Sustainers and Recurring Giving at bbcon!

We’re just 9 days away from the start of bbcon! I already told you what to expect on the advocacy front, so now it’s time for a little self-promotion. Yours truly will be co-presenting a session on Sustainers, called Leave No Recurring Revenue on the Table along with David Glass from World Wildlife Fund.

Sustaining giving is the most valuable investment your organization can make – it’s cost-effective and encourages retention and engagement. In Europe, it’s all about monthly bank drafts for supporting charities. But in the USA, the emphasis is still on acquisition of one-time gifts, and first-time donors churn all too often. This makes the cost of fundraising too high. A sustaining giving program, if it exists at all, is promoted weakly as a special thing off to the side.

David and I think that USA-based nonprofit organizations need to turn this paradigm on its head. We should make sustaining giving the norm. In addition to World Wildlife Fund, there are other nonprofits who are doing just that. We’ll take a look at some examples of how, and David will show us a program that WWF invested in and promoted that has yielded great results. We’ll also discuss some trends in recurring giving and take a peek at segments.

That’s all the spoilers you’re going to get from me, so make sure to attend our session at bbcon. It’s on Sunday, September 30 at 4:15pm. Our session is in the “Interactive” track, so we’ll also focus heavily on online sustainers and we’ll take a look at some configurations in Luminate Online that you should make to maximize the ROI.

There are other awesome sustainer sessions too in addition to ours:

Attracting Loyal Donors through Sustainer Giving Programs presented by Carol Rhine, Principal Consultant at Target Analytics, a Blackbaud Company – this session is also on September 30 at 4:15pm. Carol’s session approaches sustainers from the analytics side – why you want to have them, how to find them in your file and how to effectively solicit them. If you’re conflicted about whether to attend my session or Carol’s, I say go to both – send your online person to ours, and your direct mail manager to Carol’s.

Same Time Next Month: Building a Multi−Channel Sustainer Program presented by Steve Kehrli from PETA, Amy Day from Dumb Friends League, and Chas Offut from Blackbaud – on October 2 at 11:00am. Steve, Amy and Chas are going to look at sustainers through the lens of a multichannel approach, and will focus on both online and offline programs.

And if you tell me that you’re not yet registered, then I’ll shake my head in disbelief, and point you to www.bbconference.com to register today. See you there!