Sustainer/Monthly Giving Program Migration

Elisabeth Platt · January 2017

Does anyone have any examples or best practices in getting your donors to update their monthly giving information in Luminate? We would like to transition our monthly giving program to Luminate. We currently manage the program offline (except for a few donors that have signed-up since we began using Luminate). We need to encourage our current donors to go to Luminate to "sign-up" as a monthly donor. Any ideas? Thanks.

Ami Defesche · February 2017

Elisabeth Platt:

Does anyone have any examples or best practices in getting your donors to update their monthly giving information in Luminate? We would like to transition our monthly giving program to Luminate. We currently manage the program offline (except for a few donors that have signed-up since we began using Luminate). We need to encourage our current donors to go to Luminate to "sign-up" as a monthly donor. Any ideas? Thanks.

Hey Elisabeth! I'm highlighting your question in this week's Luminate Community Update to get you some more answers, but until some answers start coming in I thought you might be interested in this webinar coming up next week: https://community.blackbaud.com/events/item/1/1308 It might have some valuable tips and ideas for your situation.

Lisa Slawinski · February 2017

Elisabeth Platt:

Does anyone have any examples or best practices in getting your donors to update their monthly giving information in Luminate? We would like to transition our monthly giving program to Luminate. We currently manage the program offline (except for a few donors that have signed-up since we began using Luminate). We need to encourage our current donors to go to Luminate to "sign-up" as a monthly donor. Any ideas? Thanks.

Hi Elisabeth,

Great question! We are pretty new to Luminate as well, but haven't thought about asking our offline "recurring" donors (our Development Director doesn't consider them sustaining donors since they send a check, thereby depending on the donor to give), so I'd love to hear what others suggest. I have suggested to him that we send a letter via snail mail to encourage them to give online, but he hasn't warmed to the idea yet (we're also a young organization, so some development plans are still emerging).

Amy Daly · February 2017

Elisabeth Platt:

Does anyone have any examples or best practices in getting your donors to update their monthly giving information in Luminate? We would like to transition our monthly giving program to Luminate. We currently manage the program offline (except for a few donors that have signed-up since we began using Luminate). We need to encourage our current donors to go to Luminate to "sign-up" as a monthly donor. Any ideas? Thanks.

Hi Elizabeth - We recently went through this process, with a goal of converting as many monthly donors as possible to the LO system (in the past, gifts were made either through a batch process in the Raisers Edge or via paper checks entered manually as received). I think it has been more difficult than we anticipated, but we're making steady progress. A few notes:

We created a specific donation form that was specifically for existing members transitioning to LO. This allowed us to create more targeted autoresponder messages and also make sure we "turned off" automatic processing/batching for gifts made via the old system so that the donor was not double-charged.
We host an annual event for our monthly giving club donors, so we used this event as an opportunity to announce the new platform and sell current members on its benefits (easier to use, direct access to change gift info, etc.) We also announced that all members who converted to the new system by a specific date would be entered in a drawing for a gift basket.
Following the event, we sent a personalized email to all current monthly giving club members, again to announce the new platform and sell current members on its benefits. The email also included a link to the custom donation page and information about the prize drawing. We sent a follow-up/reminder email to donors who had not yet converted to LO a few weeks later.
We included a short article about the LO platform as a new "benefit" for monthly donors in an email newsletter during this same timeframe.
Our annual stewardship/upgrade request mailing was a couple of months later, so we highlighted the new platform (again, emphasizing the benefits of switching to the donor) in the mailing.
We continue to use all expired/declined card phone calls as an opportunity to encourage people to convert.

While I think we have done fairly well at converting existing donors who are highly engaged, it has not been easy to convert donors who are "unplugged" (ie. not highly engaged in events, volunteerism, or other). We're six months in, and 173 of 519 members are now making gifts via Luminate. Hope this is helpful!

Sustainer/Monthly Giving Program Migration

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