Missions to Movements
This isn't just another nonprofit podcast - it's your weekly invitation to think bigger, take bold risks, and create lasting change in an ever-evolving social impact landscape. Meet Dana Snyder, your guide through the evolving landscape of nonprofit innovation. She's on a mission to help change-makers like you push the boundaries of what's possible in nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Each week, Missions to Movements serves as your personal mastermind session, delivering actionable insights and bold strategies that challenge traditional nonprofit thinking. Dive into revolutionary approaches to digital fundraising, discover how to build magnetic monthly giving programs that create lasting donor relationships, and learn to amplify your voice as a thought leader in the social good space. Whether you're reimagining your organization's impact or forging game-changing partnerships, you'll find the ideas, insights, and inspiration to take your mission further than you've ever imagined. Ready to turn your mission into a movement?
Missions to Movements
Gift For You: My 4-Part Monthly Giving Email Welcome Series Using Flodesk (Done For You!)
Today, I'm sharing something I normally reserve for my paid mastermind clients: a ready-to-implement, 4-part email welcome series designed specifically for monthly donors. Even better? It’s built in Flodesk so you can download and customize it immediately for your organization!
When you’re capturing new monthly donors, are you missing a crucial opportunity to take them through a well-timed sequence?
I’ll break down the four strategically timed emails that I recommend sending: an immediate thank you, a personal message from leadership, an impact story that demonstrates their support in action, and a 1-month anniversary celebration. Each message serves a beautiful purpose in strengthening donor connection.
And using Zapier, you can seamlessly connect this entire sequence with popular donation platforms like Givebutter, FundraiseUp, Classy, and iDonate.
Your monthly donors are the backbone of sustainable funding - I can’t wait to see how you use these email templates. Click HERE to download them for FREE.
Resources & Links
Download my FREE 4-part Monthly Giving Email Welcome Series templates here. And if you need implementation support, book a VIP Intensive with me.
If you're interested in incorporating text messaging with 99% open rates into your donor engagement strategy, join me and the team at Tatango for a FREE webinar on March 26th at 1:30pm ET.
Try out my favorite email marketing software, Flodesk, and get 50% off your first year!
This show is presented by LinkedIn for Nonprofits. We’re so grateful for their partnership. Explore their incredible suite of resources and discounts for nonprofit teams here.
Monthly Giving Awareness Week is May 12-16! Join me, RKD Group, and GivingTuesday for 5 days of FREE resources to help you launch and grow recurring gifts.
Are you still dreaming about building your monthly giving program or refreshing your current one? Applications are now open for my “done with you” Monthly Giving Mastermind. 4 spots are open and we start in July. Click here to apply.
My book, The Monthly Giving Mastermind, is here! Grab a copy here and learn my framework to build, grow, and sustain subscriptions for good.
Let's Connect!
When someone commits, they say yes to being a monthly donor, they've made a significant decision right, like they're essentially saying I believe in your mission enough to support it consistently, month after month after month, and this is a pivotal moment in your donor relationship. However, many times, we miss a really crucial opportunity by not having a thoughtful welcome process in place for these really valuable supporters in building this relationship. I'm Dana Snyder, your host of the Missions to Movements podcast, and my path to philanthropy has been anything but traditional. This show is your weekly mastermind, designed to give you the ideas, insights and support you need to push the boundaries of what's been done before in nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Whether you're looking to build a magnetic monthly giving program, elevate your personal brand or create partnerships that amplify your impact, this space is for you. I'll bring you solo episodes and conversations with industry leaders offering actionable strategies and fresh perspectives that will move you and your mission forward. Let's turn your mission into a movement. Hey there, welcome back to Missions to Movements. Today, we are focusing on something I am truly passionate about. I give you one guess Transforming your one-time donors into committed monthly supporters who become the backbone of your organization's mission and I recently celebrated my birthday on St Patrick's Day, and it got me thinking about giving rather than receiving. And so with St Patrick's Day and it got me thinking about giving rather than receiving. And so with St Patrick's Day just past us traditionally a time associated with good fortune I wanted to share something hopefully valuable with you. I have developed over time a complete, ready to implement four-part email welcome series designed specifically for your monthly donors. I typically share this in my monthly giving mastermind group, but the best part about today is it's entirely free for you to use and adapt for your organization. And so first I want to talk about why this matters. I'm going to talk about the logic behind the four-part email series. I'm going to talk about the platform. I'm literally sharing the workflow with you in an email platform to use and download. It's all ready to go. You just have to customize it. If you want to skip ahead and you're just eager to look at it, you can click the link in the show notes, or it is going to be accessible on my website, positiveecclesiacom, right at the top during this celebratory period. So let's discuss first of all why this matters. When someone commits, they say yes to being a monthly donor, they've made a significant decision right, like they're essentially saying I believe in your mission enough to support it consistently, month after month after month, and this is a pivotal moment in your donor relationship. However, many times we miss a really crucial opportunity by not having a thoughtful welcome process in place for these really valuable supporters in building this relationship, and a lot of times it's just because we already have so much going on. We're trying to do it manually, and if we don't have this proper acknowledgement and engagement in the very beginning, we're risking that amazing beautiful high retention rate that we want. And this group usually is your most reliable supporter base, and so I understand the challenges of doing this.
Speaker 1:Like creating an effective email sequence, takes time that you simply don't have in your already packed schedules. So this is why, precisely, I've created this resource for you. The workflow the four-part email series is completely built for you in Flowdesk. I love, love, love this email platform. If you receive any of my emails, that's what I use. The implementation is super straightforward and it's strategically designed to establish trust with your new monthly donors from day one, to demonstrate the tangible impact of their ongoing support and to really foster engagement that extends beyond that initial transaction of the donation. What makes these emails particularly effective is their simplicity. They're text-based, they're authentic communication. This really feels personal rather than promotional, even though they're coming from your email platform. The look and the feel and the format to them and how I have them designed specifically is that it should feel like it's coming from a person. There's one email where there's an option to include a brief video, which even adds more of a human touch to your outreach. So these messages are all crafted to feel like they're coming from a real person who genuinely values the donor's commitment on the other end. So let me walk you through the sequence that I have developed, the logic behind the four-part email welcome series.
Speaker 1:So email number one is the welcome and thank you email. It is sent 10 minutes after the gift. Now this is delivered shortly after their initial donation, with an intentional 10-minute delay. So the timing is deliberate. Their payment receipt will have already arrived and this buffer, basically, is preventing an overwhelm of their inbox Because if you think about it normally, you would want it to be sent immediately. Then there's an email receipt. There might be something else and already they're bombarded and they're just gonna be like, okay, they're all the same thing and not look at the importance of those separate welcome email. So the content and the timing is straightforward, but it's meaningful, it's a sincere thank you, it's a warm welcome. There's no asks, just genuine appreciation.
Speaker 1:Then email number two is a founder ED message. This is going out one day later. So with it arriving one day later, it allows the donors like fully processing their commitment. This is a personal message from your executive director or a founder, really connecting the donor's support directly to your organization's mission and vision. This is the ideal place for a brief video. It does not need professional production value. I actually think it's better if it doesn't have it. It's just really authentic communication that's helping donors connect with your leadership.
Speaker 1:Email number three is the impact story email. This is coming two weeks after their initial commitment, so you're demonstrating exactly how monthly support translates into real impact. This could be a compelling beneficiary story, a meaningful statistic, a testimonial that really illustrates the tangible difference that their support is making. So this email again, we're sending it technically 13 days after day one and this is reinforcing that decision to commit monthly by showing their support in action when it matters most. Then email number four, probably my favorite, is the one-month anniversary email. This marks their first full month as a monthly donor milestone Definitely worth acknowledging. It's coming at day 30. So this is going to be like 16 days after the last email. It's celebrating their commitment Again, it reinforces the significance of their support and it also provides an opportunity to deeper their engagement. So this is sharing like what's going to happen.
Speaker 1:Next. You're going to receive exclusive updates, maybe an invitation to a donor community, and then I also I think this might be an email three, where it's asking for a reply about like why did you decide to give? What really inspired you about our mission? You can either do this in email three or email four, where you're asking for a response. So that's the setup of the four part emails. Now the beautiful part of it is that the real value in this welcome series is in automation, ensuring that every new monthly donor receives this thoughtful onboarding without requiring any manual intervention each time. The only thing I want to put an asterisk on is if you want to create your email around the impact, where you're updating it on maybe a quarterly basis so that stays fresh, you can go in and just update that part.
Speaker 1:I have included in this download comprehensive instructions on how connecting your donation platform works to Flowdesk using Zapier. Zapier is an integration tool that allows two different systems or more to communicate seamlessly, and so this automation works with virtually any donation platform that integrates with Zapier. In my document, I've provided specific setup guides for several popular platforms GiveButter, fundraiseup, classy and iDonate but again, the process is adaptable to the most modern donation systems with Zapier. So if I did not list them, you can still look up how to do this Once you have it configured. So again, I'm sending you a link. When you click on it, it is completely built out with the timing, email subject lines. You just have to edit them in Flowdesk. It's ready to go. You just need to make sure that you create your segments and connect it to your donation platform.
Speaker 1:So once this is configured, this automation ensures that every new monthly donor automatically receives your welcome sequence no manual data entry, no exports, no imports, nothing, nothing else. Once you set it up, once it continues working in the background while you get to do everything else. So if your organization or you is listening to this and saying, okay, I definitely want to do this, but I would like some personalized implementation support. I do offer VIP intensive sessions where we can develop and deploy this whole system together. We will craft the email messaging, we will set up the automation. We will ensure that everything messaging, we will set up the automation. We will ensure that everything is functioning optimally for your specific needs. If you are interested in that, you can schedule a session going to positiveequationcom backslash monthly-giving. You can click the link in the show notes or just shoot me a message on LinkedIn. It totally works. Just go to Dana Snyder.
Speaker 1:And a little bit of icing on the cake here is if you really want to optimize this donor communication strategy, you could consider complementing these emails with SMS messaging, really creating a comprehensive, multi-channel approach. Because, don't we know it, our phones are almost always within reach and text messages are nearly impossible to overlook, and they have incredible open rates, around like 99%. So it's just super effective. If you're interested in incorporating text messaging into your donor engagement strategy, you can join me and the team at Tatango. We have a webinar coming up on March 26th at 1.30 pm Eastern Time. It's a free webinar SMS 101, four essential messages to engage donors and boost giving. We're going to go through it all. How do you acquire phone numbers? What are the rules, logistics you need to have, what type of messages work, when to send them, all those things. So really really practical guidance, open Q&A, how to increase engagement, but obviously without overwhelming supporters. And so if you're interested in that, you can register through the link in the show notes to secure your spot.
Speaker 1:And, last but certainly not least, the most important thing is your next step. So how do you get this free welcome series? You can visit the link in the show notes to download your free four-part email welcome series and implement it in Flowdesk quickly, and I am so confident that this one resource will make a significant difference. And I want to share a little bit also about Flowdesk and why I use this platform, and if you are using something else like a MailChimp, a Constant Contact Flowdesk, and why I use this platform. And if you are using something else like a MailChimp, a Constant Contact Flowdesk empowers you to grow.
Speaker 1:They do not charge any different rates dependent upon the size of your subscriber base. So no matter if you have one email subscriber or 100,000 email subscribers, you pay the same flat rate and you get all of the features, all of the forms, all of the beautiful emails, all of the Instagram link and bios, all the amazing audience metrics and analytics that you get, the segmenting it's amazing. And if you sign up, I think it's normally $410 annually. I have a special discount link or code where you get 50% off your first year, so it's $210 flat. I mean, it's no brainer, or I think. If you pay by month, it's $35 a month. You can look into the pricing.
Speaker 1:But when you click to download the four-part email welcome series workflow template it's not just the emails, it's welcome series workflow template. It's not just the emails, it's the whole workflow template Then it's going to ask you to create an account. It will be a free account so you can test it all out, see how it looks If you like it. If you want to test it, you can even start by just like uploading a CSV file and let it run. I promise you're going to love it. I've been using it for years.
Speaker 1:If you have any questions, please let me know. Again, you can reach out to me on Instagram, reach out to me on LinkedIn, but when you implement the series, I'd love to hear about it or tag me on social media, whatever works. And happy St Patrick's Day, and I hope this gift brings lasting value and good luck to your organization. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Missions to Movements. If you enjoyed our conversation and found it helpful, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a review. Wherever you're listening, your feedback helps us reach more change makers like you and continue bringing impactful stories and strategies to the show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button, too, so you'll never miss an episode. And until next time, keep turning your mission into a movement.
