My good friend, and fundraising expert, Pamela Grow, recently wrote about monthly giving programs and used Best Friends, one of the most loved animal welfare organizations in the country, as an example.

I happen to be a supporter of Best Friends and donate monthly. It's not a big amount, but I'm sure when Best Friends adds up all of their small monthly donations, it comes out to be quite a lot.

I began thinking about why I'm so happy with my automatic giving program with Best Friends. Actually, I am giving monthly to another organization as well. And I'm not happy about it. What makes the difference between the two?

I won't mention the other organization, but I was not enthusiastic about signing up when I got a phone call from a relative that was working the phones for this unnamed group. I said yes, really against my better judgment. I've regretted it ever since. So this donation is coming out of my checking account every month and pretty soon I'm going to screw up my courage and cancel it.

Why am I unhappy? I've never heard a word from that organization since I signed up over the phone. Not a thank you, an email, a newsletter...Nada!

Why haven't I canceled earlier? It isn't that easy. I'm not sure now how to reach the organization, and I'm rather embarrassed to call my relative and ask for more information. This is how automatic payments, whether they are a contribution or a recurring subscription or other kind of purchase, get a bad name. It is not always transparent and, since we are all convenience addicted, it takes considerable effort and dissatisfaction to intervene. That may be why Americans are rather adverse to signing up for automatic payments. They have probably had a bad experience with them.

So, why am I so satisfied with Best Friends? For starters, I wasn't coerced into donating. A friend of mine mentioned that she was checking out some local potential adoptive parents of a dog from Best Friends. I asked how that worked and what is Best Friends. She said she had been a supporter of the organization for a long time, and they asked her to do a home visit in our town for this potential adoption. She was thrilled to do it.

Curious, I checked out Best Friends online. I must have spent an hour or two entranced with the website and all the stories of animals that donors can sponsor. By the next day I had decided I wanted to donate to a special dog that had been rescued by the organization, in honor of my late dog, Lucy. So I signed up, agreeing to allow Best Friends to deduct a small amount monthly through my credit card.

I was brand new to Best Friends, but because my dear friend was a supporter, I felt comfortable donating. The website is appealing, and I was donating to a particular animal. I do know that the method works...it's called "singularity" by Dan Ariely, author of The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home. I recently attended a webinar at NetworkforGood that featured Ariely. The fact is that we are more generous when we can empathize with one particular person, or animal in this case, than if we just hear abstract numbers or even are presented with a small number of recipients.

But besides the singularity angle, Best Friends came through in a number of other ways. I got an email thank you and a mailed thank you. I receive an email from Best Friends at least once a week, usually with a neat story about their work (like the Gulf Oil Spill animals that are showing up in shelters and need adopters). They send an email newsletter frequently as well. You can see an example here.

But, I also receive a beautiful magazine every couple of months that I always sit down and devour right away. Besides that, when I tweeted to Pamela Grow about her blog post about the organization, saying that I was a fan, Best Friends tweeted me to say again how grateful they are for my support. They are listening to their supporters through social media.

I have never considered canceling my monthly donation to Best Friends. In fact, I'll likely increase it They really have me, hook, line and sinker.

If your organization is thinking about a monthly giving program for your donors, make sure you can follow through the way Best Friends does. Otherwise you're going to have some unhappy people who will start canceling as soon as they can figure out how.

Remember:

• Singularity
• Thank you letters
• Frequent communications to keep your organization fresh in your donors' minds.

Is there an organization you think is doing a particularly fine job with monthly donations? Let me know in the comments.