People ask me this question a lot: “My monthly donors only make up 3 percent (or fill in another percentage) of my donors. Is that good? What’s the percentage I should strive for?” The answer is: “It depends!” Let’s look at a few different scenarios:
- If you have 100,000 donors who have made a gift in the past year and 3 percent of them are sustainers, it’s not bad. That’s 3,000 donors giving you between $24 and $35 a month—or between $864,000 and $1,260,000. You should have the potential of growing.
- If you have 10,000 donors who have made a gift in the past year and 3 percent are giving monthly, that’s 300 donors and annual revenue between $86,400 and $126,000.
- If you have 1,000 donors, which 3 percent become sustainers, you’re looking at annual gifts of $8,640 and $12,600 on average.
In all three scenarios, I’d first say: “Congratulations! You’ve started and you’re well on your way to grow.” The more donors you have, the more potential you have. It does depend a bit on the types of donors though. (For example if 50,000 of your 100,000 donors come from an event, they may not be that easy to convert to give monthly. I’d certainly recommend you try, but it’s more difficult than asking donors who support your direct mail and online appeals with a gift.
Based upon the most recent statistics from the “2018 Blackbaud Luminate Online Benchmark Report,” the industry percentage of sustainer revenue from total revenue is 10.87 percent.
In other words, from all online giving from Luminate Online clients, sustainers make up almost 11 percent. So, if you compare your 3 percent to that almost 11 percent, it looks like you may be running behind.
But, do not get too hung up on that percentage. What’s much more important is your coverage ratio.
The formula: Number of Acquired + reactivated sustainers ÷ the # of lapsed sustainers.
Let’s look at this example: 50 Acquired + 10 Reactivated = 60 ÷ 50 lapsed sustainers = 1.2 . Your program is growing, but barely!
Growing your annual sustainer revenue is a combination of bringing in new sustainers and keeping the ones you have with all your might!
So before you get too focused on comparing yourself to that industry average of 10.87 percent, what does your coverage ratio look like for your sustainers? Do you have the processes in place to keep the ones you have? What are you doing to bring sustainers back? Spend some time to verify everything is working correctly. And once you know it is, you’ll be ready to really grow to the next highest level, with coverage ratios of 1.2 and higher.
And if you do, you’ll get to and beat that industry average and your annual sustainer revenue will grow higher and higher.
Originally posted on March 18, 2019 by NonProfitPro.
