If you couldn’t join me at the Bridge Conference for the panel discussion on “Sustaining Your Sustainer Program” with CDP’s Daren Winckel and The Humane Society’s Emily Courville, I’ve got you covered with this recap.
Background
It’s crucial to understand that sustaining donor programs are playing a larger role in the long-term financial health of many nonprofit organizations. For The Humane Society of the United States, 57% of their recurring revenue for FY23 was from its sustainers. In a fundraising environment where new donor acquisition has slowed, it can be cost effective to focus on your current donors to decrease churn and convert one-time donors to sustainers.
Here are some strategies to sustain and engage your sustaining donors:
1. Personalized Communication:
- Send personalized thank-you notes and updates.
- Regularly update donors on how their contributions are making an impact
2. Simplified Giving Process:
- Ensure the process for making recurring donations is easy and user-friendly.
- Provide options for donors to adjust their giving amount or schedule as needed.
3. Regular Engagement:
- Keep donors engaged with regular updates on your organization’s work.
- Share success stories and milestones achieved thanks to their support.
4. Feedback and Surveys:
- Solicit feedback from donors to show you value their opinions.
- Use surveys to understand their interests and improve their experience.
5. Transparency:
- Be transparent about how funds are used and the impact they have.
While these are all great strategies your organization can leverage on its own, machine learning models like ROI Solutions’ MiLo Intelligence can automate and amplify your sustainer program with testing that optimizes your nonprofit’s resources and marketing budget effectively.
HSUS Effective Leverages Machine Learning
Challenges: One of the biggest challenges for retaining sustainers is scalability, particularly in large programs. HSUS is always looking for ways to increase sustainer retention, reduce churn, and convert one-time donors to sustainers. This is where ROI Solutions has helped.
Solutions: HSUS has addressed donor churn using MiLo’s Sustainer Loyalty model, which targets sustainers most likely to leave. This model considers past pledge data of your constituents, delivers scores monthly, and allows you to predict churns in the next four months so you can intervene to decrease churn activity. The model continues to learn using the most recent data to ensure continued accuracy of the predictions.
Additionally, HSUS uses the Sustainer Conversion model which aims to move one-time donors to sustainers. HSUS leveraged this model to predict the likelihood of response to mail campaigns, balancing the cost of conversion campaigns to focus on donors most likely to convert. Through this model, HSUS was able to save $85,000 in dropping mailing segments and still generate 91% of the revenue.
Sustainer Management in Public Media
Challenges: In the world of public media, sustainer acquisition has been more challenging than ever. Public media organizations can no longer rely on traditional on-air pledge drives to protect revenue. Additionally, digital marketing strategies have become challenged by changing data protection regulations, as cookies have become toast. Premiums like the PBS Passport Streaming benefit have changed the composition of Public TV files over time by driving sustainer growth, lowering revenue per donor, and resulting in fewer committed one-time donors. Nearly half of ALL new Public TV donors come from Passport with a 40-50% sustainer rate. However, due to factors like content volatility, a reliance on Passport can put retention at risk.
Solutions: Machine learning models, based on existing website visitors and conversions, target similar prospects for ads and works better the longer it runs. CDP and ROI Solutions are working on AI-driven audience targeting to identify at-risk sustainers, improve retention of a new breed of public media sustainers, and develop intervention strategies to avoid cancellations and payment failures.
Conclusion
Sustainer management is a challenge for many organizations, but machine learning models to help guide acquisition, conversion, and churn intervention efforts can help you to make the most of your marketing budget by focusing on the donors most likely to respond. It lives up to the hype! If you’d like to learn more, Let’s Talk!
