Missions to Movements
Missions to Movements is the nonprofit marketing and fundraising podcast that helps you grow recurring donors, scale monthly giving programs, and build digital campaigns that convert.
Hosted by Dana Snyder—speaker, strategist, and founder of Positive Equation—this show is packed with actionable nonprofit growth strategies, social media tips, and fundraising best practices.
Each week, you’ll hear how organizations are increasing donor retention, building thought leadership, and using digital fundraising to drive real impact. If you want to learn how to attract monthly donors, master nonprofit marketing, and transform your mission into a movement, this podcast is for you.
Missions to Movements
2026 Monthly Giving Predictions: #1 - Recurring Giving Becomes Core Infrastructure
Why monthly giving must move from a checkbox to core infrastructure and how that shift changes budgets, dashboards, and daily decisions. Practical prompts help you test your own reliance on recurring revenue and plan for a steadier 2026.
LettrLabs is the proud presenter of Missions to Movements.
LettrLabs helps nonprofits build lasting donor relationships through real, handwritten mail that’s fully automated - turning moments of intent into meaningful connection. From thank-yous to impact updates, they help you cut through with mail donors actually open, remember, and trust.
Register now for the FREE Monthly Giving Summit on February 25-26th, the only virtual event where nonprofits unite to master monthly giving, attract committed believers, and fund the future with confidence.
The Mini Monthly Giving Mastermind: A high-touch Mini Mastermind + optional in-person retreat (May 6-8) for nonprofit leaders that have an existing monthly giving program and ready to take it to the next level with 1:1 and peer support. Apply now!
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- My book, The Monthly Giving Mastermind, is here! Grab a copy here and learn my framework to bu...
Welcome back to Missions to Movements and Happy New Year again. In the last episode, we talked about signals. I talked about what the subscription economy, what giving Tuesday, and what nonprofit benchmarks were telling us about monthly giving. So you can go back and listen to the official first episode of the new year from last week to get kind of an overview of what I'm going to be talking about in this upcoming kind of bonus series. These are turning those signals into predictions, specifically 2026 monthly giving predictions. And we're going to start with a big one. Prediction number one is that monthly giving becomes core infrastructure. Monthly giving, prediction number one, stops living in the margins. This is a really big deal because becoming core infrastructure for monthly giving has not happened. It's oftentimes been a checkbox on a donate form. It is a PS in an email campaign. It's a campaign you sometimes maybe get to when there's time, but infrastructure isn't optional. Infrastructure is what everything else relies on. And as acquisition gets harder, and this is what the signals were telling us in the subscription economy from last week, and donor behavior becomes more selective, organizations cannot afford to treat predictable revenue as optional. So why is this shift happening? So from last week in the subscription world, recurring giving is not a side stream, right? It is the backbone. It is the thing. It allows companies to forecast, invest, hire, plan without, say completely plan without panic, but have some consistency. And I think we are arriving, we nonprofits are arriving at this same realization just from lived experience that when one-time revenue stalls or fluctuates or grants aren't happening, monthly donors' predictable revenue, whether that's monthly or quarterly, annually, are what keep the lights on. And predictability is far from boring in this scenario. It's relief, it's power. And so what this means practically is if monthly giving is infrastructure, it changes how we treat it. It means someone actually owns it. It shows up in budgets and board conversations. It's integrated into our storytelling year-round. And it's measured far beyond how many people just signed up. It completely changes how we're going to look at our dashboards and our CRMs, how we want to build them, the tools we're going to invest in, the events we're going to go to, right? Infrastructure isn't flashy, but it's what allows our missions to move forward with hopefully not the burnout that we've been seeing for so long. And the mindset shift on this, this prediction specifically, is that it's not about doing more. It's about doing one thing really well and building around it. So instead of asking, how do we squeeze more out of campaigns? The question becomes, how do we build a base that really sustains us? This was one of the core things I heard over and over and over again when I was interviewing the 15 organizations for my book was like, if everything was to go away, we knew that this programming was going to continue because our monthly donors support it. Like this was going to continue. We had this stable foundation, this infrastructure. And so, how do you build a base that sustains us? And monthly giving helps to answer that question when it's treated with intention. So, my reflection, my question for you as we are entering a new year, as you are planning for 2026 is if monthly giving disappeared from your organization tomorrow, would something break? And if the answer is a lot, then the real question is, are you treating monthly giving like infrastructure or is it just extra? The other question is if we didn't have monthly giving, or if we did have monthly giving, what could be possible? If we had$2,500,$5,000,$10,000,$250,000 coming in every single month, what would that do differently at a retention rate, mind you? 85, 90, 95%. What can that do for you? So think about if monthly giving is truly as important as you're listing it out to be, how does that change the other decisions, the other investments this year? So in the next episode, we're going to talk about something that might surprise a few of you. And that is why lower monthly entry points, not bigger asks, are driving higher lifetime value in 2026. Really around how the easiest yes mindset is reshaping monthly giving strategy. If you have not already registered for the monthly giving summit, it is coming up February 25th, 26th, 1 to 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. It is the only virtual global event talking just about monthly giving. I am so pumped for our keynote speakers, to the amazing peer case study-led workshops, to the experts, to the partners coming. I hope to see you there. You can register, just go to monthlygivingsummit.com. It is free, or there are VIP ticket options. If you want to get the recordings to the sessions, if you want a private podcast to the sessions, if you want a brainstorm session with me, we have all these creative ticketing options for this year, dependent upon where you're at. Um, so I hope that you'll join me for that. And then also, final announcement here at the end is I hope you love the show. I'm very excited. I can't believe that this is going into year four this year. Um, as I mentioned on the other episode, if you would drop a review, I would so appreciate it. If you would share it with a friend, I hope that this is the year that I mean, it's already listened to in 140 something plus countries, but I hope that it is a weekly cadence of inspiration to someone else that might find it valuable. So if you could leave a review, it helps others find the podcast. Share it on your socials. And I will see you in prediction number two.
