BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, which supports a medical center in Vancouver, British Columbia, teamed with a consultant about 17 years ago to improve its overall fundraising. One of the biggest success stories from that partnership has been its recurring-gift program: Starting with only 400 monthly donors in 2001, the hospital foundation now benefits from the generosity of about 15,000.
The foundation’s work with Blakely, a consulting company in Aurora, Ontario, started because the foundation’s board mandated that it increase direct-response fundraising. The recurring-gift program grew thanks to patient, steady increases in investment and two types of appeals that aren’t often associated with monthly giving: telemarketing and door-to-door canvassing.
The latter technique is much more commonly used by charities in Canada than in the United States, notes Jas Jhooty, philanthropy officer at the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation. In Canada, she adds, door-to-door fundraising is especially embraced by organizations that work in international development, such as Unicef or the Red Cross.
Before joining forces with the consulting firm, the hospital foundation had only recruited monthly donors through direct-mail appeals, radio spots, and an annual telethon. The attrition rate was high, Jhooty says. “Most people would cancel after a year, part of the reason being the way the scripting was done,” she says. “We would say we need X number of donors for the year. Because there was a specific target, people thought, ‘They said I need to give $20 for a year, so I will. And after a year, I’m done.’”
To combat the problem of monthly donors dropping out, the current appeals ask for undesignated gifts. “We make a general case for support: making sure our doctors have the right equipment, and have funding for research,” Jhooty says. “We use a few examples, but that’s it.”
Paid Fundraisers
The foundation hired an agency to dispatch canvassers to handle the door-to-door appeals. The agency focused on certain neighborhoods in Vancouver and the nearby suburb of Surrey, and sometimes more distant communities whose demographics proved likely to generate support. An outside company also handled the phone appeals. For both types of fundraising, Jhooty says, “It’s a specific skill set. You can’t rely on volunteers.”
In 2017, BC Children’s Hospital Foundation was spending about $250 for every monthly donor it acquired through door-to-door appeals. With those donors giving an average of $20 per gift, the investment can be recouped in a year, says Maeve Strathy, a fundraising strategist at Blakely.
With telemarketing, it’s harder to turn a nondonor into a monthly supporter, she says. “But you can take someone who’s already giving and convert them to a monthly donor.” In those cases, the cost per new monthly donor runs about $300.
Today, BC Children’s Hospital Foundation is adding about 2,000 monthly donors a year, says Jhooty, and retains about 65 percent of those supporters year over year. “We have the highest attrition rate in the first year,” she says. If donors stay on past the first year, they are very likely to remain loyal.
To keep more monthly donors from bailing, Jhooty says, “We’re looking at how best to increase our stewardship in the first few months. Recurring supporters now receive a confirmation letter, a thank-you message from the foundation’s chief executive, a welcome packet, a thank-you postcard every fall, and a holiday card.”
How to Do It
Jhooty and Strathy offer advice for boosting your organization’s monthly-giving program:
Build your case within your organization. With boards and leaders, emphasize the financial payoff over time. “Monthly gifts are not big gifts, but they create significant lifetime value for your organization,” Strathy says. Donors who give at regular intervals wind up giving more over time than supporters who give once a year or irregularly. Furthermore, she says, “They’ll stay on your files an average of five additional years longer than one-time donors.”
Spread awareness among your supporters about monthly giving. Some people who believe in your cause may like the convenience of making donations at regular intervals, but not realize it’s an option, Jhooty says. Always include an explicit appeal or “at least a check box,” she says, on all fundraising communications.
Make monthly giving the default choice for donors. A charity’s online donation page should ask supporters to give monthly, making the decision to give a one-time donation a choice they must make. When Jhooty arrived at the foundation seven years ago, her first order of business was to make sure all the organization’s online appeals defaulted to a monthly-giving choice. “Some people later said, ‘Oh, I didn’t want to give monthly,’ but not many of them,” she says.
Start with baby steps, and experiment as you go. Try a couple of “monthly-first” campaigns to see how they go. Direct mail, Strathy notes, is “a low-risk way to see if there’s an appetite” for monthly giving.
If you’re a small charity, start modestly with telephone appeals. “If you have a small staff, there’s no harm in using staff to do calls,” Jhooty says. “If you’re someone who’s good on the phone, you could say, ‘I’ll make 20 calls a week and try to get donors to convert to monthly.’”
