Covid Solutions: Monthly Giving - Interview with Megan O'Brien Crayne
In this episode, Andrew visits with Megan O'Brien Crayne, Campus Minister at Brown-RISD Catholic Community. In this episode of the "COVID Solutions" series, Andrew and Megan talk about monthly giving and how Megan was able to launch a new donor-matched program for young alumni. They discuss Megan's three-part plan, the hurdles she came up against and how she dealt with them. Through these efforts, they were able to see a large percentage jump in their annual giving.
Show Notes:
Megan O’Brien Crayne is the campus minister at Brown-RISD Catholic Community which serves the students at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Andrew and Megan met at the Oklahoma Petrus Conference, where Megan learned a ton.
They have started a brand-new monthly giving program during quarantine.
Before this summer they had maybe 15 monthly givers. It began with reaching out to the class of 2019 graduating seniors and they got 11 to sign up.
In June of 2020, Megan decided to revamp the online monthly giving program.
She had a 3-part plan.
- Start with a matching gift. So, she needed to find someone who would match gifts. She asked one of their trustees who is very excited about new ideas and getting young people to give.
- Once she found a match she began reaching out to young alumni. (And found the value of having contact information.) She started with email and then searched social media, text, phone calls, whatever she could find. And getting them to take advantage of the matching gift. That gained 36 new monthly young alumni givers.
- Use the number that the young alumni had committed, to incentivize their broader audience to give. It was not as successful but it did bring encouragement to many and caused some lapsed donors to return. This brought their total to 60 monthly givers. Which brought their total giving from this group to approximately $1600 a month. Or about $18,000 a year. They normally fund-raise around $100,000 a year so it’s a pretty big percentage jump and very exciting.
The hope is that as these young alumni continue giving as they grow in their careers.
The Monthly Giving Society
They have created a monthly reflection and monthly zoom rosary to build community.
The Monthly Giving Society has a spot on their website with information and short videos as well as sharing the videos for a social media campaign. And a blurb will be in their next email newsletter.
What kind of response did you get?
For this project there weren't very many that said they couldn't contribute due to Covid. If they could give something, they would give as little as $5 a month or up to $150 a month even with Covid restrictions and job loss. They would rather decrease the amount and keep the connection.
When speaking to the class of 2019, they had a chance to speak about stewardship for the first time. It was interesting to see how that changed their commitment to giving.
You can connect with Megan at www.brownrisdcatholic.org or on social media @brownrisdcatholic
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