NextAfter

Can Highlighting Monthly Impact Boost Recurring Giving?

Experiment ID: #200571

NextAfter

Experiment Summary

Timeframe: 09/26/2025 - 10/26/2025

An organization’s main donation page serves both new and returning donors, including high-value supporters. Unlike acquisition-focused pages, this page represents a high-opportunity, high-risk environment for testing.

Previous tests on acquisition pages have shown that adding a monthly gift callout increases recurring gifts, suggesting that some visitors can be persuaded to become long-term donors.

This experiment aimed to determine if the prior finding would carry over to the main donation page without reducing revenue from larger one-time gifts. The core question: Would prompting donors to consider a monthly gift boost monthly conversions—without causing high-capacity donors to switch from making large one-time gifts to smaller recurring ones?

The Control used the regular donation page, defaulting to a one-time gift with no prompts for monthly giving.

The Treatment added a soft callout above the form: “Would you consider a monthly donation? Your $15 monthly gift helps families in spiritual crisis receive trusted help immediately and biblical support throughout the year. You’ll also receive a new free resource for your family each month.”

At the conclusion of the one-month test, the data revealed whether the monthly donation callout on the main donation page increased monthly conversions, had no effect, or caused a reduction in larger one-time gifts. This clarified the impact of the prompt on donor behavior.

Research Question

We believe that adding a monthly giving callout above the donation form on the main donation page will increase monthly donor conversions, as framing monthly giving as impactful and rewarding will motivate recurring support without displacing larger one-time donations. Because framing monthly giving as impactful and rewarding will motivate recurring support without displacing larger one-time donations.

Design

C: Control

T1: Treatment #1

Results

	Treatment Name	Conv. Rate	Relative Difference	Confidence
C:	Control	0.94%
T1:	Treatment #1	2.1%	125.2%	99.3%

This experiment has a required sample size of 827 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 3,141, and the level of confidence is above 95% the experiment results are valid.

Flux Metrics Affected

The Flux Metrics analyze the three primary metrics that affect revenue (traffic, conversion rate, and average gift). This experiment produced the following results:

0% increase in traffic
× 125.2% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

This test demonstrated that a soft monthly giving prompt above the donation form can significantly increase recurring donor conversions—without suppressing large gifts and with potential upside for smaller one-time donations.

The Treatment produced a 125% increase in monthly donor conversions (2.1% vs. 0.9%), with a statistically significant 99.3% level of confidence
Recurring donor volume more than doubled (33 vs. 15), while the average monthly gift remained steady ($30 on Treatment vs. $31 on Control, after removing an outlier)
While the Treatment had fewer gifts over $1,000 (35 vs. 41), this difference was not statistically significant (44% level of confidence), indicating no reliable evidence that large one-time gifts were cannibalized

When isolating smaller one-time gifts (under $1,000):

The Treatment saw a 9.5% lift in volume, with an 86.4% level of confidence -- this is a strong directional signal, though not statistically conclusive
The average gift amount also increased, from $132 on the Control to $140 on the Treatment

These results suggest that a well-placed, low-friction callout can meaningfully increase monthly donor conversion, and may even have a positive reinforcing effect on smaller one-time giving. Next Steps for Testing:

Explore alternate monthly ask amounts (e.g., $20, $25, or $30) to assess the revenue impact of shifting the default suggested amount.
Refine the callout language or visual design to test whether urgency, impact framing, or reward emphasis further improves performance.
Test this approach on other key donation pathways (e.g., campaign pages, seasonal asks) to evaluate if the effect carries over beyond the main donation page.

Experiment Documented by NextAfter

Question about experiment #200571

If you have any questions about this experiment or would like additional details not discussed above, please feel free to contact them directly.