Every fall, someone on a development team asks the same question: should we include our monthly donors in the year-end appeal, or leave them alone?
The worry makes sense. Monthly donors are the most loyal people on your file. They already give twelve times a year. Asking for more feels a little greedy, and nobody wants to be the reason a $25-a-month donor cancels.
In most cases, you should ask. But the year-end ask to a monthly donor is a different letter than the one you send everyone else, and how you handle it matters more than whether you send it. The extra gift is a bonus. The monthly commitment is the asset you’re protecting.
Why monthly donors deserve their own decision
Start with what a monthly donor is worth. Neon One’s 2026 Recurring Donor Report, based on transaction data from 4,107 nonprofits, found recurring donor retention held at 78% to 80%, compared to roughly 32% for one-time donors. Those relationships lasted an average of 7.7 years, compared to 1.7 years for one-time donors.
Blackbaud’s donorCentrics sustainer benchmarking points the same way. In a summary of the 2025 Sustainer Summit, the FY24 retention rate for recurring donors was 81%, compared to 46% for donors who gave only single gifts.
So what does that mean for December? It means your monthly donors aren’t just another segment. A one-time donor who gets annoyed by your year-end appeal might not give next year, and you’d have lost one gift. A monthly donor who gets annoyed can cancel, and you lose years of gifts. That’s the cost side of the decision, and it’s why monthly donors deserve their own plan instead of a spot on the general mailing list.
During my time at CRISTA/World Concern, the monthly donor program grew from about 800 to more than 4,000 donors. When a program grows like that, the monthly file stops being a side project. Every decision about how you treat those donors gets multiplied.
The math on a year-end ask to monthly donors
Here’s the benefit side. In donorCentrics sustainer benchmarking from 2018, as summarized by A Direct Solution, the median organization saw 6% of recurring donors make at least one additional single gift during the year. That figure is several years old, and it’s a median across larger organizations, so treat it as a rough reference point, not a target.
Imagine a literacy program with 300 monthly donors giving an average of $25 a month. That’s $90,000 a year in monthly revenue.
If 6% of those donors (18 people) give an extra year-end gift averaging $75, that’s $1,350. If you do it well and reach 12%, that’s 36 gifts and $2,700.
Now look at the other side. If a clumsy ask led just 2% of them (6 donors) to cancel, you’d lose $1,800 in the next year alone, and more in the years after that.
There’s little public data on how many monthly donors cancel because of an extra ask, and a respectful ask may cause very few cancellations. But the numbers show why the execution matters. The upside of the extra gift is real but modest. The downside of making a monthly donor feel unappreciated is larger and lasts longer.
That’s not an argument against asking. December is when a lot of giving happens. M+R’s 2026 Benchmarks found nonprofits received 37% of all 2025 online revenue in December. Many monthly donors are thinking about their year-end giving like everyone else. If you leave them out entirely, some of them will give that extra gift somewhere else.
What a good year-end ask to monthly donors looks like
The general year-end appeal is written for someone deciding whether to give. Your monthly donor already decided. They decided twelve times. The letter needs to start there.
Thank them for the commitment first. Not one line at the bottom. Open with it. Tell them what their monthly gifts made possible this year, as specifically as you can. “Your monthly gift helped keep our tutoring program open all twelve months this year” lands differently than “As a valued sustaining partner.”
Make the extra gift clearly optional. Present it as an opportunity, not an expectation. Something like: “Your monthly gift is already doing so much. If you’re able to do something extra this year, here’s what a year-end gift would help with.” That one sentence tells the donor you’re not taking their monthly gift for granted.
Don’t ask them to become a monthly donor. This sounds obvious, but it happens every year. An organization sends one year-end email to the whole list, and it includes a “Give monthly” button or a P.S. about joining the monthly program. To an existing monthly donor, that reads as “We don’t know who you are.” Suppress monthly donors from those versions or give them their own.
Don’t use their monthly amount as the ask. Asking a $25-a-month donor for $25 at year-end is usually too low, and asking for $300 because that’s their annual total feels presumptuous. An open amount field or a modest ask string is often safer. If you have a strong reason to suggest an amount, test it on part of the segment first.
Watch the frequency. You don’t need to send monthly donors every email in your December sequence. One or two thoughtful touches may be enough for this group. If you’re planning your final-week emails, read how to plan your last 72 hours of year-end emails and decide in advance which of those messages monthly donors will receive.
When to leave a monthly donor out
Asking most monthly donors doesn’t mean asking all of them. I’d pull these groups out of the year-end ask:
- Donors who joined the monthly program in the last 60 to 90 days. They’re still forming an opinion of you. Let them see a few months of impact first.
- Donors who have told you they only want to give monthly, or who have asked for fewer appeals. Respect the request and send a year-end thank-you instead.
- Donors with a recent failed or declined payment. Fix the payment problem first. An appeal arriving while their card is being declined is confusing.
- Donors who recently lowered their monthly amount. That may be a signal about their finances. A thank-you is the better touch.
For everyone you leave out, send a year-end thank-you with no ask at all. It’s one of the cheapest retention tools you have, and it gives you something to measure against.
Measure more than the extra gifts
When January comes, most organizations will count how many monthly donors gave an extra gift. That’s worth knowing, but it’s half the picture. Also compare cancellations among monthly donors who got the ask against those who didn’t, over the following 60 to 90 days. If you don’t already track recurring retention, this guide to measuring and improving monthly donor retention walks through the basics.
If extra gifts are up and cancellations aren’t, you’ve found a year-end approach that works for your donors. If cancellations rose, you’ve learned something important for next year, and it cost you far less than finding out after three years of the same mistake.
Here’s where I’d start this week. Pull your list of active monthly donors. Look at what they received from you last November and December. If the answer is “the same appeals as everyone else, including the one inviting them to give monthly,” you’ve found the first thing to fix.
If you want help planning the rest of your year-end campaign, the year-end fundraising course covers how to plan and run a year-end fundraising campaign. It’s a good fit if you’re building your plan now and want a structure to work from.
