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We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
660. Working Session: How to Grow Monthly Donors with Dana Snyder
00:15:44
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- [00:01]
A
Hey, friends, giving season is in full swing and if there's one question we're all asking, it's how do we turn more of our one time donors into steady, reliable monthly supporters? So today we're rolling up our sleeves for a working session featuring special guest Dana Snyder, the founder of Positive Equation, the author of the monthly Giving Mastermind, and frankly, one of the smartest monthly giving strategists that we know. So let's go. Welcome to Working Sessions on the We Are for Good podcast. In every session, we're tackling one essential topic and give you practical steps to take meaningful action within your mission. Today we're bringing you the experts and playbooks to help you move forward with clarity and confidence. Let's get to work. Dana, it is so good to see you. Welcome to Working Sessions.
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B
Thank you for having me. This is my jam. I am so ready.
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A
You're like so built for this. I mean, Dana, you have conversations literally all the time with organizations that are doing this work, that are trying to figure it out, that are trying to grow a sustainable revenue stream. You have the playbook. And so I want to start there of like, what's the unlock, what's the opportunity that is in monthly giving that maybe many organizations are kind of missing?
- [01:12]
B
I mean, the first one, and it's going to sound so simple, but just spoke at a conference that we were at together.
- [01:18]
A
Yeah, it was so cool.
- [01:19]
B
I went and did a VIP intensive two hours away in Tulsa, Oklahoma with an organization, then came back home to Atlanta and did another intensive where three organizations came together. And, and it's all very similar topic of discussion that's coming up this time of year.
- [01:37]
A
It's similar between like big orgs and small orgs, right? Yeah.
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B
Yes. Any and everybody in between and specifically at year end is we're not asking for monthly. We're not prompting for a monthly gift. It's so interesting actually, at the conference at Starkey's foundation that we were at the forum, somebody came up to me and was like, dana, we bought your book. We built our monthly giving program. It was amazing. I was like, oh my gosh. Like, thank you. Awesome. And I was like, okay, so what are you doing for year end? They're like, oh my gosh. We didn't put a monthly ask in any of our interviewer.
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A
It's so relatable.
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B
It's so common.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And so the first thing I would say is don't hide it. Go to your websites on mobile and on desktop. Is your donate button number one easy to Find. Do you have a separate monthly giving button? This is also very relevant. Next, after just came out with a study that if you have a donate button and a Give monthly button in your navigation, it's 45% lift in conversions.
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A
45. Like 4 5, 4 5% correct.
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B
Dang.
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A
Of having separate buttons.
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B
A separate button, Separate button.
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A
So we're not talking about don't do the toggle switch on the page. Like do the two paths. Which path are you in? Okay, both.
- [02:57]
B
Both. So you can have the toggle for sure. Always present monthly as an option. Always have it be a nudge. But when somebody clicks on Give Monthly, have it be a monthly only form. Like, these are quick, changeable things. Go into the back end of your donation tool, make these quick adjustments, put an extra button up there, make sure it's viewable, seeable. So that's the number one thing is like don't hide. It would be my number one recommendation. And honestly lead with it.
- [03:25]
A
Yeah, I was saying this before we hit record. I mean, I was in the seat of director of annual giving for five years and I'm telling you, the sector was holding me back by putting the label of annual Giving. It's like I need a reframe of like, what few things in our life do we think of we're going to do this once a year. Like, I can't remember those kind of things in life. We want to put stuff on autopilot that's our value aligned that the things that we want to be connected to. And so it just makes sense that we need to have a reframe around this and definitely present the opportunity.
- [03:54]
B
Yes. And I've had organizations tell me, well, we'll, we'll think about this. We just have to get through end of year because you know we're going to start back at zero. And I was like, the point is to not start at zero. Like have these like sustainable gifts that at end of year, even if it's like 10%, 20% of your base gives monthly instead of the one time they're not at zero anymore. Like you have income coming in right away in January. And um, and there's actually I just had the Giving Tuesday team in my Sustainer Slack group, which surprise is now free, by the way. So anyone can join the group. It's free.
- [04:30]
A
Oh, I didn't know that. Are you kidding me?
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B
Drop this brand new. This is a Giving Tuesday surprise.
- [04:35]
A
Oh my gosh. Glad you're spoiling it here. You heard it first on the We Are for Good podcast.
- [04:39]
B
Slack channel. It's all for people growing recurring giving programs. It's incredible. There's hundreds of orgs in there and now it's for free. So every month we have an expert come in and do a Q and A chat. And so Kelsey Kramer from Giving Tuesday, Victoria came in there.
- [04:53]
A
One of the best. One of the best. Love them. Yes.
- [04:56]
B
And they said in 2022 and 2023, 12% of recurring gifts were started on Giving Tuesday. So like, don't discount.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Asking on Giving Tuesday. Don't discount adding it to your emails. I know all your mailers are probably done right now, but if we're thinking of like what can I do in an hour? Go back into some of your emails that might be scheduled and lead with it in your emails. We're at the point where you can still do some segmenting. So for those people who give one time in the past, lead with a monthly giving opportunity. I think it's just really important when you have so much more visibility and eyeballs on your content right now, where do you literally want people to go? And you're the driver. Yeah, you gotta direct to them.
- [05:45]
A
And I think, you know, it's come up on the podcast a few times. Like we need to have a hypothesis around things. It's like when we try things, we can see what happens as a result of this. But I think a lot of times we try things and we can never compare it to anything either. What would happen if you added that option this Giving Tuesday? You could very clearly compare that to years past. See what happens. What could be unleashed in just making a simple shift, which got me really excited about this series of. It's playing on the idea of simple shifts on repeat. It's like how we evolve, how we can get better and how we can just do small tweaks.
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B
Yes, another just like small tweak. This is a small organization. Turner Syndrome foundation, they just went through my monthly giving mastermind and we talked about this kind of like Omni marketing presence. And so we had built them this four part acquisition series specifically just for monthly giving. They're running it right now and they started running social ads. So like very reasonable cost on meta, Facebook and Instagram. Video ads that's just going out to their warm audience. So it's a smaller number, it doesn't have to be super expensive. And they're like, we've never had open rates like this on our emails and the conversions on our emails. And I was asking, well, who are the ads? They're like our warm Audience, we uploaded our CSV, so they're seeing the ad and then they get the email and they've gotten like 14 new monthly donors. They're like, we've never had this donation this quickly on something brand new that we created. And so even if you're small, it's totally doable to spin up these things to essentially run tests. And they're like, this blew our minds.
- [07:20]
A
Wow, this is a great time to test things. So, okay, Dana, we called this series Working Sessions because we wanted to, like, have a roll up your sleeves moment. Even though I'm in short sleeves. So I guess I can make this tank top over here. Something, please.
- [07:32]
B
I got you.
- [07:33]
A
Okay, thank you. We want to roll up our sleeves and like, what do you think we could tackle in a working session? Something that we could, you know, try, test, innovate around the idea of monthly giving. What you got for us.
- [07:43]
B
So I would say just quickly do an analysis of what you're already planning to send out, because likely there's already things that are in your mind. One really, it's about the website. Where are you sending people to? Have you turned on those elements that we briefly talked about? Are your buttons optimized for monthly giving? Is the form optimized? Do you have a simple one liner in the form or around the form that is prompting people to give monthly? Monthly giving power is our work. This is something I talked about with the Trevor project. They added that one line, monthly giving power is our work. And they saw a 50% jump the next month in recurring gifts.
- [08:22]
A
What? Friends, this is so simple. It's again, planting the seed. It's like John, the annual giving director, didn't have the idea of, why wouldn't our strategy be monthly? Your donor's probably not thinking that either, you know, and so planting the small seed. Oh, this is a way I actually can show up and make a difference. Wow.
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B
Yes.
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A
Love this.
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B
And it's way more accessible. Right. As far as the amount. So for a new audience, think about your donation amounts. This is another quick win. Make sure. And I just went through an audit yesterday with an organization. Their one time and their monthly amounts were the same.
- [08:59]
A
So getting really practical. Do you divide by 12? Do you divide by 10? Like, what's a starting place of numbers that you would say?
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B
So two schools of thought. One is if you can align a dollar amount with an actual impact Item. So, yeah, $24 equals x $48 equals blank. $8 a month equals blank. So it's yeah, 8 times 12, 24 times 12 what that equates to. Or if you're an organization that's like, I don't have those numbers. Can't pull those together. The other school of thought that I teach is dollar a day, 50 cents a day. And the theme to that is don't go a day without supporting something that you so dearly care about. And 50 cents is $15 a month. A dollar is $30.
- [09:48]
A
Again, if you're all in or you want to see this change in the world, of course you want that part of your rhythm. Like, you don't want to like, forget.
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B
The cause, like you want to be part of it. 50 cents. I could totally give 50 cents a day towards something that as I drink.
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A
My $5 cold brew, I'm feeling the like, okay, this could happen, you know, Totally.
- [10:05]
B
And I think it's leaning with so specifically around right now because this is working sessions for giving season. The language around our work, your work, your mission is not seasonal. So don't have your gift. Be like there's some really fun like wording that you can lead into John's giving.
- [10:26]
A
My gosh, that's so good.
- [10:29]
B
I mean, I would put it into chatgpt, like do but make it make your copy. Another thing that I recommend is look at your copy and does it sound different than any everything you've been saying the whole rest of the year? The other difference in these emails that the Turner syndrome that we help them write is they were pretty much just text removing complicated images. It was one call to action. There was multiple hyperlinks linking to the same thing. Make it explicitly clear and make your email sound like they're coming from a human, not a brand.
- [11:04]
A
I'm glad that we're normalizing this conversation because verbalizing it, it sounds ridiculous, but in practice it's so true. You know, if there's a moment to add humanity, to recognize there's a human on the other side of this. Because there is.
- [11:19]
B
Yes. I have a great example. So there's an organization that I'm working with right now in an intensive and we're going through this and doing this actual copy exercise and they were explaining they have a, like a food pantry, they have a Christmas store, they have a children's center. And that's literally what it used to say. Like they have these things. And instead when we went through the copy and I was like, tell me what happens there. How do people come to the center? What's a real life experience? And I was like, those are the things we're putting on Your website.
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A
Mm.
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B
So like the father picking out a Christmas item. Cause like, you are visualizing. I always call them mind movies. Like you are giving somebody a mind movie. How do you insert them directly into the story? Don't make me guess.
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A
Yeah.
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What the experience could be like.
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I'm on a donation form. So you gotta really transport somebody to like, feel in that moment of. Of why this matters and what that translates to in a very human, relatable sense.
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B
Yes. And then one other, like, quick thing that you can do. And this was something I shared last year for Giving Tuesday is for anybody that gives to you. This could be specifically on Giving Tuesday, but you could do it for end of year in general is craft an email that literally. It's text only. And it literally says, hey, thank you so much for your generosity this giving season. And if it's Giving Tuesday, you can be even hyper specific. Cause that's probably around a specific program. We'd love to hear what inspired you to give. Just hit reply. And people last year sent me so many messages, say, oh, my gosh. We received hundreds of responses. And not only is that great for you just to have a better understanding and relationship with somebody, but that boosts your open rate of your inboxes when you send things.
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A
I didn't know that.
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B
Yeah. Anytime you can do a reply, it's telling the inbox gods that your email is valuable.
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A
And that there's humans. It's not just like bots sending out spam all day every day. Yeah. Okay, Dana, I feel this every time I'm around you, that we just want to bottle you up and take you with us at all the places.
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B
I hope those things were helpful.
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A
It truly is. And it's like our podcast always leads to like a one good thing with working sessions. I'm thinking, what is one thing that you would advise if someone's gonna carve out an hour today to move the needle? What's your one good thing for this to, like, get activated?
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B
Okay. Gather your team or yourself or your board or all three. And I post about this on LinkedIn so you can find it specifically the template that I wrote. But basically have everyone write a post together. This is why it's good for like a meeting, or if you're doing a board meeting or something, set a timer for 15 minutes. Draft a post about what made them support your mission, what is it that they love about being a part of it, and post it collectively on LinkedIn and tell your personal story about why it matters and what. Why this is so Powerful. John. I had somebody, after I gave this piece of advice during the conference, message me to say I told my story on LinkedIn and my profile impressions went up 4000%.
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A
Oh, my gosh.
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B
It's visibility. People want to hear your stories. It's. It's not a lot of work. Right. 15 minutes. There's literally a template for this that I posted on the. On LinkedIn, but humanize it.
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A
How powerful, how simple platform of choice. You know, it's like, where do you show up? Where's your authentic place to, like, connect with people? That's powerful. And thank you. Let's connect people to you. I mean, what's the best way for people to find. Dana Visionary Snyder, I made up your middle name for you many years ago. I love to bring it up.
- [15:11]
B
I mean, LinkedIn for sure. And then I would say, I mean, the biggest thing right now is the monthly giving summit. Registration is open, coming in February. And so that's beyond me go there because, oh, my gosh, the case studies of orgs that are coming out and sharing their stories, John, is just so cool. So cool.
- [15:28]
A
That's where it's at. And I feel like you pick it to be on my birthday every year, so I feel like it's kind of a small gift to me.
- [15:33]
B
February 25th. 26th.
- [15:35]
A
Yeah. I have two dates now. 26th. Thanks for celebrating with me.
- [15:39]
B
Happy early birthday.
- [15:41]
A
Always so good to see you, my friend.
- [15:42]
B
Thanks for being here. You too. Thanks, guys.