Animal Welfare Professionals

We will be doing a formal launch of our Monthly Giving program in February.  To date, this has been a low-level, add-on ask for us - literally tacked onto our bi-annual direct mail appeals which shows in the small number of folks giving to us this way.  In looking to grow this cohort of donors significantly this year, we plan a formal launch of the program with incentives, recognition, etc. 

I'm wondering if anyone can provide feedback on defining the correct audience for this launch.  For instance, I don't want to convert our regular (yearly, bi-annual, event, etc.) donors into monthly donors.  I want to use our considerable network to find new folks.

So, a bit of a challenging question but I'm hoping this considerable group of knowledgeable people can help.  Thanks.

#FundraisingandDevelopment

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Jody Purdom
Development Director
Pets Lifeline
CA
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What we have done is look at the demographics of our current donors to determine which audiences have the best chance of contributing to us.   I'm not sure where you plan to access your prospective donors that you are going to aim the monthly donor program toward.  Are you buying email lists in your region or are you aiming at your current followers who are not yet donors or ???   We decided to purchase some email lists for a variety of upscale zip codes in our service area.  We were able to cull that list down to primarily female donors, ages 30-75 with an estimated household income of over $50K (our current donor demographics).   Again when we started this program it was first informational about our work, then showed success stories of our work, then offered them tours of our facility,  then asked them to contribute and offered the one-time or monthly options via PayPal and Venmo.  We continue to keep in contact with the entire list via routine emails. These emails were COLD CALLS so we had to build up a rapport before seeking $$.  We've had a decent response so far (8 months in) and feel buying very specific lists has proven worthwhile for us.  We kept our budget to around $5K and have returns that will surpass that amount by the end of 2025 via new monthly donors

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Bruce Thorsen
President, Board of Directors
Purrfect Match Cat Rescue
Millington TN
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