Sustainer First Fundraising
As many of you know, I’m working on a book.
I’m immersed in the depths of editing at the moment. There is one trend in particular that I’m struggling to articulate, and I wonder if you might be able to help.
The book is about how the rise of the Subscription Economy has transformed recurring giving, made sustainable giving accessible to more nonprofits than at any other time in history, and how they can take advantage of it to create a robust recurring stream of income to accomplish their mission.
What is proving tricky to express in a responsible way is a trend that I’ve seen among the most significant and fastest-growing recurring giving programs.
Many of these top-tier organizations are leading with recurring giving. But they are doing so in an intensely focused way, putting sustainers first above almost everything else. Some might even say these organizations are too narrowly focused or even irresponsible, but it’s hard to deny the results.
I’m curious for you to reflect on this as you read. Have you noticed this narrow focus leading to great results as well? Have you seen it play out in other settings? What do you make of it?
Let’s look at this pattern of leading with recurring giving more deeply.
Sustainer First Fundraising
Increasingly, charities are leading with recurring giving. For these charities, their sustainer program is positioned as the most important and central way of supporting the charity. There may be other fundraising efforts, but the tone is clear – our best, most faithful donors who care deeply for the cause are giving on a recurring basis.
This trend goes by different names:
Sustainer First
Sustainer Primary
Sustainer Centered
Sustainer Forward
Whatever you call it, a common feature of organizations that have built the strongest sustainer programs is that they have prioritized recurring giving above nearly everything else.
Charities like St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and the Humane Society of the United States lead with a monthly ask on donation forms with messages like “St. Jude kids depend on you” and “Save all animals year-round!”
For organizations like World Vision and charity: water, the sustainer-first mindset goes very deep.
World Vision and its Core Driver
World Vision is one of the largest charities in the world. In 2023, the organization reported $1.5 billion in revenue. Their impact has been tremendous – in 2023 alone, they distributed 208,000 tons of food supplies, helped establish access to clean water for 3.1 million people, improved sanitation for nearly 2.5 million, and equipped 2.9 million with household handwashing facilities, responded to 78 humanitarian emergencies in 59 countries, distributed 9.6 million bed nets, and distributed nearly $800 million in microloans, impacting nearly 1.4 employees in 25 countries.
I’ve had the privilege of working with many alums of World Vision over the years. I’ve interviewed former leadership. I’ve been blessed to work with World Vision directly on several occasions, advising them on programs like the 30 Hour Famine, Team World Vision, and digital fundraising.
World Vision’s size today is difficult to comprehend, but what is not hard to understand is that recurring giving has been the primary driver of its growth in individual contributions over the years.
From the early days of World Vision, after its founding in 1950 by Bob Pierce, child sponsorship was the cornerstone of the organization’s efforts. The organization grew explosively in the 1980s, mainly in response to a dire famine in Ethiopia and innovative fundraising strategies in major channels like television.
My former boss and mentor, Steve Woodworth, was at the center of that effort, along with several other key leaders, leading all of marketing. During his time at World Vision, the organization grew from approximately $40 million annually to over $130 million in just 12 years.
One thing that has stood out to me from hearing stories of World Vision over the years was the central focus on recurring giving in the form of child sponsorship.
Bill Kliewer, a key figure on the World Vision leadership team for many years, once told me how intensely focused they were on the sponsorship program. Sponsorship was the key.
Charity: Water and it’s Singular Focus
In 2016, the team at charity: water launched a monthly giving program called The Spring. Launched a time when the meteoric growth of the relatively new charity had subsided, founder Scott Harrison and his team were frustrated with the cycle of starting over January 1 every year. The idea was to create a recurring revenue stream by focusing almost exclusively on recurring giving.
It worked. By 2020, the program had more than 80,000 active recurring donors.
I asked Brady Josephson, VP of Marketing & Growth at charity: water, about this. The organization has done a number of really smart things over the years to grow their program, but for Josephson, the most important thing was their singular focus on The Spring – “The biggest thing to me was from our CEO and Founder to the Executive team to the Senior Leadership on down, there was SO MUCH commitment and alignment to growing our subscription giving program.”
Josephson continued, “This focus and growth came at the detriment of some other things, but the whole org was like ‘SPRING, SPRING, SPRING.’”
He continued, “That’s the single most important thing for any nonprofit to grow subscription giving. You can do all the tactics and check all the boxes but if you don’t have that level of buy-in and commitment throughout the org, your growth is limited and slower.”
A Good Kind of Unbalanced?
In some ways, conventional thinking contradicts how these organizations have prioritized recurring giving – in some cases, at great cost to other strategies and efforts.
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
“Best to have a diversified approach.”
These sayings are good, a lot of the time – and we have language for the opposite approach – “Unbalanced.” “Narrow-minded.” “Myopic.” “Risky.”
Yet, at least some of the best charities raising the most recurring giving have prioritized sustainer giving for years, even decades.
These organizations could be (and many have been) accused of being narrow-minded, losing revenue in other areas, and missing out on single-gift donors. At the same time, being “unbalanced” and prioritizing recurring donors has paid off. Years down the line, they have substantial, resilient sustainer programs.
This does not mean these organizations do not have healthy fundraising programs in other areas – single-gift direct marketing, events, peer-to-peer, major gifts, etc. In fact, many of them have quite sophisticated efforts in one or more of these other areas, often funded by resilient recurring revenue programs. It’s just that they’ve adopted a mindset that they lead with recurring most of the time.
My hypothesis is that there are three reasons for the success of these programs.
1. Focus – Instead of dividing attention and resources, these charities poured their best efforts into a focused effort.
2. Donor Attention – I think donors can sense when an organization has prioritized creating a community of resilient, sustaining donors – an inner core, so to speak – and they respond well to that.
3. Frequency – When sustainer giving is prioritized, more “at bats” come with a higher frequency and quality of communications around recurring giving, leading to greater response.
More research is needed on sustainer-first fundraising, and this is the closest I think I’ll ever get to recommending being unbalanced and narrow-minded!
💡 Takeaway: A sustainer-first approach sends a clear message that the core of individuals who care deeply about the cause partner with the organization on a consistent, ongoing basis. The organization prioritizes building this long-term snowball of stable, sustainable support that enables the mission.
What do you think? Have you seen other organizations benefit from being singularly focused on “one thing” at the cost of others? Do you have a counter perspective?
I’d love to hear from you – just contact me!
Also, if you are interested, I’m starting to build a list of folks who want to support the book by preordering a copy, writing a review, sharing about it, or getting even more involved. If you are interested, you can add your name to that list here: www.imago.consulting/launchteam
I’ll be sending out periodic updates on the book as things continue to progress!
Until next week… Surfs Up! 🌊
- Dave
P.S. For those of you who were wondering, we made it to France safely. (If you missed last week, we moved to France for the summer). We’ve enjoyed settling into a summer rhythm of family time, work, writing, exploring our community, and going on adventures.
About the Author | Dave Raley
Consultant, speaker, and writer Dave Raley is the founder of Imago Consulting, a firm that helps non-profits and businesses create profitable growth through sustainable innovation. He’s the author of a weekly trendspotting report called The Wave Report, and the co-founder of the Purpose & Profit Podcast — a show about the ideas at the intersection of nonprofit causes and for-profit brands.
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