Why Monthly Recurring Donors Matter: Short term effort = long term gain
By Julie Jehly, Founder, JJ Crowdfunding Advisors There’s a lot of buzz right now about securing monthly recurring donors and it’s a fundraising trend in 2024 for good reason. Sure it can take time to implement a program or give your current one a tune up, but as the statistics from three sources below show, dedicating resources is worth the short term effort. From a March 2024 Bloomerang webinar – The cost to secure a new donor is 2-3 times more than the initial donation amount The new donor cost is 5 times more than maintaining a recurring donor Renewal response rates are 20-30 times higher than acquisition response rates Here are some reasons from Neon One and their April 2024 report summarizing five years of recurring giving patterns from 2018-2022. They found – The average nonprofit’s recurring donor base grew 127% and has a 78% retention rate has a lifetime of just over 8 years That 50% of recurring donors gave additional gifts Individual recurring donors gave about $949.19 per year – $79.10/month According to M+R Benchmarks, here’s how the number of monthly donors has increased over the last three years –