I'm familiar with the marketing reasons for encouraging people to give more frequently, enough people are willing to give more in total if they can spread payments to make this worthwhile. I just don't think it wise or efficient not to give people the option of an annual payment. Aside from cheapskates like myself who would baulk at a monthly commitment, transaction charges are bound to arise somewhere along the line.

There is also the issue of lifetime value, I have my suspicions that the more frequently you remind people of a direct debit the more likely they are to review it. So It may be true that a monthly direct debit is only worth two years worth of that amount, but an annual one is in the longterm worth many times more.

As for donors v members, do we have plans to offer membership to donors?

WereSpielChequers (who still supports four organisations through annual direct debits started in the 1980s)

On 17 September 2011 08:46, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly@pobox.com> wrote:

We have just switched from annual to monthly for our "family" RSPB membership payment.

Instead of 25 quid we pay 3 x 12 = 36 quid: we can spread the payments and the RSPB gets an 11 quid bonus.

RSPB was mentioned by  Anonymouse at the last London Wikimeet (#49) as a good model of membership for a charity.

http://www.rspb.org.uk/

*****
  • Over a million members, including over 195,000 youth members.
  • A staff of over 1,300 people and over 13,000 volunteers.
  • Resources available for charitable purposes in 2007 was £78.6 million.
*****

Ha! Small fry!


Gordo



On 16/09/2011 23:19, WereSpielChequers wrote:
Monthly and quarterly are nice to haves, but presumably most members will want to do an annual payment for their annual renewal?

WereSpielChequers

On 16 September 2011 23:05, Michael Peel <michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
We're working on finding an easy way to give donors the choice of monthly or quarterly direct debits, but we haven't got it working quite yet. For now, if you want to donate by direct debit each month, then you can do so by visiting:
http://directdebit.wikimedia.org.uk/index_monthly.html

Hopefully we'll have a more integrated solution working in the near future.

Thanks,
Mike

On 16 Sep 2011, at 22:59, Chris Keating wrote:

>
> This is fantastic! Well done!
>
> Thank you. We have taken a shortcut, which is to outsource the absolute maximum of the administration involved in Direct Debiting. Once we are on a firmer administrative footing we can bring it back in-house if needs be.
>
>
> Hmmm... I just tried to set up a direct debit and it seems the only
> option for the frequency is quarterly. I want to donate monthly. Why
> can't I? Obviously, the fees are greater for 3 donations of £2, say,
> than for one donation of £6, but I think you'll get a lot more takers
> if you offer monthly direct debits for the simple reason that people
> tend to be paid monthly.
>
> We are set up for monthly and quarterly direct debits. I'm not quite sure why that form insists on quarterly, I doubt it will continue to insist after we speak to the suppliers on Monday, as we have other test forms that are definitely accepting monthly DDs.
>
> You're right about the advantage of monthly DDs. during the fundraiser we'll test prompting different amounts/frequencies and different layouts of form to see which gives us the best long-term income.
>
> Chris
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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-- 

Gordon Joly
gordon.joly@pobox.com
http://www.joly.org.uk/
Don't Leave Space To The Professionals!

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