TL;dr: we tell you about our Sustainer Checkup service, which will help fine-tune your recurring giving program to retain sustainers.
We hope your nonprofit organization gained a lot of net new one-time donors during end-of-year fundraising season.
How have you been communicating with these new donors to steward and retain them? Our friend Ted Fickes of Bright+3 has a lot of valuable observations about year-end donors and next steps.
Since so many new end-of-year donors make one-time gifts, a goal for many organizations is for the donor’s next gift to be a sustaining gift.
Sustaining gifts are the lifeblood of many organizations. Recurring revenue can be counted on. Sustainers, the majority of whom give smaller gifts regularly, usually monthly, have a higher lifetime value than one-time donors. Acquisition of donors is expensive and getting more so as attention spans get shorter and channels grow.
Let’s talk about donor intent. When someone decides to become a sustainer, they are affirmatively choosing to tell your organization they want to make a monthly gift. This is most often through a credit card. They aren’t returning to your donation form each month to make more one-time gifts; donors want their donation to continue automatically just like other subscriptions.
It is vital to honoring your donors’ intent when they make a recurring gift by making sure their donation processes reliably.
But their gift doesn’t always continue without interruption. Sometimes technical things get in the way–their card expires, their card is stolen and reissued with a new number, or their card was temporarily over its limit and was unable to be charged. If nothing happens to correct these technical difficulties, then the sustainer’s gift lapses.
Sometimes other things cause sustainers to lapse. If the organization doesn’t steward the donor in a way that increases loyalty, the sustainer may lose interest, cancel their gift, or take no action if their gift lapses for a technical reason.
Sustainer attrition is preventable with some attention–Raise HECK’s Sustainer Checkup. These are quick services designed to help you verify whether your sustainer program is set up to retain recurring revenue at the highest percentage. You can choose a technical review only, and also have us check your recruitment and stewardship.
At Raise HECK we want to help you choose and use the best technology to fulfill your mission. The Sustainer Checkup is part of helping you use what you have to the fullest extent possible. Get in touch with us at hello@raiseheck.com or by filling out this form. We’d love to help you retain more donors!