If you didn’t get the chance to attend our Bridge session, you missed a good one. I was joined by Emily Courville from Humane World for Animals and Paul Finley from FlexPay for an informative case study exploring Humane World’s sustainer program and the various methods they use from ROI Solutions and FlexPay to identify and reduce sustainer churn.
Humane Heroes Sustainer Program
Humane World for Animals, formerly known as Humane Society of the United States, “tackles the root causes of animal cruelty and suffering to create permanent change.” With a robust database of supporters, sustainers play a significant role in driving Humane World’s programs.
The Humane Heroes sustainer program has become the financial backbone of the organization, with recurring giving accounting for 59% of FY24 revenue. After success with DRTV, in FY17 online donation pages were set to show a monthly giving option as the default, rather than a one-time gift—a strategy that has since become central to all appeals, not just year end. The program encompasses approximately 187,000 donors, driving $43 million in annual revenue.
Credit cards remain the dominant payment method among active sustainers. Meanwhile, a shift in acquisition strategy is underway: online channels surpassed face-to-face fundraising in 2023 and 2024, showing better long-term value retention and improved lifetime donor performance.
Sustainers on average give more consistently than other donor types, with Humane World’s sustainers giving more consistently than sustainers at other organizations according to benchmarking reports. Across the board, sustainer programs are a key revenue driver, with Humane World performing above the sector median in both donor and revenue terms. How are they able to accomplish this? Both ROI Solutions and FlexPay’s assistance in reducing churn play an important role.
Sustainer Churn: Voluntary and Involuntary
There are two types of churn: voluntary and involuntary. According to FlexPlay, 52% of churn in the nonprofit sector is voluntary (a sustainer chooses to end their donation) and 48% is involuntary (the sustainer does not choose to end but instead ends due to payment processing factors). Some drivers of voluntary churn are:
- Donor’s personal finances
- Customer service experiences
- Lack of visibility on fund spending
The primary driver of involuntary churn is the result of a false decline by the bank issuing the sustainers’ credit cards.
Voluntary Sustainer Churn
With Humane World’s heavy reliance on sustaining donors, there is a constant focus on increasing retention, minimizing churn, and converting one-time donors into long-term sustainers.
This is where MiLo Intelligence, our machine learning platform, enters the picture. MiLo processes large volumes of data to produce custom-calibrated scoring models that predict key outcomes for each organization. It offers a powerful yet accessible way to test machine learning, with no third-party data use or data sharing required.
To support these efforts, a Sustainer Loyalty Model was developed to predict and reduce churn. The model emphasizes that not all sustainers are created equal and uses historical pledge data to assess how a donor appeared at any given point in time. Scores are delivered monthly and are designed to predict churn within the next four months, giving organizations time to proactively intervene. Regular monitoring and periodic remodeling are essential to maintaining the model’s accuracy as behaviors and data patterns shift. In addition to identifying at-risk donors, the model can also highlight the most loyal sustainers, enabling targeted outreach for upgrades, engagement, or stewardship.
By leveraging the Sustainer Loyalty Model, Humane World implements precise, data-informed interventions tailored to each sustainer’s behavior and risk profile. These predictive insights not only help reduce churn through timely outreach but also identify high-value, loyal supporters for deeper engagement.
Involuntary Sustainer Churn
Involuntary churn—when recurring donor payments fail and cannot be recovered—poses a major threat to nonprofit sustainer programs. While not every failed payment results in churn, repeated processing issues or specific decline codes from credit card issuers can signal that a pledge should no longer be reattempted, marking the point of true involuntary churn. An initial failed payment followed by a donor notification can unintentionally trigger voluntary churn, as some donors may choose to cancel after receiving the message. According to FlexPay, 10–25% of recurring payments typically fail on first attempt, and 27% of donors cancel after receiving a failed payment notice. Even those who update their payment information report a 35% drop in satisfaction, increasing the risk of future attrition. FlexPay addresses this challenge by optimizing the recurring billing process—working seamlessly within systems like Revolution CRM to intelligently recover failed payments before donor contact is needed. By preventing unnecessary disruptions and reducing the need for donor-facing failure notices, FlexPay helps preserve trust, minimize both involuntary and reactive voluntary churn, and strengthen the financial foundation of mission-driven organizations.
FlexPay helps prevent involuntary churn through a multi-phase strategy that addresses the payment process before, during, and after billing. In the pre-billing stage, FlexPay encourages organizations to proactively optimize first-attempt payment success by working closely with their payment processors to ensure all available tools—such as account updaters—are effectively deployed 7–10 days prior to billing. For some donor segments, pre-billing notices may also reduce declines by preparing donors for upcoming charges.
Once a decline occurs, FlexPay uses invisible, intelligent retry strategies to recover payments with minimal donor disruption. Unlike basic rules-based retry tactics, FlexPay’s AI and machine learning technology adapts to each specific decline reason, leading to higher recovery rates and an improved donor experience. Seamless coordination with nonprofit operations is key to ensuring these retries are both effective and invisible to the donor.
When outreach is necessary, clear, empathetic, and strategic communication is key to recovering failed payments while protecting donor loyalty. Automated messages via digital channels like email and SMS—gathered at the time of donor enrollment—enable timely and non-intrusive contact. Messaging that emphasizes empathy, urgency, and donor control helps preserve satisfaction and brand perception, while an easy-to-complete cure process increases recovery success. While some organizations use specialized services like Engaged Recovery to manage these touchpoints, similar best practices can be applied internally or through third-party providers to maximize impact. Together, these efforts reduce involuntary churn, protect recurring revenue, and maintain strong donor relationships.
How does this Impact Humane World for Animals?
Credit cards account for the highest-value sustainer pledges at Humane World for Animals, especially in the $25–49 range, while PayPal—though lower in volume—offers stronger donor retention due to backup payment options. However, across all credit card pledge tiers, there’s a significant gap between actual and potential revenue. For instance, closing just 1% of the revenue gap in the $25–29 range could generate $115K annually. With FlexPay in place, Humane World is already recovering hundreds of thousands in failed payments—over $680K in just six months—and is on track to recover more than $1.3 million by year’s end.
FlexPay’s technology is driving transformative results for Humane World for Animals. By intelligently recovering failed credit card payments and reducing involuntary churn, the organization is not only protecting existing revenue but also unlocking untapped potential in its sustainer program.
Conclusion
In today’s fundraising landscape, where recurring revenue is essential to long-term impact, Humane World for Animals stands as a model for how data-driven tools and strategic partnerships can strengthen a sustainer program across its entire lifecycle. From acquiring sustainers with strong retention potential to identifying those at risk of churn, and ultimately recovering failed payments with minimal disruption, Humane World has embraced innovation to protect and grow its mission. With ROI Solutions’ MiLo Intelligence enabling predictive, personalized outreach to reduce voluntary churn, and FlexPay’s advanced billing recovery solutions to minimize involuntary churn, the organization has created a sustainable, resilient giving program that honors donor intent and maximizes lifetime value. Humane World’s success is a testament to what’s possible when nonprofits prioritize not just donor acquisition—but donor retention at every stage.
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