Welcome to Cultivating Generosity,

a Rad Philanthropy Newsletter

Welcome to Cultivating Generosity, the newsletter to help you flourish as a values-driven and joyful nonprofit and advancement professional. I'm here to help you connect to you and your community's purpose. I'll share tactical information to engage your supporters around the acts of giving (time, talent, treasure, ties, testimony), ask you to reflect deeply about the why behind your programs, provide sector news, and we'll have a fun time while we're at it.

Today's issue is all about using predictions to inform your strategy. You'll learn about:

• Wishful thinking vs planning

• Monthly donors

• Using cheese to tell the future

   

Enjoy!

Rad Reflections Wishful Thinking Vs Planning

Since it's summer time, you may be busy planning for year-end or the entirety of your FY25. Let's spot the differences between wishful thinking and planning, to help set you up for success and mitigate disappointment for the year.

Setting donor goals by increasing what you did last year by some percentage

This is wishful thinking unless you have somehow increased your resources, your reach, your engagement, or have analytics to show why this is expected.

Adding more programs or responsibilities because they are great ideas

This is wishful thinking if you have not built the capacity or added resources to your team over the last year, but may be planning if you have more available staff time or have increased your efficiency around programs in some way.

Planning for fewer tasks to mitigate curveballs

The unexpected happens every year, so planning up to 85-90% of your team's capacity may help you with those surprises. This is planning if your leaders recognize trends and prepare staff accordingly, but can be wishful thinking if your culture is rigid around adjusting plans and "getting it done" no matter the cost to staff. How well you are able to retain your staff and your ability to predict this rate will also help determine which mode you fall in.

Learn Monthly Donors

There has been data for years that shows that recurring donors 1) have a higher lifetime value (the donation amount over their life) and 2) higher retention rate. Those are the holy grails of fundraising - and yet, many fundraising shops still have not adopted this strategy.

With the proliferation of subscription services, more fundraisers have made the argument that monthly giving should be inborn for donors. And as fundraising maven Louis Diez has researched and described, a focused monthly giving program can outstrip your one-time donors. But he also says this isn't easy, which I agree with.

So, if you want to seriously consider growing monthly giving programs, here are a few basic questions as you begin to evaluate your readiness:

1. What are your technical abilities? Does your gift processing platform make it easy on the back-end to process recurring gifts, or would an increase in these create a burden on your team that you are not resourced to manage?

2. Can you create and manage multiple gift forms and donor journeys? A recurring ask may not always be appropriate, like with a first time or memorial donor. Can you support multiple types of forms and future solicitations that acknowledge these differences?

3. Are you able to steward these donors in an appropriate way? Or are you going to send them the exact same auto-email month after month when their gift is processed?

If you are confident that your team can address these key questions satisfactorily, you may be in a position to implement this strategy.

Playtime with Perry Divination with Cheese

Did this newsletter leave you with any burning questions about fundraising or nonprofit? Drop me a line at perry@radphilanthropy.com and I'll help you out.

Interested in working with me? Book a session with my Calendly link.

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