It seems like everything these days is by subscription model – just think Netflix or Hulu. Why? It’s because technology has made such automatic monthly payment systems easier than ever before.
It’s the same in the nonprofit world. New technology has made recurring charitable giving even easier, both for the nonprofit organization itself and especially for the donors who support their favorite nonprofit.
For the nonprofit organization (such as the Hypersomnia Foundation), recurring donations are extremely beneficial from an operational perspective, as it allows the nonprofit to improve its long-range planning and decision-making. Plus, recurring donations help with an organization’s cash flow needs, since most one-time gifts are made in December, and, as we all know, there are 11 other months in the year.
For donors, monthly/recurring giving has become extremely popular. Donors usually cite 3 main reasons why they like to make monthly or recurring gifts:
- It’s more convenient. Monthly/recurring payments can be set up through pre-authorized check (ACH) or electronic funds transfer (EFT) from a bank account, through a credit card transaction, or through charitable donations made automatically through their paychecks at work. Create it once, and you’re done. (And it’s easy to increase, decrease, pause, or stop your gift.)
- It’s a way to really increase the impact of a gift. For example, $20 may not sound like a lot, but $20 every month equals $240 a year, which is a substantial gift to a nonprofit like the HF.
- It’s a great budgeting tool for donors, who can spread out their gift over the course of the year and lessen the impact to their bottom line.
A number of the HF’s supporters are recurring donors, including some donors who themselves have idiopathic hypersomnia (IH). Here’s how one of them describes her decision to make monthly gifts to the Foundation:
“I donate monthly to the HF as an investment in my health and the health of others with IH and related disorders. When I was first diagnosed with IH in 2011, there was almost no information available on the internet about this rare disorder. Since that time, the HF has filled this void in a big way! They provide vetted medical information about IH for patients and doctors alike, resources for students with IH, personal journey stories so we know we’re not alone, and much more. The HF’s patient registry is making it easier for researchers to study us and eventually find better treatments for us. Pharmaceutical companies interested in developing sleep medicines now have the HF and IH on their radar! But the HF needs our donations (especially monthly donations, which help ease budget planning) to operate and provide these great services to our hypersomnia community. So I donate monthly, knowing this investment is one of the most important ones I can make.”
We’d like to hear from more of our donors to learn “What’s your reason for giving?” Please email us at to share your thoughts.