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
Behind the Production of the Monthly Giving Summit with 4,693 Registrants from 58 Countries!
Today’s episode is a peek behind the curtain of my recent virtual Monthly Giving Summit. The good, the surprising, and everything in between! With a team of 6 handling strategic planning and marketing, we ended up with 31 speakers and 4,693 registrants from 58 countries!
I’ll share what we paid in speaker fees, the secrets behind our marketing approach, why simple, no-frills video ads work, and how a $2,500 investment in paid ads generated 26% of our total registrations at just $2.04 per registration.
Plus, my combo of email marketing, influencer partnerships, speaker collabs, and strategic outreach that led to a 50% live show-up rate at the summit.
If you’ve ever dreamed of hosting a virtual event that truly moves the needle, this episode is your blueprint. You don't need a massive operation to create meaningful impact — just a genuine desire to serve your community.
Resources & Links
Thank you to our amazing partners who made the Monthly Giving Summit possible: Givebutter, FundraiseUp, MissionWired, Tatango, iDonate, and DonorPerfect.
I used LettrLabs to send thank you notes to speakers.
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!
One of the most successful channels was our paid social media strategy, so we invested about $2,500 on meta ads, which brought in 1,228 registrations. That ended up being 26% of our total registrants, and what's incredible is that we achieved an average cost per registration of just $2.04. I mean, that is phenomenally low. 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. Welcome to Missions to Movements. I'm your host, dana Snyder, and today I'm going to take you behind the curtain of our recent monthly giving summit the good, the surprising, the everything in between. So if you have ever wondered what it takes to put together, if you've been considering putting together a virtual event that attracts thousands of people from around the world or in your local community. You're in for a treat, because I'm going to just share the behind the scenes, from our marketing approach to attendee insights and everything we learned along the way. I am sharing it all in hopes that it can be beneficial to you when you are putting on your next event, or it will inspire you to maybe think about putting together an event around your cause area. So a little bit of context. We had 4,693 nonprofit professionals from 58 countries register for the Monthly Giving Summit, so a truly global reach. The event was two half days. It was on February 26th and 27th from 1 to 4 pm Eastern time. We really love that format. It allows for West Coast people to join and not be too early in the morning. It allows for people to get a half day of work done and I found that it's a really good timeframe for people to commit to. For more context, just back in September, we did the first annual monthly giving summit. So yes, we are slightly crazy and doing two back-to-back events like six months apart, but hey, we had a really good time. So back in September, we had 2,100 registrants from 47 countries, so that's a pretty big leap in growth, which was incredible. So let's start with our marketing approach, because, honestly, the results blew me away. One of the most successful channels was our paid social media strategy. So we invested about $2,500 on meta ads, which brought in 1,228 registrations. That ended up being 26% of our total registrants, and what's incredible is that we achieved an average cost per registration of just $2.04. I mean, that is phenomenally low for a specialized event like this virtual.
Speaker 1:The ad itself that performed the best and I ended up running across the board was super casual. It was a video. It was just me talking directly to camera with an immediate hook. I was actually sitting in my living room on a chair, I had a sweater on, it was so cash and the immediate hook started with 60 new monthly donors in one night. So then, from there, I shared some teasers about the case studies that attendees would hear at the event. Seriously, no fancy production, just really authentic excitement about what we were offering. I was holding my phone in my hand. There was no tripod, there was no. I don't even think I had a special mic like literally no frills. So that was the social ad part, and I will talk a little bit later about the full circle of those specific attendees.
Speaker 1:But we didn't rely solely on paid ads. 15% of registrations came from my own email list and LinkedIn network, maybe even this podcast. What was really interesting this time around was the steady flow of signups, so we were seeing 50 to 100 plus new registrations every single day. I think that might have been because how the ads were performing, probably because we also had buzz from the first time of doing this event. There was a little bit of proven success that people really enjoyed the first experience, so they were sharing it with people.
Speaker 1:I also tried something new with influencer partnerships, so I talked about this in one of my earlier episodes in working with content creators, and so I took a little bit of my own advice and I approached other nonprofit consultants and offered them either a flat rate based on their email list size or a cost per lead of $4, which is honestly where I projected our meta ads would come in at was like $4 to $6. And so I sent those proposals out before I realized that meta would actually come in cheaper. I sent those proposals out before I realized that meta would actually come in cheaper and that strategy of influencer partnerships accounted for about 10% of our registrations, and one of my favorite tactics was actually partnering with speakers to create mini teaser videos where they shared a bit about their presentation topic and then I would jump in, so it was like a split video to invite people to the summit, and these videos worked really great for both social media and ads. So if you go on my Instagram account or LinkedIn, it's a really great place to see kind of what I'm referring to, where it's this speaker talking, first there's a hook and then it jump cuts to me talking with the actual invite to the summit, and then it jump cuts to me talking with the actual invite to the summit and I almost forgot. This is a simple but effective tactic that can often be overlooked.
Speaker 1:I searched for top nonprofit conferences online and I saw which blogs and websites were publishing these lists and I reached out to be added, especially at the beginning of the year, since this event is in February, so many people are planning out their calendars and so they're looking at all of these recommended lists, and since this was only the second annual monthly giving summit, we weren't automatically on people's radar to be on these lists yet. So I just found who the writer was reached out on LinkedIn or if I had a personal contact with the organization and asked if we could be added, sent them a little blurb and the logo of the event and they put it on, which was really cool. So hopefully we will be considered for 2026. Then we had our partners promotion, which accounted for 23% of registrations, which really shows the power of strategic partnerships. And when I'm talking about partner promotion, these are the official partners of the monthly giving summit. So they had breakout sessions and they were speaking during the event and they were incredible.
Speaker 1:Last thing, on marketing, what's particularly impressive was the live show up rate. So overall, we had a live show up rate of 50%, which is incredible. I'll go into more of that in a second. But the live show up rate from the cold audience that came through social ads was 33%. 30%, I think, is good. On an overall event average, 33% of these cold social leads attended live, which is amazing, especially because it's a free event. It's a virtual event from people who have never heard of me us this event before. Now let's jump into attendee insights. So people who actually showed up. So again, we had 4,693 total people register Truly incredible.
Speaker 1:When we asked registrants what topics they were most interested in learning about during registration. The results were also interesting. Over half 55.5% to be exact wanted to learn about acquiring new monthly donors. Starting a monthly giving program came in second, at 20%, and then integrating monthly giving with other fundraising strategies was third, at 13.5%. What I thought was really interesting is that only 5% and if you're one of these people, only 5% listed retaining existing monthly donors as their top interest. So I thought that was compelling, because retention, to me, is the most important, because you don't want to have a whole bunch of new people come in and then not have them stick with you. So I would hope to see that go up further down the line.
Speaker 1:But if a lot of organizations are at the beginning of their monthly giving journey, then that might be why that makes sense. If a lot of organizations are at the beginning of their monthly giving journey, then that might be why that makes sense. The challenges that were reported aligned with these interests as well. Nearly 54% of their biggest challenge was difficulty attracting new monthly donors, followed by limited resources for marketing their program at 18.4% and integration challenges at 13.7%. So the alignment between what people want to learn and the challenges they're facing really validated our content strategy and it revealed a lot of organizations. Many of you are still in early stages of your monthly giving journey and so really excited to work on new content for you coming down the pipeline. About 67% of registrants reported annual online revenue under $100K and 69% were just starting their monthly giving programs. So lots of people in the entry space to work. And then 3% had more than 10,000 monthly donors. So this really tells us there's a huge opportunity to help organizations build and scale these programs from the ground up. So lots of movement that can happen there.
Speaker 1:The event itself was a huge success. As I mentioned before, we had a 50% live show up rate, which is exceptional for a free virtual event. What's even more impressive was the engagement, so attendees spent an average of four hours and 24 minutes with us out of a six-hour total event. This is congruent with what we saw in September. So it was really cool for us to do it again and it wasn't just a fluke. We featured 31 incredible speakers across our various sessions. Of these, 18 were paid speakers. The other ones were partners. Our speaker investment strategy is really thoughtful. Thank you to our partners. We pay all of our speakers. It doesn't matter if they have a 15, it's a 15 to 30 minute panel session or a case study, and they get to choose. Either it's sent as a donation to their organization or paid directly, and so we pay $250 for that, and then $750 for our 30-minute keynote, and this year we just had one, in September we had three. So in total we invested about $5,000 in speaker fees. I think that's probably about right and so thrilled to do that and we'll continue to do that. After the event, we sent personalized thank you cards to all of the speakers through Letter Labs, which is a nice personal touch that I like to do to make sure that they feel seen and appreciated.
Speaker 1:During the event, the chat was fire. Actually, at the end in the report section, somebody said the chat was moving so fast I couldn't keep up. That's a good thing for us, right? This was an incredible sense of community really forming in real time. Organizations were sharing their experiences, they asked questions, they connected with each other. I just wrapped a phone call with one of the partners and they were like there was just so much joy, and that can be really rare, also in a virtual event presence. To uplift joy, we love incorporating giveaways throughout the summit. So with these giveaways we are either covering shipping costs or the full cost of items or we split 50% with partners.
Speaker 1:So these moments of really surprise and delight keep engagement high throughout the entire event, and I think our email strategy played a big role in the high attendance rate too. So we sent multiple reminders one hour before, another hour after it started, on day one, a day one recap just to like get the buzz in case they weren't there for day one, and then day two reminders 30 minutes before. And then day two reminders 30 minutes before and then an after the fact wrap up. So the idea was that this sequence kept the event top of mind without it also being overwhelming and just showcasing the value. And I don't have specific numbers on this yet, but, like immediately, we had an overwhelming group of people going to the replays. Once we published the replays, day one went live like the night, I think, after the event ended, and then day two recaps were the following week. So that was really exciting to see.
Speaker 1:People were going in and watching full sessions back, and none of this would be possible without our amazing partners who made this event possible. So GiveButter, fundraiseup, missionwired, tatango, idonate and DonorPerfect. Now, these partners didn't just provide their financial support. They really brought valuable expertise to our attendees throughout their sessions and their resources Many of them they helped promote the event to their networks, which contributed to the amazing reach. And one of the favorite areas of the event is actually our Expo TED Talk-like sessions, and these are 15-minute quickfire thought leadership sessions brought by our partners and continues to be a highlight of the event, and it's always about genuine value to attendees, not promotional content, but what can they actually teach and provide education on. So these sessions are consistently rated the most helpful by attendees because they're focused on practical solutions, and I think that's a really big difference about our event. So, speaking of attendee feedback, I do want to share some of the post-event survey results. When asked how likely they would be to recommend this event to a friend or colleague, on a scale of 1 to 10, we received an average score of 9.1. So I will say that's incredibly validating, especially for a free event in its second year.
Speaker 1:We asked attendees about what were their favorite parts of the summit and the responses were wonderfully varied. What were their favorite parts of the summit? And the responses were wonderfully varied. Many loved the case study rooms and the breakout sessions, especially the ones that were segmented by program size, which allowed them to learn from organizations similar to their own. The pre-launch to 500 monthly donor session with Lisa and Courtney was specifically mentioned multiple times, so shout out to you both. If you are listening, you crushed it.
Speaker 1:Attendees consistently praise the energy and the enthusiasm of all of our speakers. Liz Forkin Bohannon's keynote on big dream energy was a hit, a very popular highlight for many, and several attendees mentioned that they appreciated the very practical, actionable advice that could be implemented immediately. And then what really stood out on the feedback and this is really quintessential to the monthly giving summit is how much people valued the sense of community, and this is super important to us. The chat was described as on fire, with over 10,000 messages exchanged. Many smaller nonprofits expressed gratitude that the event was free, saying they wouldn't have been able to participate otherwise. And then, of course, we asked for suggestions on how to improve for next year, and so several attendees actually recommended having longer breakout sessions. There was just so many questions in the rooms that they didn't want to feel rushed. There have been requests for more networking opportunities and ways to connect with other attendees because the chat was so fast moving and some wanted it even more content specifically tailored to the different organization sizes and stages of monthly giving. So amazing, wonderful feedback for us to take and work on and, interestingly, several also managed. I'd love to see handouts or downloadable resources to accompany the presentations. So, trust me, we are taking all of this feedback to heart as we are working on planning for next year's summit, and let this be a fact that we actually listen and we read all of your responses, so I wanted to share all of that.
Speaker 1:Could not happen an event at this scale without an incredible team working behind the scenes, and I want to give you a glimpse into what this looks like, because we are I said this during the summit a lean and mean machine. I think there can be this perception sometimes when we look at events like this, that wow, they must have had a ton of people doing all this stuff, and that is not true. So what it looked like is a core team, including myself. Kat, who's on my team, who managed most of our speaker and partner relations she is my director of operations and partnerships manager, julie, you might know from we Are For Good, came over and was amazing as our producer. I hired Julie for both prep time and to run the actual event, and her experience was invaluable in making that seamless.
Speaker 1:We also had our VA, who was pretty much completely dedicated to the Monthly Giving Summit work for a full month when she started. Plus, we had an intern Shout out to UCF. They both started literally like weeks before the monthly giving summit, so they were pretty much dedicated to that. And then we also hired Caitlin Whitaker for additional event support, which is incredible. She helped us with the last monthly giving summit and so that was our team. So me, kat, julie, va, intern, caitlin so six, and I would say it was basically Kat and I, or not, basically it was. It was Kat and I leading all the way up to like the two weeks beforehand, so you can do it, and we had 31 speakers.
Speaker 1:So this was definitely a large chunk of our time was putting all of this together and what I love to do. So if you have obviously a bunch of other stuff going on that you have to manage with programs, I would definitely consider hiring somebody part-time or contractor that can help you build it all out and then you have a bigger team to make it all happen when you get to the main month or a couple weeks out. And one small but, I think, important detail is I love, love, love and so value my team. I sent them DoorDash gift cards for helping during those two really intensive event days so they could get lunch delivered and not have to worry about it, and I think those little things really matter when you're asking for people to be like quote unquote on for three hours straight for two days, especially during kind of a lunch hour.
Speaker 1:So key takeaways what did we learn from putting together this summit? First, authenticity and marketing works. Our highest performing ads were not slick, fancy productions, it was a genuine me in my living room conversation that truly connected with our audience's real needs. Second, partnerships are so powerful Between our sponsors and our influencer collaborations. We reached audiences we never could have on our own and I wouldn't have been able to literally do this. I wouldn't have been able to pay everybody, I wouldn't have been able to have the content. They brought. So many valuable connections. I cannot say enough enough value of the partners for this summit. So please go visit all their websites. I'm going to link to all of them again in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Third, there is clearly a massive need for education around monthly giving programs, particularly in acquiring donors and getting programs off the ground. The fact that so many organizations are just beginning and you might be here your monthly giving journey just shows the enormous potential in this space. Fourth, investing in quality, diverse speakers is worth it. The ones doing the work. Nearly everyone that was featured is from a nonprofit and doing the work on the ground and we wanted to showcase what they were doing and I was so grateful that they were willing to give us a sneak behind the scenes. So this ensured we proactively reached out for diverse expert voices sharing actionable insights, rather than there wasn't, I'm trying to think, any consultant voices, which I'm not saying is a bad thing, but in this specific space and I might like do more of a balance next time, but I really love having the peer element of like what they're doing on the ground and then, finally, creating a really engaged community experience, even virtually, leads to remarkable participation.
Speaker 1:The live show up rate, the time spent in the event. This just demonstrated how hungry people were for connection and practical knowledge they could implement immediately. This is why I shout out to my team we had significant conversations about making sure that we were providing resources in the chat, engaging with people, hyping them up, making sure they felt seen. That was a dedicated pre-event discussion. We wanted to make sure that everyone that was there felt heard, if they were sending a direct message or just participating in the chat. So, as we look ahead to next year's summit and maybe we'll do something in the fall maybe, but I kind of want to do something in person in Atlanta, if you're down for that, shoot me a note and let me know we are taking all of these insights to make it even more valuable for you, for the attendees. I think I will stick with making this a 100% free event. All of the registrants got access to the recordings. That was a decision that I was really proud of.
Speaker 1:Thank you again to our partners. Thank you again to GiveButter, fundraiser, missionwire, tatango I Donate, donateperfect for making that possible. It allowed thousands of nonprofits who might not have had the budget for professional development to access high quality training. So we are just building this really engaged community of now 5,000 plus nonprofit professionals who are hopefully better equipped to launch and grow and sustain their monthly giving programs. And, more importantly, I think we've really created a space that celebrates and elevates monthly giving as a really crucial strategy for nonprofit sustainability. So the energy, the enthusiasm and the collaborative spirit of this community is something I could not have predicted when we first launched this summit.
Speaker 1:So I just want to say thank you to everyone who participated. I want to say thank you to everyone who participated, our incredible speakers, our generous sponsors and, of course, all of the nonprofit professionals who joined us. If that is you, I'm giving you a high five, I'm giving you a hug. Thank you for being there. Your engagement and your enthusiasm truly made this event special. So that's a wrap on our monthly giving summit behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:Look. Wrap on our monthly giving summit behind the scenes. Look If you have any questions about putting together your own virtual events or want to learn more about monthly giving strategies, shoot us a note, drop us a DM, reach out to me on LinkedIn. Head to our website. So until next time, I hope this was helpful and keep creating sustainable funding for the important, so important work that you do. 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. Thank you.
