Purpose & Profit Club® – The Nonprofit Fundraising & Marketing Podcast · Christina Tzavaras Edwards

188: Monthly Giving Isn’t the Strategy. It’s the Result.

·27 min·1 clip

A form is not a strategy, a checkbox is not a campaign, and billing automation is not a loyalty plan.

The host opens by framing monthly giving as a way to smooth fundraising volatility. She says recurring revenue helps organizations avoid the familiar spike-and-slump pattern that shows up in back-heavy years, especially when a large share of funding arrives in the last couple months of the year. She broadens the idea beyond monthly gifts alone. A recurring cadence can also be quarterly, twice a year, or biweekly. The point is consistency, not a rigid calendar. She ties that consistency to sustainability and stability. Grant cycles and events are named as less reliable sources of predictability, and development teams are described as exhausted by the roller coaster. The episode also points to the size of the upside. If an organization is already bringing in recurring revenue, even a modest increase can matter. She uses a concrete example of a group with about $50,000 a year in recurring revenue. A 20 percent lift there is significant. That framing turns monthly giving into an operational opportunity. It is not just a feel-good donor category. She then challenges a common reflex. If the fundraising plan still starts with another event, something deeper is off. Her argument is that many nonprofits are not underfunded because people do not care. They are running campaigns that never built enough momentum. That shifts the problem from donor apathy to campaign design. She also warns against rushing the setup. Put the form on the site too fast and the launch can underperform. When that happens, confidence drops quickly. The next story becomes familiar and unhelpful. Leaders decide their donors are not the right kind of donors. They wonder whether they are asking too much. They talk themselves out of the strategy before it has a chance to work. The episode pushes back hard on that spiral. Recurring givers usually stay longer than one-time donors, and that longevity is the real reward. The host keeps returning to preparation before promotion: build momentum first, design retention first, then launch with intention. Monthly giving is not the strategy. It is the result.

As heard by us

Monthly giving reads as the payoff for tighter fundraising, not the opening move.

Purpose and Profit Club® treats monthly giving as something built, not stumbled into. The episode works best when it connects recurring support to steadier fundraising and less dependence on events or grant cycles.

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Why you'd press play

If recurring donors keep slipping away, this gives you the sequence to build monthly giving with intention.

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