In 2013, public television stations across the country collectively decided to revamp their approach to fundraising.
Public radio had long solicited “sustaining” donors — people who give monthly — but public television was lagging behind.
The stations’ on-air pledge drives, a main source of new donors, had always centered on one-time giving. But as they watched public radio stations boost their donor-retention rates by focusing on sustainers, more and more local public television stations started testing this approach in their on-air messages. Leaders tracked the results in both TV and radio and realized “how predictable the revenue can be and how you can dramatically change the retention of your donors” through monthly giving, says Michal Heiplik, executive director of contributor development partnership and membership marketing for WGBH in Boston.
The data showed that donor retention could climb from less than 20 percent to 40 percent in the first year alone — and go even higher as time passed. So they pushed the Public Broadcasting Service to promote monthly giving in the on-air appeals it provides to member stations.
“And the moment that those on-air statements started including sustainers, that was really a turning point for public media and the growth of [monthly giving],” Heiplik says.
In the five years since, WGBH has doubled the number of members who give monthly, which represents about 30 percent of the station’s total membership revenue. It also has nearly doubled the share of new donors who give for more than one year, to 44 percent. The reliability of a third of the station’s annual revenue has been “life-changing,” Heiplik says.
In an interview with the Chronicle, Heiplik shared insights from WGBH’s experience to help others build or improve a sustainer program.
Think long term: You may experience pain before gain.
Shifting to monthly giving isn’t easy, especially for smaller organizations that are trying to hang on from one month to the next. Nonprofits that want to commit to a sustainer program need to be sure the finance department is behind it and should realize the first year could be tough.
“It’s OK not to meet your first-year budget,” says Heiplik. Instead of thinking about short-term impact, consider the long-term value sustainers will bring as they turn into a reliable — and potentially significant — part of your nonprofit’s budget.
“We now start every month with X dollars that we know are going to show up,” Heiplik says. “Unless we really kind of majorly screw up in terms of processing, our systems go down, something absolutely apocalyptic happens, there’s a very predictable revenue stream. What that essentially does for us is it allows us to invest and try new things.”
Solicit monthly gifts in all kinds of appeals.
Re-examine all the ways your nonprofit raises money and figure out how to use them to attract new monthly supporters and convert existing donors to sustainers.
For instance, WGBH promotes monthly giving online, in its on-air messages, and in its monthly magazine. Plus, it has added door-to-door fundraising, which Heiplik estimates has attracted tens of thousands of new donors over the past four years, including many sustainers.
The station outsources canvassing to an outside vendor and supervises the program, which starts with ZIP code analysis of neighborhoods within an hour’s commute from WGBH and then looks at households that are not already members or sustainers and don’t have canvassing restrictions, among other criteria.
Canvassing has been very effective, Heiplik says. “We don’t think about it as acquisition of members; we think of it as acquisition of sustainers.”
Encourage giving by electronic funds transfers.
People who contribute through electronic-fund transfers from a bank account tend to continue giving longer than those who donate through credit cards, which expire and are easily canceled or replaced with other credit cards. The retention rate is about 8 percent higher for regular giving from bank accounts.
Try to figure out which donors are a good fit for monthly giving.
“I joke about this,” Heiplik says “It’s the difference between dating and getting married. Not all donors are ready to get married. They’re perfectly fine dating us.”
Pay attention to how your supporters respond to your sustainer pitches, he says, and you can “build up some of that institutional muscle pretty quickly.” For example, WGBH found that younger members and people who listen to radio programs every day are more likely to become sustainers than other donors.
Process gifts as efficiently as possible.
A few years ago WGBH switched to daily, rather than monthly, gift processing so it would know right away if there’s a problem with a payment. Many nonprofits only process charges once or twice a month, he says, which means they may not realize until weeks after a payment was attempted that it was rejected.
To further minimize loss of sustainers, Heiplik suggests working with your credit-card processing company to enable tools that automatically analyze your data and update changes in addresses or credit-card expirations.
WGBH also instituted a “40-day lockstep process” to recover lapsed donors, beginning with a phone call in the first seven days, followed by emails, direct mail, and telemarketing calls.
The station also has a staff person available to answer calls around the clock.
“If you ask someone to update, and you’re mailing a letter about it and asking them to call you, you want to make sure someone’s there to pick up,” he says.
At WGBH, its once fluctuating attrition rate now stays close to 1.5 to 2 percent, which is acceptable, he says, because it reflects “natural” causes like credit-card errors, insufficient funds, or the death of a supporter.
Nurture monthly donors.
To keep monthly donors on board, they need special attention. For example, WGBH turns to them first for feedback on how the station is doing.
Taking these extra steps is well worth the effort.
“It’s really gratifying when we have donors coming into our building, and you ask them if they’re a donor and they say, ‘No, no, I’m not a donor — I’m a sustainer,’” he says. That shows that they feel like partners in the mission.
Michal Heiplik is executive director of the Contributor Development Partnership, a collective of public television and radio stations that analyze the most effective fundraising tactics and share them among stations nationwide. He is also executive director of Local Development at WGBH in Boston.
