The timing of a donor’s last gift is a well-known predictor of their next gift—with donors who have given more recently much more likely to give again.  But we were wondering if the same was true for monthly gift conversions.  Would the timing of a donor’s last one-time gift be predictive of when they choose to convert to monthly giving?

The answer was a resounding yes!

To get to the bottom of the question, we looked at the timing of the monthly sign-ups for one of our clients over the course of a year and a half.  We measured how closely a donor’s monthly gift conversion followed a one-time gift, and the results were unequivocal.

 

We found that 25 percent of monthly gift sign-ups happened within two months of the donor’s last one-time gift—and 60 percent happened within six months.  This is for a client who has monthly gift conversion efforts happening throughout the year, so the results were not skewed by the timing of their monthly invitation campaigns.

The lesson from this research?  Do not delay asking a donor who just gave a single gift to convert to monthly giving.   Your best prospects for monthly gift conversion are most likely those donors who have just given you a one-time gift.