So many things to update; so little time!  So we went back to a concept we tried, and you tolerated, last month: the potpourri post.

Sustainer growth: We’d talked about the 2019 M+R Benchmarks Study, which showed monthly giving rising as one-time giving was mostly flat.  An astute commenter (all Agitator commenters are astute!) asked about whether this was all monthly giving or just online? (It appears to be just online.)

Now we have data from the Blackbaud Target Analytics donorCentrics FedExCup Sustainer Summit.  As we’ve seen and gamed out, donor numbers are falling (11% in this sample).  However, sustainers, and sustaining revenue are increasing, driving overall revenue higher.  Some additional notes:

• Percent of donors acquired directly to sustaining is generally increasing;
• Canvassing, broadcast, and digital are almost all of the direct acquisition of sustainers;
• Retention of sustainers has gone up at the same time as one-time giving retention has gone down.

Legacy giving and memorial giving similarities.  A few weeks ago, Roger’s Death is our Friend post, talked about the importance of working on legacy giving.  And in January, Dr. Claire Routley and Dr. Kiki Koutmeridou hosted a webinar on how to optimize your legacy giving offer.

Part of that presentation focused on the importance of giving  the person donating through a legacy a sense that their gift will be a legacy of themselves beyond their life.  It turns out that may be true for loved ones giving in memoriam as well.  A just-released study shows that adding a permanent memorial for memorial giving increases both the likelihood of getting a second memorial gift and average gift levels.  A discussion of impact on the anniversary of the death also increased second memorial gifts.

Net promoter scores? We’re not fans.  Back in 2011, the Agitators who came before me were talking about why Net Promoter Scores are a poor measure for nonprofits. (Highlights: they measure intent not action, falsely assume people are detractors when they may be apathetic, make poor use of data, aren’t actionable, and can’t predict giving well.  Other than that, they are fine).

Last week, the Wall Street Journal, eight years after the Agitator’s coverage, finally covered NPS, calling it “The Dubious Management Fad Sweeping Corporate America” and highlighting even more reasons not to use this measure.  What to use?  Well, Dr. Adrian Sargeant and Kevin Schulman have an excellent NonProfit Pro piece discussing alternatives based on models of loyalty and behavior like a Commitment Study.

You. Me. NYC.  Thursday, May 23.  As we mentioned last month, the NonProft Alliance is doing a full day educational event in New York City tomorrow.  There are many fake deadlines in this world, but this one is real.  We’re talking about the fundraising landscape, strategic changes you can make to increase results, and data privacy and effectiveness.  You can still sign-up here. (Full disclosure: I helped with the education content committed for the conference and thus am not objective about how awesome it will be.)

UK fundraising slump.   in February, we reported that UK charitable giving was down 4.2% year-over-year; in April, we reported  14% of UK charities say they are “struggling to survive.”  Now, 43% of UK charities (and six of the top ten) are reporting a decrease in their fundraising.

One webinar down, three to go.  Last week, Roger highlighted four free webinars; one is now in the books.  The video is below:

Three remain:

June 11: Beyond the Nudge: Putting Deep Behavioral Science Insights to Work for You.

June 19^th: Which Half of Your Marketing Spend is Wasted?

June 26^th: How Donor Intelligence Can Retain Your Sustaining Donors

Bias in crowdfunding. Last year, we talked about how people were more likely to give to help people who are skinnier, whiter, and more attractive on crowdfunding platforms.  (These same biases are on The Bachelor, but I don’t know that that’s been studied formally.)  A new study backs this up and adds some additional biases.  Male borrowers (for microloans) are less likely to be funded and people are more likely to fund projects closer to home (as we also saw with classrooms with DonorsChoose.org).

What else should we be catching folks up on?

Nick