors makes at least one extra gift a year when asked. So that's great. Bass, well, I wouldn't say free money, but it's extra money that will come in the door. And again, by by saying thank you by recognizing that they are a monthly donor, that again, makes them feel special. So just think about some opportunities, racy, oh, if I were a donor, I would upset if they didn't tell me about, right. That's what you're talking about here. And urine is a great opportunity to do that. Giving Tuesday have a special segment for your multi donors, and then version your messaging. So really key obviously, that the minute somebody becomes a monthly donor, they become they get a special segment or a special tag or group, whatever it is, it's called in your email program. So that way, you can do something special, you can send, you know, something surprising to them, right. And again, it can literally be something like, Hey, if you do something with kids, maybe you can have the kids make a drawing. And then you can scan that in and pop it in an email. Remember, you have that special segment. So you can send it to your monkey doors by saying thank you for your monthly gift. You can also send it to your other donors, saying thank you for your ongoing support, right? Because as long as there's no overlap, right, you can, you can send them different things. I mentioned ultimate gift, legacy gift, monthly donors are six times more likely to leave you in the will, but you do need to start planting the seeds. So one of the ways to do that is in January, I recommend that you send a tax receipt to those donors who made a monthly gift, you do not need to send a monthly thank you letter in the mail. But I recommend send a tax receipt by mail in January, and by email as well. And in that in that tax receipt letter, which is really just sort of a an elaborated thank you letter, right. You can plant the seed about like, would you consider leaving us in your will? Now this example here, it's actually like a connection survey, as they call it. It's a survey that's being sent to donors. And in that survey, we asked a number of questions. And one of the questions was, did you leave us in your will? And we were blown away by the number of people that says, yes, I've done it. I haven't done it yet. But I'm interested. And those of those who have said, No, I don't even have a will. So in other words, don't bother me. You know, so but again, it's all over the map, right? So start planting seeds about legacy. Yes, once you've got them giving monthly, it again, it's fabulous. And again, there's a lot of potential there, right. And it might take a while, but ultimately you're gonna get that gift. And then, you know, again, I'm all for like keeping things simple. So re purpose. Repurpose your stories, repurpose your messaging your videos, if you put something on Facebook a year ago, we repurpose reuse it if you have a wonderful thank you video that you used for an event six months ago. Use it again, put it in an email, right? So I come across with so many organizations, and they're like, oh, yeah, we don't have anything and it's like, oh, really well. How about that video? How about this? How about that? And then like, oh, yeah, you know, yeah, I put her an email. Okay, well, don't understand not necessarily going to remember what you sent him six months ago, even three weeks ago, you know, so, so use what you have. It's, you know, to your point, it's like if you're looking for stewardship stuff, repurpose it. And if you really have I mean, I love I'm gonna give a plug here for Lynn Wester. So, Lynn Wester the are the ERG group, and she's all about stewardship and If you go to her website, donor relations guru.com, she has free, a whole free resource with lots and lots and lots of stewardship ideas. It's incredible. Right? So, so go to her website. She's fantastic. Anything to do with with stewardship, but repurpose what you already have. Maybe you haven't made your gifts department, we use it, you know. So, also, again, keep it simple. Keep it doable, because happy monthly donors will keep on giving right now, unfortunately, you know, the one big thing that's still a little bit of an issue when it comes to multi dormice is these pesky little credit cards that expire, right, or these cards that are compromised, so donors get new cards, right. So keeping your monthly Dormans is a little bit of a process. So what I recommend that you do is you create a retention day. So once a month, sit down, maybe you know, the first of the first Monday of the month, you sit down and say I'm going to take a look at my monthly donors, how many of them, their payment didn't come in? Okay, now, I need to do some follow up, right? So look at your monthly giving promote at least once a month, just say, what are the trends? Or am I doing? Am I you know, looking at possibly some monthly donors at risk. And then look at those donors who are saying up, you know, like, my payment didn't come in, those are what I call like, soft cancels. And then those donors that call up or write to you and say, I can't do it right now, I can't afford it right now. I'm, you know, it's not a good time. If they call you, you have an opportunity to talk to them and say, Well, would you consider a pause? Would you consider a smaller amount? And a lot of people say, Well, yeah, you know, I didn't know I could do that. So yes, let me pause for six months, or let me go from, you know, $15 a month to $5 a month, and then you've just kept that month, they don't are by doing that, right. So, so, but setup one day a month, where you really looking at that. And then it's key that you follow up those payments, and then come in, send them an email, mail them a postcard, make a phone call, send them a text, if they've given you permission, right, and then repeat. Because the reality is that donors are so busy, just like everybody's busy, right? So they forgot that they got a new cart last month, they forgot that they have to tell you, right, so So do everything in your power to make sure that you follow up and try to keep as many people as possible. Now, one of the little like, tricks, if you will I, I have found works really, really well is on that retention day, you sit down and say, hey, you know, today there are 10 monthly doors at risk. Well, if they give me $25 a month, that's $300 a year that's $3,000 at risk from these 10 monthly donors. If you look at it that way, you say you know what, $3,000 is worth a little bit of time, it's worth a phone call, it's worth an email, right? So, so just look at that, because again, these monthly norms are very, very powerful. And these donors, these are soft cancels, they didn't tell you that they wanted to stop, right. So you just need to nudge them a little bit to give you their updated information. So really do everything in your mind to to keep them and if you go to my website, you can actually download this monthly donor retention playbook where it has free letters, emails, scripts, and everything. So the key takeaways for today are that generating monthly norms is important and adheres deserves that focus, right? You want to analyze the revenue so make sure that you create that benchmark that we talked about. There are so many tactics to make your multi Donor Program roar right to grow it right. There's lots of lots of different things you can do. But pick what you're comfortable with start somewhere do just one more thing right? And see what happens and then do one more thing right? And as you're growing I can guarantee you that you will say oh hey you know I did that lets me do one more email let me do two more emails and then you will grow even more right so you get really excited about how you can grow segmentation our stewardship are key so you want to do everything to keep your donors engaged. And you know, but but that's that's really The crucial point to start somewhere, keep it simple. Don't overthink it. And then you will do all right. The final thing is you want to set goals. So you know, so I always recommend that you set goals. So if you've 100 monthly dollars now, and you take a look and say, How did I get to those 100? Can you go 250? Can you go to 200? What would it take to make that happen? Right? If you have 1001 day loans now, how did you get there? What can you do, and then set a goal, write it down, put it on your bulletin board or your computer wherever you you keep your goals. And then again, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish. Right? Do you want to set some goals? So so like the final poll here, Tim, if you want to launch that it's like, how can you make more of your or your monthly donors weaker? What is your goal is to double the number of triple the number of double my annual revenue, what is some of the goals that you're going to set for your monthly donor program? Sounds like Tim is yeah, there. You are. Great. You launch it. Oh, I did. Okay. Yeah, for some reason, I can't see that. You'll want to poll it so I can I can't see the poll, but 41:29 because you're in stream yard. I got. I got it. Yeah. Let's see. 41:37 And feel free to use a chat to if you have a specific area. Yeah, 41:41 we're paying attention. Yep. Yep. Yep. I'm gonna, 41:49 by the way, thank you so much for the wonderful woman who is doing the sign language there. This might first isn't my first webinar with those sign. Interpreter lectures. Oh, really? Yeah. My first one. Yeah. 42:01 All right. Okay, we got we got some votes coming in. Great. It's dynamic. Yeah, I look, we've done generosity exchange three years. And this is by far the best platform that we've had. So yeah. What's your goal? double the number 35.3%? Okay, triple the number 29.4%. Nothing's even double my annual revenue. 16.7% And then other, okay, which is 22%. But I, I have to like vote more to see the thing, which is a little goofy, but like, that's other news there. And I'm gonna put a DNS item here, just so you can see it. 42:46 recommendation that you should solicit first time donors three weeks after make a Yeah, that's a great recommendation. Yes. Yes. That's actually a question. But that's a great recommendation. The sooner you can get donors to make a recurring gift, the better off you are. And you know, if they've just given their heart to try it, right. So, so give them that opportunity. So, I mean, I work with organizations that actually put like a monthly giving ask writing the thank you letter. And then those organizations that don't want to do that they send like, a special thank you and additional Thank you two or three weeks after they send the first thank you to ask them for a monthly gift. 43:29 And I'll be here when you're ready for questions, because we get some time. Yeah. 43:33 Okay, great. All right. So no other challenges? 43:38 Not okay, anything in the chat or anything? 43:43 Okay, great. Awesome. Alright. So are no other goals. Sorry. Alright, so So I want to end with this quote, I love this. Right. And I maybe I love it because I can use my Dutch. So great things are done by a series of small things brought together by FinCEN for whole. So again, that's what it is, right? You know, we're creating a masterpiece with little things. It's not big stuff, right? It's a constant planting of the seeds. It's the constant like ideas of giving donors the opportunity to make a monthly gift. That's how you grow. So now we're going to open it up for questions. And I as I mentioned, here's my contact information. If you want to send me an email with any questions, feel free to do so. So yeah, Tim, alright, open it up if there was any questions, 44:40 okay. Ashley, who also I do want to put this in a little bit of a self serving way. actually asked a question but I'm first going to show we just switched to Neon Pay as a processor and save so much in processing fees and information. That's that's the power of a connected ecoystem folks, but I'm gonna read Ashley's question, How often do you suggest asking current sustainers to upgrade their contribution? And any tips on messaging that ask for an upgrade? 45:14 Great, great question. So I recommend to upgrade at least one once a year. So, but look back at those donors that have been giving longer than six months ago. So you don't want to do it too soon, right. So you want to make sure that if you have a new monthly donor, we came on, say, last January, this coming January would be great opportunity to ask them for an upgrade. And I know like, most organizations, they don't even ask for an upgrade, they've had monthly two or three years, and they have never asked for an upgrade. So definitely ask them for an upgrade at least once a year. But again, depending upon how obviously you're growing your monthly donor program, you need to look vaccine, anybody who's given in the last six months, I'm going to leave them alone for this first upgrade, anybody who's been giving longer than six months, consider asking them for an upgrade. And then again, the same thing that you do with with your general fundraising, right, so tell a story and explain what the need is, especially now. I mean, I don't know what type of organization you are. But you know, everything's gotten more expensive, literally everything. So um, so again, ask them for, you know, a small monthly upgrade, like $2 a month more $3 a month more. And then again, lead them to a special page where they can make sure that that special page that is a special Upgrade page, just focus on monthly giving so that we you know that anybody that goes there came from that particular email. And if you're sending mailings, an upgrade appeal is great. If you're making phone calls and upgrade phone calls, that combination of mail, phone and email still works. It's still really, really powerful, right? So I, you know, most of the organizations I work with, they do an upgrade, like in January, and then they do like a second upgrade in July. So those are really good times to consider an upgrade. And if I look at the stats, 12% of Monty dormers make makes an goes through an upgrade when asked. So again, so ideally, you want to ask for an extra gift 6% does add and then 12% Does an upgrade. So can you do both? Right. That's that's the key. 47:37 And we put some of these stats, because I made sure to coordinate with Erica, when doing the donor report earlier this year. There's a whole dedicated chapter just on recurring giving in their care. Let's put her actually you were you're gonna go back on the main stage again. Thank you for addressing my question. I am a painter at a few other NP nonprofits good. By the way, that's a really good thing. 48:02 Yes, that is a really good idea. You learn from that. I mean, I probably give to like 50 organizations. So 48:08 I have I have a stack that I'm trying to figure out. You can't see me because actually, yeah, rightfully covering my face. But I have a stack of like, direct mail, just like oh, yeah, my once here. Yeah, do more upgrades. And they've been working. Yeah. I'm a sustainer. Harvest helper. Yeah, for for example. 48:28 So yeah. So So you to your point, a lot of organizations have not ever asked for upgrades and even Yeah, I might have out of the 50 I might have like five or so that do it. So, yeah, so you so you're missing out if you're if you're not doing that, and again, 48:46 not You're not gonna freak him out? 48:48 No, don't just gonna say no. Doesn't work right now. You know, so, the data, 48:54 the data is very clear across the board that donor fatigue generally does not exist, what exists is crappy appeal fatigue. And, and if you've done a good job, which which stewardship of of recurring donors is a layup? In many ways, then they're not going to be turned off. Right. Right. What other questions what other questions? 49:24 Yeah, so when and again, you know, obviously, I only have an hour, so I can't Yeah, I wasn't able to go into a lot of stewardship stuff. And if you have a print newsletter, use it. If you have an E newsletter, send it to your monkey Dorrance. Right, those are all stewardship things, you know, so you don't have to do a lot of swag. You don't have to do a lot of a lot of benefits. You know, you don't have to have separate levels, you know, so that's a 49:50 video just use a video and you know, thank you. 49:54 And here's the thing. I mean, if there's anything that COVID has done, it's made us more comfortable to say In, you know, in, you know, basically standing while I'm not standing in my underwear, but you could stand in your underwear, right? Or you have your cat or your dog or you know, whatever. So we're, we're much more, you know, I'm not wearing even makeup, you know, so it's like, we were much more used to being ourselves, right where people, right So, so people, you know, respond to people. So do do something, send them a video call, you know, the some of the standard thank you video things that you can do so, but, but you know, just something surprising, don't just don't promise them that they're going to get this, this and this. And then if you can't fulfill now they get disappointed, right. So, um, so that's the key. And also, it's really important that when a donor becomes a monthly donor that they know that that's what they're doing that they're absolutely sure, you know, so and that's where, why those platforms are like give monthly gift monthly gift monthly that every step of the way the donor commits to giving monthly and if they do that, then they're going to stay with you. Much longer. Love it. Yeah. Any other questions? 51:07 Any other questions, folks? Maybe people want a break before our keynote. Oh, yeah. All right. Erica, this is obviously not the last that you'll be seeing of Erica, we actually have been working way too long. And I'm the holdup on No. All on me. We are going to do and it's happening. We're going to do a five part series in 2023. Starting in January, right you want to start in January you want to do it then that works. We're gonna do a five part series. Oh, you have a MasterCard thing. Good. Like, we don't have time for that. No, yeah. When did optional now but Neon CRM at least like we Neon One rolled out all the stuff? Yeah. So like, you're covered if you want to do it, you were covered. Yeah. So yeah, we're gonna do a five part series with Erica. Just like this. Probably, you know, webinars style, but but then we'll collect that into a free resource for people. And so we're really excited to to bring her back. Well, thank you here. I'll throw up. I'll throw up. Katherine, here. 52:26 Welcome. Thank you. I love this. I love this live thing. So this is great for Friday nasty. Yeah, I like it. 52:33 Well, I'm gonna get ready. This is my final form, folks. This is my final shirt of the date. Notice I did change even during the test. I know. Wow. So I am going to get us ready for the keynote. That's coming up. So just for folks who are joining us in about seven minutes. Thank you, Katherine. And, Ashley. Let's give you some accolades. So in about seven minutes, we are going to have our keynote kick off. It's a pre scheduled conversation between Edgar Villanueva and Denise Barreto. But then Denise, who has been texting me. So I know she's coming. will be joining us live for the q&a as well. So and then right after that, we're going to do some networking, and then our awards and then it's done. Well Holy moly. 53:29 Well, thank you, everybody. Thank you, Tim. Transcribed by https://otter.ai