Will There Be A New Normal For Subscription Donors?

A quick introduction: Sustainers are a big part of today’s subscription economy and we’ve seen tremendous growth in the past few years, as this chart from the DonorCentrics™ Sustainer Benchmarking Study shows.

We’re still not at the level I think we should be at, but I guarantee that those organizations focused on growing their sustainers over the past few years were able to breathe a lot easier during the recent pandemic.

Let me start with some positive news first because I’m sure you could use some:

• It’s not too late to start growing your number of sustainer subscribers! Yes, even NOW.
• I’ve seen record-breaking growth in the number of organizations’ new sustainers. Mind you, it didn’t matter if the nonprofit provided direct service or not.
• I’ve seen small donors who contacted organizations to upgrade their current sustainer gifts.
• I’ve seen sustainers who converted from credit card gifts to gifts from their bank account, thus upgrading their gifts.
• Yes, I have heard from nonprofits about sustainers who canceled their gifts, but in many cases, with some proactive guidance, at least 20 to 30% were saved.
• I’ve also seen organizations with very few cancellations.

What was the main driver in most of this sustainer growth?

Here are five major factors that helped drive the digital growth of new sustainers and increases for existing sustainers in particular:

1. Many donors care about the organizations with which they’re involved and, when presented with a challenge (such as a lost event), they are happy to step up when asked!
2. Many donors who see sustainer giving as a long-term solution will be especially beneficial for the organization as they are happy to step up when asked!
3. While unemployment rates have sadly skyrocketed, most donors are in the retired category so they have some (fixed) income they can tap into when asked!
4. If presented with the option to give monthly to an organization they already care about or to a nonprofit they see is especially active and doing great work in the trenches, donors see that a small gift on a regular basis from their (fixed) income is a great way to help, especially when asked!
5. For those donors who are already giving monthly: If they get regular updates of how their gifts are making a difference—especially now—and how they’re helping the organization’s mission, that’s an important reason to keep their sustainer ‘subscription’ going. In some cases, they’ll even increase their giving levels when asked!

I hope you see the pattern here. Sustainers (and donations) come in when asked.

While so many of us had to retreat to working from home, some ‘old school’ channels (newspaper, mail, and phone) and newer technology (personal videos, online meetings, emails and social media) were successful in reaching out to donors. They especially helped in accomplishing growth in sustainers and all or most of the above.

Here are some of the approaches that were extremely successful:

1. Emails to donors with targeted sustainer gift or emergency asks
2. Emails with simple—often positive—updates, if there was a button or a link to make a sustainer gift in addition to an emergency ask
3. Social media—especially with positive news—personal videos, quick updates, recipes, tips, “how are yous.” They all helped.
4. Phone calls. With donors, at-home contact rates were higher than ever before. Donors want to connect and once you talk to a donor, the topic of sustainers can come up. Telemarketing agencies had to rework their systems and had to manually dial donors, with much higher contact and connection percentages. And you know what they say: More donors reached = more conversations = more conversions.
5. Matches. If you made a call to your favorite foundation or major donor, you could bring up the topic of a challenge match, which is useful for all types of fundraising but especially for sustainers.
6. Mailings. With the USPS working and printers and letter shops considered essential businesses, personal cards and appeal letters worked well, especially in combination with email follow-ups. A simple tick box on the reply form asking for sustainers could do wonders.

It’s now so easy to generate a new sustainer. Your website is there. Your online form is ready. You simply must start driving everybody there.

Finally, while most fundraisers were extremely busy at this time, many donors had time to read their mail. They had time to talk to you. They had time to engage and learn more about your organization. And the more they learned, the more likely they were to commit to that subscription: the sustainer gift.

I already saw the tremendous power of sustainer gifts before. Now, with events canceled or postponed, I hope that more organizations will see the power of mail, phone, and email to generate new sustainers. I expect that will continue for the foreseeable future. Don’t lose the connections you made—continue building more of them!

Donors can make a huge contribution with a small subscription-level sustainer contribution. Don’t ever sneeze at it and you’ll be able to raise more money than ever before—and you can plan on it no matter what!

Originally published by Blackbaud Institute, npEXPERTS 2020: The Digital Spark.