Focus on your sustainers this summer

Greetings friends,

 

I hope you’re having a great start to your summer.

 

If you’re like me, you’re thinking about what the post-pandemic fundraising world is going to look like. Maybe your organization is trying to figure out when it will be time to start doing in-person events again, or you’re wondering how donor priorities will shift in the next year as we move forward into a vaccinated world. I think it’s safe to say, no matter what happens, that the acceleration of digital transformation we’ve seen across our community means that your digital outreach programs will continue to be a large, and growing, part of your fundraising efforts.

So, what are the trends happening in fundraising right now?

 

During the pandemic, we saw many organizations refocus on retention and stewardship of the people they already know care about their mission. And, we’ve seen recurring revenue, or sustainers, become a bigger and bigger focus for a lot of different organizations, not just in the nonprofit world, but among companies like Apple or Disney or other corporate giants. 

 

In the last 7 years, we’ve seen nearly 100% growth of recurring subscription-based services in the e-commerce space and 70% growth of recurring-giving programs among nonprofits. In fact, according to fundraising guru Harvey McKinnon, sustainer gifts have become so mainstream that you can realistically expect 10 percent or more of your current donors to make that monthly commitment, right now. All you need to do is ask them.

 

Building a strong sustainer program will give you more confidence in your revenue on a month-to-month basis and access to an ongoing base of support from people who really care about what you're doing. And, for nonprofits, this strategy can be very powerful. 

Taking the next steps

 

Starting, and then growing, your sustainer program can sound daunting. Success depends both on delivering the right message at the right time - and on setting up ongoing stewardship to make sure you’re retaining those donors. At NGP VAN, we have tools that not only help you acquire more sustainers but make it easy to manage them over the long term.

 

This month we’re releasing two Success Guides focused on increasing sustainer giving. These guides will give you easy recipes you can follow to get started with online sustainer fundraising - or to grow your program.

 

Read our Success Guide for setting goals and launching your sustainer program 

 

Read our Success Guide for taking your sustainer program to the next level 

 

And to help you put these ideas into practice, we also have a monthly webinar on increasing your sustainer giving.

 

Register for the webinar

Looking forward

In the next few months, we’ll be releasing more features aimed at fundraising like SMS automation, the ability to submit online donation forms on behalf of an organization, and several new features based on our Actionable Intelligence initiative which uses machine-based learning data insights to optimize your fundraising. So, keep watching your inbox for more about these features coming this summer.

We love creating tools that help you succeed.

 

 

Yours,

Mike Liddell

(He, Him, His)
General Manager, Digital

To update your subscription preferences, please click here.

 

If you believe you received this message in error or wish to no longer receive email from us, please unsubscribe.