What $25 a month does that a one-time gift cannot

A one-time gift funds a thing that has already been decided. A recurring gift changes what can be decided.

The difference is commitment. A club planning a season, a clinic booking a venue, a partner deciding whether to take on a coach, all have to commit to costs months before the money is certain. With only one-time gifts, a small organization commits to what it already holds, which in practice means committing late, booking at worse prices, and saying no to things it could have afforded.

There is a second effect that is less obvious. Predictable income is what makes it possible to pay someone. You cannot responsibly offer a person a salary against a fundraising total that might or might not repeat, which is exactly the problem the General Fund's $65,000 Program and Operations Lead line runs into. Recurring gifts are the kind of money that can underwrite a commitment like that.

Monthly giving on this site works the same way as everything else: you choose the project, and if you want, the line item. The designation carries onto every renewal, so the twelfth month lands on the same line as the first. Each renewal appears in your dashboard, and each one counts toward that project's raised figure.

You can cancel whenever you want, and we would rather you start smaller and stay than start large and stop. $25 a month is $300 a year, which is more than the Nepal clinic's entire bilingual facilitator line, or a meaningful share of a girls' club's transport for a season.