Network for Good

Thinking about monthly giving is one of the smartest things you can do as a fundraiser. It would be wonderful for nonprofits to be thanking people every month instead of asking them for donations every few weeks. How do you do that? How do you turn your annual givers into monthly supporters?

1. Make sure your donation form offers a recurring-giving option. 2. Revisit the language you use in your appeals. 3. Package the appeal in an exciting way. 4. Don't be afraid to ask for a monthly gift after someone completes a one-time transaction.

It seems to me that monthly giving programs should be a natural for small, even tiny nonprofits. Yet, many in the U.S. still don't use this form of giving. It may be that they think it is just too complicated. I just recently whizzed through "Monthly Giving: The Sleeping Giant," by Erica Waasdorp, and was gratified by her down-to-earth approach. Here are some tips that I gleaned from Waasdorp's book and her webinar with Pamela Grow.

In the September 2008 issue, Katya Andresen, then vice president of marketing at Network for Good, advised readers to "be sure your donors know exactly what the benefits of giving are" in her To the Point column, "What They Get Is Key to Why They Give."

With Katya Andresen exiting stage left from the nonprofit blogging world and taking over as CEO of ePals, we share some of the tremendous fundraising tips she has been gracious enough to pass on to our readers through our various publications.

This detailed study by PayPal and Network for Good unveils important mobile fundraising market trends.  You’ll learn great insights on how mobile is shaping giving, as well as practical tactics to be able to capture more donations on mobile devices.

No matter the communication channel, donors must be interested in the messages fundraisers send. In July 2008, FundRaising Success Editorial Advisory Board member Katya Andresen, chief strategy officer at Network for Good, interviewed fellow FS Editorial Advisory Board member Kivi Leroux Miller, president of Nonprofit Marketing Guide, on how to take your newsletter "From Snoring to Soaring."

The team here at Network for Good has been working on our new mobile-friendly donation services lately so I thought I’d pass on our tips for making your site more mobile-friendly. You don’t need a special mobile version of your site or an custom-built app to improve how mobile visitors experience your site overall. With a few simple design tweaks, you can make your nonprofit website much more usable on a mobile device — and improve your visitors’ experience across all platforms.

Adjusting to mobile is about more than just making your website readable on a smartphone or tablet. It's about adjusting and helping donors and supporters who are mobile, as in moving around, checking their phones in public places, and responding to destractions. It's not just about the tech, but also the human behavior in this always online world.

While technology has opened all sorts of new possibilities for fundraisers, there is no technological cure-all for the fundraising sector, no matter what anyone may attempt to lead you to believe. Fundraising still takes work — and hard work at that.

In this October 2008 column — "Oh, No, Not Again!" — Katya Andresen, chief operating officer and chief strategy officer of Network for Good, says fundraisers should ditch those annual-campaign cliches and try something new.