Your Monthly Donors Also Pay for Netflix. Act Like It.

Try this. Open your banking app and look at last month’s card payments. You’ll probably find a charity somewhere between Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime. Now think about how each of them treats you.

Netflix remembers what you watched last night and suggests what to watch next. Spotify sends you a year in review that you actually want to look at. Most charities send a receipt at the start of the year and an appeal at the end of it.

This matters because monthly donors don’t compare your charity with other charities. They compare it with everything else that takes money from their card every month. And when the budget gets tight, they decide what to keep.

What usually goes wrong

In our work with nonprofits, we see the same thing again and again. Nonprofits put a lot of effort into getting someone to sign up as a monthly donor. The ads are tested, the landing page is polished, the thank you page is lovely. But after the first payment, the donor mostly just gets charged. There’s very little that makes them feel part of something.

Subscription companies can’t work like that. If people cancel, they lose their business. So they have learned a lot about why people stay, and nonprofits can use much of it to improve monthly giving and recurring donor retention.

What charities can learn

People like to feel that what they pay for says something about them. Having Spotify isn’t really about the songs. It’s about being someone who loves music. Charities have something much better to offer here, because supporting children in crisis or protecting wildlife says a lot about a person. So it’s confusing when we call these people “monthly donors,” which only describes how they pay. Tell them what they are part of.

People also like to know they’re not alone. Most monthly donors have no idea how many others give with them. A simple message like “you and 40,000 other supporters made this happen” can help show them that their individual gift is part of something bigger, and it costs nothing.

Everyone likes to feel like an insider. Amex does this with perks and status, but charities can do it in a more honest way. Share news with monthly donors first. Send a short message from someone working in the field. Let them see the work up close.

Don’t send everyone the same thing. Netflix shows each person a different home screen. Many charities send the same emails to someone who joined during an emergency appeal and someone who signed up at a music festival. You usually already know why each person joined. Use it.

Make it easy to change the gift. With a streaming service you can pause or switch to a cheaper plan in a minute. If a donor’s only choice in a hard month is to cancel, they may cancel. If they can give less for a while, they have another way to remain a recurring donor.

And surprise people now and then. Nobody asked for Spotify Wrapped, but now people wait for it every year. A charity can send a note on the anniversary of someone’s first gift, or a short video from the place their money went. Small things like that are remembered.

Look at the right numbers

Many charities track two things: how many monthly donors they have and how much money they bring in. Subscription companies look closer. They check how many people stay each month, what happens in the first three months, and how many payments fail and never get fixed. When you look at your monthly giving data this way, you start to see when and why people leave, and you can do something about it.

You already have the hard part

This doesn’t mean charities should start handing out points and rewards. Donors would find that strange. But think about it this way. Netflix spends huge amounts of money to make people care about a TV show. Charities already have something people care about. They just need to show it to their donors more than once a year.