Medical Students for Choice: Recurring Giving Campaign

Medical Students for Choice (MSFC) has spent more than three decades doing work that is as urgent as it is essential: ensuring that the next generation of physicians is trained, prepared, and empowered to provide reproductive healthcare — including abortion. Founded in 1993, MSFC fills a critical gap in medical education, offering clinical training opportunities and advocacy support where institutions fall short.

Overview

In the wake of the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court decision — which eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion — the demand for trained reproductive health providers has intensified dramatically. At the same time, the fundraising landscape has grown more competitive, and mission-aligned organizations like MSFC must build the kind of durable, recurring revenue that can sustain their work through political and cultural headwinds.

That's exactly what this experiment set out to do.

With a donor file of approximately 530 supporters and a modest but committed base of 80 monthly sustainers, MSFC partnered to test a structured engagement and solicitation program designed to grow their sustainer community and deepen their overall donor relationships — methodically, measurably, and with a clear goal in mind.

Key Strategies & Tactics

MSFC's experiment was built around two interconnected goals: growing their social media following as a top-of-funnel lead source, and converting existing and prospective donors into committed monthly sustainers. Their approach included:

• Social Media to Email Conversion: Growing followers across social platforms as the first step in a donor pipeline — with the explicit intent of converting followers into email subscribers and, ultimately, into donors.
• On-File Prospect Conversion: Identifying one-time and lapsed donors already in their database as prime candidates for a sustainer upgrade ask — people who had already demonstrated belief in the mission.
• One-Time Donor Upgrade Asks: Reaching out to current one-time donors with a specific, personalized ask to convert to monthly giving — framing it around predictability, community, and mission impact.
• Direct-to-Donate Social Media Asks: Meeting donors where they already are by embedding direct donation calls-to-action into social content, reducing friction for new and lapsed supporters.
• Segmented Campaign Cadence: Running a coordinated Fall 2023 fundraising calendar — including a fall appeal, Giving Tuesday campaign, and sustainer-specific upgrade campaigns — across email and social channels simultaneously.

Lessons Learned

Growth experiments don't always unfold on the timeline we envision — and that's where the real learning lives. Here's what MSFC took away:

1. The pipeline matters as much as the ask. Building social media followership is necessary but not sufficient on its own. Converting followers to email subscribers — and then email subscribers to donors — requires intentional, multi-step nurturing. The social-to-email funnel needs consistent investment in content and engagement before it reliably yields donors.
2. On-file prospects are your warmest opportunity. Existing one-time donors who haven't yet been asked to become sustainers represent low-hanging fruit. Personalized, mission-centered sustainer conversion asks to this segment are worth prioritizing early and often — this audience already believes in MSFC's work.
3. Sustainer growth requires a sustained effort. Doubling a monthly donor base is ambitious — and achievable — but it requires consistent messaging, multiple touchpoints, and a long-term commitment to the sustainer identity and community. Monthly giving programs grow most reliably when donors feel like members, not just contributors.

The Multiplier Effect

Impact

At its core, this experiment is about more than donor counts and conversion rates. It's about building the financial foundation that allows MSFC to do its most important work: training the physicians who will provide reproductive healthcare to patients who need it — regardless of what the law says in their state.

Every monthly donor added to MSFC's sustainer community represents predictable, reliable revenue that the organization can count on month after month. That consistency is what funds clinical training rotations, student chapter support, and advocacy programs that shape the future of reproductive medicine.

In a moment when access to abortion care is more restricted — and more contested — than it has been in fifty years, the organizations doing this work need revenue streams as resilient as the mission itself. Monthly giving is that stream.

MSFC isn't just raising money. They're investing in the pipeline of providers who will show up for patients across the country, year after year, regardless of political climates or geographic barriers. Building the sustainer program that supports that work is, in its own right, an act of mission.

The next generation of reproductive healthcare providers is training now. MSFC is making sure they have everything they need.