This post was written for and published by Bloomerang
More and more organizations now have a sustaining donor (monthly, quarterly, etc. donor) program. That’s great!
Unfortunately, there can be a tendency not to continue appealing to them.
But should you continue asking them for money? Can you send an appeal to your recurring donors?
The answer is a resounding: YES, YES, YES! If you don’t, you’re missing out.
The typical small shop that I have worked with sends two appeals a year and perhaps two newsletters in the mail. They may be sending one email newsletter a month and perhaps six of those include appeals for money, typically around Giving Tuesday and year-end.
If you ask me that’s really not a huge number of appeals. In fact, if you’re only mailing one or two appeals a year, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table – especially from recurring donors!
You MUST absolutely continue to reach out to this group of your most loyal donors. Just think about it: these donors have invested in you! They care about you. They trust you.
If you stop appealing to them, you exclude your best donors.
But it’s not enough to just lump your sustaining donors in with all of your generic appeals. A much better approach, now that you’ve secured these wonderful, ongoing donors, is to create a segment just for them, so that you can always appeal to them in a unique and special way.
For some of the organizations I work with, their sustainers are the top responders to appeals every time. For one of the organizations I work with, 59% of their sustainers makes at least one extra donation a year, but many give even more often than that. Just think the money you would lose out on if you didn’t ask!
Here are a few tips:
