Top 5 Questions to Ask Before starting an Regular Giving Program

Over the past few months I’ve been talking to a few different people from smaller organisations about regular giving.  As the advantages of an RG program as opposed to just cash gifts are clear, adding the option rightly comes up quite early in the life cycle of an organisation. So how do you know if you’re ready and what should you look into early on?  Here are the most basic questions I think you should ask yourself:

1)      Can we run an RG program? This is perhaps the most obvious point, but an incredibly important one.  Really it comes down to two things, capabilities and capacity.  You don’t want to be in a position that you’re trying to play catch up with systems when you’re already going.   My short and non-comprehensive check list of the basics would read.

• Capabilities: Do your systems allow for people to give reoccurring gifts? Can you track who has made them and who has not?  Can you give accurate tax receipts to people?  Is this an incredibly manual process that is going to take up all your time and stop your organisation achieving its main goals?
• People: Do you have the resources to administer it.  Related to the above point, most technology will require some level of human processing. In addition a regular donor is likely to feel more involved with your organisation and will have the right to have any questions or enquiries answered in a timely fashion.  Generally speaking the bigger and or newer the the program the more incoming issues your likely to have. So don’t try to grow too quickly.

2)      Do we have a decent proposition to recruit people as regular givers?  This isn’t necessarily hard to figure out, it can be your ongoing work and overall goals, just make sure it isn’t timed or too specific. A good formula to think of is “support x so we can y in years to come”, rather than “support x so we can z next year”.  Also work out how you’re going to communicate with your donors, if you don’t tell them how awesome they are and how much their money is helping, then they won’t give it to you for very long.

3)      What’s out recruitment strategy? I’m going to help you with this one, because the answer is always the same, start small and grow slowly.  If you grow slowly then you have the opportunity to work the teething problems you will inevitably encounter while they remain small in volume.  Secondly think about who  you are going to ask and when?  I’m also going to help you with this one.  Ask the people closest to you first then work your way out. Realistically the best people to ask to become Regular Givers are the ones who are already giving to you in some way.  Ask them in the most personal way in which you have capacity for. In the smallest of programs this could be a phone call from you. I know that you’re awesome so you’ll be really successful.  Then when you’ve asked the people who you know best, try some of the people who you know a bit, they might have asked for information from you but not given you money, most people won’t give until you ask them, so ask them. When you’ve exhausted everyone you know then you might want to think about recruiting people you don’t know.

4)      What should our recruitment budget be? Before answering this, go back to the previous questions and answer that.  Don’t be concerned with having a “budget” of any sort before you’ve tried all the stuff that’s essentially free. Then when those people have been exhausted work your way through all the cheaper stuff with a slightly wider circle of people who know you fairly well and when you are absolutely ready start speaking to people outside your circles.  Speak to a few agencies, because if you’re at a stage where you have to describe yourself as small in any sense you’re probably not going to be able to run a program in house. Get a few quotes and find someone you want to work with and who wants works with you. If you’re thinking of getting into F2F make sure you have a lot of money to invest (an excellent presentation by friend of the Blog Peter Coleman of Public Outreach Australia and new friend of the blog Alice suggested $300,000 as the minimum spend – which seems a valid figure, but understand that that doesn’t include what you would be laying out in resources on your own end and you will need to be planning to spend that year on year to make it really work).  Given this, it would be a really unusual circumstance where you’re looking to start F2F in the first few years you’ve been running regular giving.

5)      Am I holding back without good reason?  The biggest thing stopping us from pushing forward our programs is often our own fear of change.  A regular giving program will almost certainly give your organisation a huge amount of benefits, predictable income,  steady growth and so on.  However RG will not be the right decision and and for many more now will not be the right time. That said if you can see a glimmer of hope that you can make it work, stop reading this blog and start putting the pieces together to make it happen. A solid regular giving program is a wonderful thing.