Do You Have a Button Or a Monthly Giving Program? (Findings From 400+ Audits)

One October, just before I gave a keynote at an event, a woman walked up to me with my book in her hands. She said her team was changing their monthly giving program. I asked how they were building monthly giving into their year-end asks. She stood there silent, then said, “Oh my gosh, we haven’t put anything into our year end.”

She was doing the work and still had no plan for year end. Her story comes to mind whenever I talk about how to build a monthly giving program that keeps growing after the gift is made.

In this episode of Missions to Movements, recorded on my patio in Atlanta as the fall air turned crisp, I shared what more than 400 nonprofits learned when they audited their monthly giving programs, along with four fixes to make before year end.

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Where These Findings Come From

Earlier this year, at webinars and events, I asked nonprofits to fill out the Monthly Giving Interactive Audit. I wanted to know what actually stops monthly giving programs from growing, and more than 400 audits later, I have an answer.

The audit is one of two sources behind this episode. In one week this year, I also spoke with more than 8,300 nonprofit leaders about monthly giving. Many of them did not know their average monthly donor lifetime value, and the words I heard over and over to describe their programs were stagnant, overwhelming, and nonexistent. So I built a calculator, and almost 900 people have taken it.

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What 400+ Audits Reveal About Monthly Giving Programs

What surprised me most is that the donation form is in good shape. In the audits, 76% of nonprofits can set up a monthly gift in under three clicks, and monthly giving sits on the donate page for most of them. Technology has come a long way. The trouble starts after the gift happens.

Among the nonprofits that completed the audit, 86% have no plan to increase what monthly donors give and 86% do not track how many one-time donors become monthly donors. In the same audits, 84% do not acknowledge monthly giving anniversaries, and 82% treat monthly giving as a checkout option rather than a flagship program. Most teams build the form because they have to, and then the work stops. The program never gets built.

That matters most in December, which brings in about 40% of annual online one-time revenue for the average nonprofit, with appeals, mail, events, and galas all happening at once. That figure may not match your organization exactly, but the pattern is familiar to most of us. As you plan year end, decide whether you are building toward December 31 or toward a sustainable 2027.

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How to Build a Monthly Giving Program With a Name and a Home

A form is something a donor clicks. A program gives people a reason to join and a reason to stay, and it has a name, a home, and a plan for what happens before the gift and after it. Those three pieces are the core of how to build a monthly giving program that lasts.

The name comes first. In my book, I wrote about The Adventure Project, which calls its monthly giving program the Collective, and the top of its page invited visitors to join 381 incredible people, a number that may have changed since. When you read that, you want to be number 382, and a name gives donors something to belong to.

The home comes next: a dedicated landing page that explains what a gift does every month and who is already in the program. When I worked with Heroes for Children, we rebuilt their monthly giving program from the ground up, with new website copy built around identity and forms built around a specific recurring ask. A year later, their monthly recurring revenue grew from less than $1,000 to more than $7,000. The recipe was simple: a name, a home, and a clear, consistent ask.

Treat the program as a flagship in your year-end appeals, and bring it up in board meetings. Flagship programs get planned, and checkout options get forgotten.

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Know Your Monthly Donor Lifetime Value

Knowing your number is the second fix, and I wrote about it in a recent LinkedIn newsletter. Among the almost 900 people who used my calculator, the average monthly gift was about $36.

Many of us look at $36 and think it is small. Pair it with an 85% to 90% retention rate, and a monthly donor is worth more than $2,000 over their lifetime. That is the amount you can afford to spend to acquire them, welcome them, and keep them, and it leaves out additional one-time gifts and planned gifts.

Once you see that number, the easiest raise in fundraising comes into view, and almost nobody is asking for it: an upgrade. Lucy Madden, CEO of Letters to a Pre-Scientist and a member of my mini Monthly Giving Mastermind, runs a program with more than 500 monthly donors and had never run a dedicated upgrade campaign. This summer she sent a full email series, and she shared the results from just the first email with our group: six new monthly donors, seven upgraded gifts, and four one-time gifts. That is a huge result from a single email.

Tracking how many one-time donors become monthly donors is the number most nonprofits are missing, and it still surprises me that 86% do not have it. We have the tools for it, including AI tools that can pull the figure in minutes. What has been missing is the question, because most of us have never asked it. Without that count, you cannot tell what is working.

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Find the Next Monthly Donors You Haven’t Asked

Your next monthly donors may already be in your orbit, waiting for someone to ask. I think of it as a “who haven’t I asked” problem, and there are three pools to look at.

The first pool is people who already know you: one-time donors who have given more than once, event guests, and volunteers. Pull the list and start counting. Someone in my Monthly Giving Summit chat told me they uncovered a hidden group of monthly donors this way, because nobody had asked those supporters before.

The second pool is people your believers know. Think about advocates, board members, longtime donors, and volunteers, and look for ways to grow that circle.

The third pool is people you can reach through ads and partnerships, which means borrowing an audience. This year I helped launch The Next Meal, Tony Robbins’ monthly giving program for his 100 Billion Meals Challenge, and the team is running ads at a very low cost per acquisition using Tony’s audience. Think about who your supporters identify with, and partner with those people by showcasing them in your content and targeting their audience.

International Justice Mission UK (IJM UK) ran a hand-raiser ads campaign that I wrote about in my book. People landed on a page where they could raise their hand and say “I’m in.” The campaign grew IJM UK’s email list by 71%, more than 9,000 people in three months, and a surprising number of them signed up to give regularly on the thank-you page.

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Keep Monthly Donors With Milestones and Stories

As the audits showed, 84% of nonprofits do not acknowledge monthly giving anniversaries, so one year, two years, and three years go by with no thank-you and no story. I have given to Dressember for nearly six years, roughly $24.72 a month, and that makes me a relationship, which is how your monthly donors need to feel too.

The moments that build that feeling are small and personal, and you already have the data for them. Welcome people when they say yes. Send a story at one month and at six months that shows what their gift has done, with no ask attached. Name each milestone, whether it is a dollar amount or a length of time, tell donors you see them, and thank them for staying.

Someone recently asked me whether it makes sense to capture a LinkedIn URL or an Instagram handle so you can reach donors in more than one place. There is room to get creative about the information you collect so your outreach feels more personal.

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What This Means for Your Organization Right Now

Many people are angry and frustrated about what is happening in the world right now, myself included, and they are looking for something to do about it. Your nonprofit has the people, the relationships, and the knowledge to work on exactly the things they care about. Invite them to join you, and monthly giving gives them a way to do it.

This week, open your website on your phone and go to wherever you donate, the way a stranger would. Ask yourself whether you would join the monthly giving option or whether it looks like a checkbox, then write down three things you would change.

To see where you stand against these stats, take the Monthly Giving Interactive Audit, which takes five to 10 minutes, and run the free lifetime value calculator at monthlygivingbuilder.com to see what your average monthly donor is worth. When you know your gaps, the Monthly Giving Builder walks you through the five steps I teach to set up what is missing: a name, a page, an ask plan, donation emails, and a retention plan. The free, virtual Monthly Giving Summit takes place on February 25, and registration is open if you want to meet about 6,000 other nonprofit peers working on this too.

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FAQ: How to Build a Monthly Giving Program

What is the difference between a monthly giving program and a monthly giving button?

A monthly giving button is a checkout option on a donate page. A monthly giving program gives donors a reason to join and a reason to stay, with a name, a dedicated landing page, and a plan for what happens before and after the gift. The Adventure Project calls its program the Collective, and Heroes for Children grew its monthly recurring revenue from less than $1,000 to more than $7,000 after rebuilding around a name, a home, and a clear ask. In the Monthly Giving Interactive Audit, 82% of nonprofits treated monthly giving as a checkout option rather than a flagship program. For anyone learning how to build a monthly giving program, the first step is giving it a name and a home.

What are the biggest gaps in nonprofit monthly giving programs?

More than 400 nonprofits completed the Monthly Giving Interactive Audit from Positive Equation, and the biggest gaps appeared after the gift. 76% could set up a monthly gift in under three clicks, yet 86% had no plan to increase what monthly donors give, 86% did not track how many one-time donors become monthly donors, and 84% did not acknowledge monthly giving anniversaries. These results point to programs built around the donation form with little planning for what comes next.

How much is a monthly donor worth?

Almost 900 people have used the Monthly Giving Builder lifetime value calculator at monthlygivingbuilder.com, and the average monthly gift they entered was about $36. With an 85% to 90% retention rate, that adds up to over $2,000 in lifetime value per monthly donor, before counting additional one-time gifts or planned gifts. That figure is the amount an organization can afford to spend to acquire, welcome, and keep each donor.

Where can a nonprofit find new monthly donors?

Start with people who already know your organization, including repeat one-time donors, event guests, and volunteers, then look at people your believers know, and finally at ads and partnerships that borrow another audience. International Justice Mission UK (IJM UK) grew its email list by 71%, more than 9,000 people in three months, with a hand-raiser ads campaign. The Next Meal, Tony Robbins’ monthly giving program for the 100 Billion Meals Challenge, is running ads at a very low cost per acquisition using his audience.

How should nonprofits thank monthly donors?

According to the Monthly Giving Interactive Audit from Positive Equation, 84% of nonprofits do not acknowledge monthly giving anniversaries. A stronger approach marks the welcome, the one-month and six-month points, and each anniversary with a short story about what the donor’s gift has done, with no ask attached. Collecting a LinkedIn URL or Instagram handle on the donation form can give nonprofits more ways to personalize that outreach.