By the middle of 2026, 26.4% of the people who gave to a US nonprofit in 2025 had given again, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which tracks retention year-to-date across a panel of organizations. The organizations in that dataset are the ones with donor software and someone to run it. A church or a food pantry with a volunteer treasurer is usually doing worse.
A monthly donor is the exception to that arithmetic. They give again next month without an appeal, an email or a December push. That is the entire case for recurring giving, and it is why a small organization should care about it more than a large one does.
New donors leave; repeat donors stay
The same project breaks retention down by donor type. By the end of Q2 2026, 11.3% of the donors first acquired in 2025 had given again, against 37.5% of repeat donors. The hard part is never the second gift from someone who has given five times. It is the second gift from someone who gave once.
A monthly gift turns a first-time donor into a repeat donor in thirty days, automatically. Nothing else you can do on a website comes close.
The FEP figures come from "a dataset contributed by several donor-management and online-fundraising software providers", per its methodology page, and the rates are year-to-date, so they rise through the year. Treat them as the shape of the problem, not a target for your organization.
How to ask
Three rules, in order of how often they are broken:
- Ask on the donate form, not on a separate page. A "Make this a monthly gift" checkbox next to the amount. The only person who will ever consider a monthly gift is someone already deciding to give, and they are on that form for about a minute.
- Ask for less than the one-off amounts. The one-off buttons might be $50, $100, $250. The monthly ask is $10, $15, $25. A monthly donor at $15 has given $180 by the end of the year, which is more than most one-off gifts, and almost nobody who would give $100 once will give $100 a month.
- Say what the monthly amount does, per month. "$15 a month keeps one child in the after-school program." The one-off outcomes are about a moment; the monthly outcome is about continuity, and the copy should say so.
What the page has to say
Monthly donors have two worries, and the page answers both in a sentence each. "You can stop at any time, just reply to any receipt and we will cancel it" removes the fear of being trapped. "You will get a receipt each month, and one statement in January" removes the fear of tax-time paperwork. Then stop.
The card is the only practical method for a recurring gift; a bank transfer or a check cannot renew on its own. Make sure your card path is live and tested before you turn monthly on. The donate page post covers the rest of the form.
How to keep them
- Every renewal gets a receipt. Each monthly charge is a separate gift and needs its own acknowledgment; donor receipts and thank-you emails covers the rule. A receipt is also the monthly reminder that they are still helping, which is the point.
- One update a quarter, to monthly donors only. Not an appeal. A short note on what their money did since the last one. This is the email that stops cancellations, and it is the one almost nobody sends.
- Never upgrade-ask in the first year. Someone giving $15 a month will consider $25 after they have seen a year of updates, not after three months.
- When one cancels, write to them. Not to win them back; to thank them. A card expiring is the most common reason a monthly gift ends, and a warm note is how you find out that it was not a decision.
In Webkio, a monthly gift is a checkbox on the same donate block as the one-off amounts, charged through your own Stripe account as a subscription. Each renewal is recorded as a new gift with its own receipt and counts toward the goal, and when a monthly donor cancels you get an email saying so, which is the moment for the thank-you note. If your site runs on something else, check that its donation form actually offers recurring card gifts; many only take one-off payments, and no amount of copy fixes that.
FAQ
What is a good monthly donation amount to suggest?
Lower than your one-off buttons: $10, $15 and $25 are typical for a small organization. The monthly donor's value is in the twelve gifts, not the size of one.
Should monthly be the default on the donate form?
Pre-selecting monthly raises the share of monthly gifts and lowers the number of people who complete the form at all. For a small organization that needs both, leave one-off as the default and make the monthly checkbox impossible to miss.
How do monthly donors cancel?
They need an easy answer or they will not sign up. "Reply to any receipt and we will stop it" is the simplest promise, and then you honor it the same day by cancelling the subscription in your payment account.
Do monthly donors need a receipt every month?
Yes. Each charge is a separate contribution with its own date and amount. An automatic receipt per renewal is the only practical way to do it.