How the Paint Joy Foundation Recruited 116 Founding Donors Before Its First Birthday
Most nonprofits spend their first few years just trying to keep the lights on—chasing the next grant, the next one-time gift, the next “we’ll figure it out in Q4.”
So when this brand-new arts organization told us they’d built a full recurring giving program with 4aGoodCause before blowing out a single birthday candle, we did what any reasonable software team would do: We asked them to explain themselves.
Our team recently sat down with Nicholas Monroe, founder and executive director of the Paint Joy Foundation, and Jasmina Vranesevic (“Jas”), the foundation’s VP and a founding board member, to talk about their “Founding 100” campaign.
It’s an excellent story about murals, momentum, and making the ask before you feel ready. Here’s how they did it.
At a glance
👥 New Donors Acquired: 116, from a standing start
🔁 Monthly Givers Added: 71 — 61.2% of their founding donors are recurring givers
📈 Goal Exceeded by: 16% (the goal was 100; they landed 116)
⏱️ Timeline: Launched and hit the goal in under a month, all before the foundation’s first anniversary
For context: Plenty of organizations don’t launch recurring giving until they’re several years old—if they launch one at all. Paint Joy decided to build its monthly base out of the gate.
You can listen to the Paint Joy team’s interview with Amanda Johnson of the 4aGC team here, or read through the case study below:
Arts Nonprofit Fundraising Case Study: 116 Founding Donors Before Their 1st Birthday.
The mission
The Paint Joy Foundation is, in Jas’s words, “an organization that’s rooted in arts and community.” The idea is beautifully simple: Put joyful, transformative color into public spaces—think murals, community paint days, accessible artwork—to spark connection where people didn’t expect to find it.
Nicholas is an artist himself, and the foundation runs on a conviction he holds deeply: Everyone is an artist. Everyone has a color they get to touch. The murals matter, but they aren’t really the point. As Nicholas put it, “It’s not so much the wall or the mural that gets transformed or the canvas that gets transformed. It’s the people…. It’s connecting with humanity and it’s also connecting with yourself.”
Paint Joy’s mission matters because, In Nicholas’s telling, “people are starving for art. People are starving for connection.” The foundation is only a few months old and hasn’t yet hit its one-year mark. Nicholas is based in the San Antonio and Austin area of Texas; Jas is in Toronto.
The two met through a leadership program, joined forces, and have been splashing color across borders ever since—including a mural project with an organization supporting young women who’ve been displaced from their homes.
Big dream, with a small number of candles so far on the cake. Let’s talk about how they funded it.
The challenge
If you’ve ever worked for a brand-new nonprofit, you already know: The money is unpredictable, and the asking is uncomfortable. Paint Joy had no fundraising platform at all when they started—no software, no donation pages, no system. Just a vision and a lot of phone calls waiting to happen.
The deeper problem, though, wasn’t the tooling. It was the funding model. Nicholas named it exactly: “In our nonprofit, the biggest challenge is predictability. I don’t know what funding looks like for the next project or for the next big thing, and to be able to have the recurring giving helps reshape that conversation for those that show up to a project. There’s momentum already building…. [recurring giving] is like a head start.”
Every mural would mean hunting down the next dollar to pay for it. Nicholas described the grind of “how do I go and source money and find the canvas”—forever chasing the money before you could make the art.
A recurring program wasn’t a nice-to-have. It was going to be the team’s founding fundraising strategy.
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Instead of chasing the next donation, we're building this foundation by the community through Paint Joy.
Nicholas Monroe
Founder, Paint Joy Foundation
🏆 Success story:This volunteer-ran Rotary chapter increased its fundraising by ~30% with 4aGoodCause. They found that integrating recurring giving into club campaigns helps boost their overall revenue.
The solution
Nicholas found 4aGoodCause the old-fashioned way—by doing his homework. The team was hunting for something user-friendly, accessible, and credible enough to make a months-old foundation look like the real deal to its very first donors. What they landed on gave them exactly that.
The recurring giving setup was the star.
Paint Joy could offer supporters a simple monthly gift—the Netflix model, as Nicholas framed it: “It’s like I spend X amount of dollars a month and I get to watch movies, and this is like I get to contribute X amount of dollars a month and create and place art in the community. It was something that I could connect with.”
With 4aGC, clean conversion-optimized donation pages made the foundation look established from day one. Stripe payment processing was ready to go. A MailChimp integration handled newsletters and let them keep their donors organized. And the back end let them actually see their recurring donors roll in—more on how satisfying that turned out to be in a minute.
Automated donor communications did a lot of quiet heavy lifting, too. The moment someone gives, they’re greeted with a message—one less thing for a tiny, volunteer-powered team to juggle. As Nicholas put it, “It’s a letter from me, but the communication is managed by 4aGoodCause. So it’s one less thing off the IT side that’s supportive.”
But the biggest stand-out for the Paint Joy team? Feeling partnered with 4aGoodCause since Day 1.
Jas described the difference: “It’s amazing how we feel like we are partnered together [with 4aGoodCause], rather than I’m sending an email and maybe I’ll get a response.”
“Ronald has been incredible as far as answering questions,” added Nicholas, “I feel seen, I feel heard, I feel loved…. It’s like I’ve known him for years, and it’s a great partnership.”
But honestly, the credit here belongs to them—we just handed them a paintbrush that didn’t fight back.
“After the first meeting, we felt such support,” Jas shared. “It feels like a community. If we reach out for any questions, if there’s anything that’s needed, it’s amazing how we feel like we are partnered together. I feel like Ronald was a part of the creation of [the organization] and the board and the team.”
The results
Before the Founding 100 launched, Nicholas set a goal. A big one.
“I was very ambitious, and I pulled this number of $100,000 out of the ether,” he admitted, and put a deadline of February 10 on it.
February 10 arrived, and they had a $4 gift.
That could have been a demoralizing flop. Instead, it became a pivot.
They reset around a clearer, more human target: 100 founding monthly donors.
And by July 1st—the day they’ve christened “Founders Day”—they didn’t just hit their goal. They went past it.
“We got to 116 because so many people were just wanting to get involved in something special,” Nicholas said.
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We got to 116 because so many people were just wanting to get involved in something special.
Nicholas Monroe
Founder, Paint Joy Foundation
Even better: The real push took less than a month. As Jas put it, “We really didn’t need five months to hit the goal. We truly did it in less than a month.”
Nicholas described watching the recurring donations land one by one. “To see the evidence come in as we build it brick by brick, donor by donor. Oh, that felt good.” He’d screenshot the little donor messages and drop them into a group text so the whole team could celebrate every name.
And the community those 116 donors created didn’t sit still after the campaign ended. They now get invited to community paint days, get VIP access to what’s coming next, and—crucially—they’ve started leading.
The team went from asking “will anyone show up?” to fielding a steady stream of “what’s next? how do I get involved?” On the operations side, the automated welcomes and simple software meant the team could spend their energy on people instead of tasks and workflows.
“[4aGoodCause] is super user-friendly,” Jas shared. “We’ve gotten so much great feedback on how wonderful it is, even for our donors… the information is clean and simple. In the beginning, it helps us appear credible.”
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We've gotten so much great feedback on how wonderful [4aGoodCause] is, even for our donors… the information is clean and simple. In the beginning, it helps us appear credible.
Jasmina Vranesevic
VP, Paint Joy Foundation
Why it worked
A few things stand out about how Paint Joy pulled this off—most of it due to their grit, some of it the tools underneath them:
They led with vision, not spreadsheets. Nicholas treats vision as “such a very big undercurrent,” and every ask started there. People weren’t buying a donation tier; they were joining a movement.
They gave supporters something concrete to join. “Founding 100” was a clear North Star—a nameable, joinable milestone. It’s a lot easier to say yes to becoming a founder than to “supporting operations.”
They made it personal, one conversation at a time. Every recurring donor came through an actual phone call or a face-to-face invitation. As Nicholas framed it, “It’s not so much a gift, but what we were extending was an invitation for people to build this with us.”
The platform made a new org look credible—and made giving easy. Clean, simple donation pages meant a months-old foundation looked trustworthy at first glance, and monthly signups took seconds.
Automated stewardship kept every donor warm. Instant welcome messages plus monthly newsletters (via the MailChimp integration) meant nobody fell through the cracks, even with a volunteer team.
They reframed rejection as fuel. In Jas’s words, “Every yes, every no, every maybe is truly a win in a celebration for us.” A “no” became feedback, not a dead end.
They refused to wait for perfection. Nicholas made it clear, “Being ready is a decision. It’s not a feeling.”
Paint Joy isn’t treating 116 as a finish line—it’s a launch pad.
The team is now setting its sights on larger sponsors and grants (with a recurring base already in place to prove community support), more community paint days, more murals, and a genuinely global ambition: from Texas to Toronto and, as they put it, wherever they can take the color.
The Founding 100—now 116—will keep getting invited to lead the way.
And their advice to any small team eyeing a monthly giving program doubles as their plan going forward.
Jas said it best: “Get the ball rolling and get it moving, it doesn’t have to be perfect.”
And 4aGoodCause will be partnering right alongside them—handling the infrastructure so they can keep doing the part only they can do: putting joy on the walls of their community.
“I don’t know how many organizations 4aGoodCause manages, but I feel like there’s maybe just a couple because that’s the kind of attention that I get,” Nicholas shared.
And though 4aGoodCause definitely has more than just a couple of clients, we’re incredibly proud to be able to help each one feel cared for, invested in, and partnered with.
How to upgrade monthly donors over time: This video walks you through how to invite existing monthly donors to increase their support with just one click in 4aGC
How to retain monthly donors: This guide provides actionable strategies—like personal outreach, donor events, and payment automation—to minimize donor dropout.
Ronald Pruitt
Ronald is the President and Founder of 4aGoodCause, the fundraising CRM that makes recurring, monthly giving a breeze for small nonprofits.
For over 25 years, Ronald has had the joy of doing what he loves, building online solutions that make a difference in the world. He’s helped raise millions of dollars online for small nonprofits across the country. Connect with Ronald on LinkedIn.
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