Monthly Donors Cancel Gifts as Recession Deepens

April 15, 2009

Monthly Donors Cancel Gifts as Recession Deepens

Some charities have done a much better in garnering donations during the recession than other types of charities.

Among them are animal-welfare groups. In the past few years, many of those organizations recruited donors to take a certain sum from their checking or credit-card account once a month. Monthly donors tend to give more money, and to keep giving for longer periods, than people who give less frequently, charity experts say.

But charities that have large numbers of monthly donors may not be secure for long, according to new data on “direct-debit” supporters—as they are called in the United Kingdom. Such donations accounted for 23 percent of all charitable gifts in Britain last year, a study found.

The data on the decline of direct-debit donors was compiled by Rapidata, a company that processes millions of automatic monthly deductions for donors to charities in England and Wales. Based on six years’ worth of monthly data, the company found that the number of donors canceling their monthly debits has surged as the recession has deepened.

In September 2008, for example, 50 percent more donors canceled their direct debits than the average cancellation in the month of September before the recession hit. And by December of last year, 67 per cent more people canceled than a typical month before the downturn.

If your organization has monthly donors, have you seen such a big drop in people abandoning their pledges? Click on the comment box below to share your experiences.

— Holly Hall

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Monthly Donors Cancel Gifts as Recession Deepens