5+ Key Tips for a Successful Sustained Giving Program

At the heart of every nonprofit executive lies a gnawing worry: How will I raise more money? Nonprofits want to make the world a better place in small and large ways, and having the funds to effect change is critical to this lofty mission.

A successful sustained giving program can be a game-changer for your nonprofit, bringing in consistent and reliable funding that your mission can depend on. The best part: every nonprofit can maximize sustained giving success with a well-built and effectively managed program.

This article reviews the best practices for developing a successful program based on the experiences of the country's top sustained giving programs.

1. Make your sustained giving program easy to join. 

This basic point is often overlooked. Many nonprofits don’t consider the ease of a sustained giving program! 

Some simple donation form tweaks can remove obstacles for donors:

• Add a toggle button to your donation form. Let donors choose to convert a one-time gift to a monthly gift by switching a toggle button.
• Accept different types of donations. Consider which types of nonprofit donations you can accept: cash, check, credit card, ApplePay, or in-kind donations. 
• Ask strategically. Research shows that $19 is an effective ask, and you can then see if they will upgrade to $25 a month after they’ve engaged.
• Provide suggested giving amounts. Lean on your nonprofit CRM to automatically adjust suggested giving amounts based on donation history.

What’s the best way to ask? You can use any one of several fundraising tools, but for offline channels like direct mail, choose a toll-free phone number and a memorable URL so you can start tracking the relationship and managing the donor journey. 

2. Use data to understand your sustainers.

If you have an all-in-one nonprofit CRM, you have all the data to identify sustainers within your donor base. Many donors give multiple times a year but aren’t flagged as sustainers because the giving isn’t regular or someone has given sizable gifts infrequently. Mine your data and view it to find someone committed to your cause. That’s the number-one quality of all sustainers.

Data can show you how many gifts a donor makes per year, and many organizations will use AI-enabled tools to predict the best time to ask donors to give more or give more regularly. 

Once you’ve found some potential sustainers, create a compelling message or relay a heartfelt story about your organization’s impact. People want to help, and data can show you the paths that will be most successful.

For example, suppose you have a donor, and you know she donated to fund advocacy for FDA approval of a drug because her husband is sick. In that case, she might be touched and motivated by stories about other successful advocacy efforts you’ve launched. Or she might appreciate an email wishing her a happy anniversary; use data points to personalize your outreach and strengthen donor relationships.

3. Focus on stewardship in sustainer giving.

The key to a successful sustainer program is retention rates. You not only want a donor giving you $20 a month, but you also want her donating every month…forever! There are myriad ways you can retain donors and increase sustained giving, including:

• Automate a series of emails that show donors how your nonprofit is affecting the mission. Highlight how each donor's gifts are put to work, positioning them as superheroes in your nonprofit’s story.
• Consider a text outreach campaign around holidays or special anniversaries.
• Offer invitations to events, even some explicitly created for recurring donors.

As you start to map out a sustained giving program, it is helpful to piggyback a donor steward campaign to make sure you’re letting those donors know how impactful their giving is. This means you’ll be promoting your sustained giving program along with a donor stewardship campaign, effectively riding the coattails of the stewardship campaign to broach the sustained giving program.

Simply add some of the outreach strategies listed to an ongoing campaign, and you’ll have a solid start to your sustained giving program.

4. Manage your sustained giving program effectively.

A sustained giving program must be monitored over time. Keeping in touch with these donors will keep them engaged and encourage them to continue to commit to your mission.

There are five keys to sustainer management:

• Dedicate staff members to donor care. Whether you assign different clients to individuals or run blanket campaigns, ensure your donors have someone looking out for them. If you're a small organization, you look out for them.
• Stay in touch with consistent, personal communication. Make donors part of your team, recognize their loyalty, and understand why they give.
• Don’t skimp on technology. Invest in a good CRM with billing software and a vendor with significant experience with successful sustainer programs. Data integration means that your tools are all leveraging each other, and data hygiene keeps your data solid and actionable. 
• Carefully monitor critical metrics. Know which metrics you need to track. Data will validate your successes and illuminate areas for improvement.

And finally, specialized billing software is vital. The right type of billing technology can make a significant difference. 

5. Measure the results of your sustained giving program.

A data-driven approach is highly effective because you can quickly see what’s working, but you can also find areas of weakness and promptly pivot to improve the success of your program. According to the 2023 Nonprofit Tech for Good Report, 67% of nonprofits use a CRM to manage donor data, and 15% use AI tools to find new donor prospects. 

You can also measure:

• Credit card decline trends: Analyze patterns to identify common issues, such as outdated payment information, and implement proactive measures, such as automated reminders for donors to update their payment methods. 
• Chargebacks (when donors didn’t really intend to be sustainers): Review chargeback data to understand donor concerns, then refine your communication and donation confirmation processes to reduce misunderstandings. 
• Average monthly gifts: Track trends in gift amounts and identify opportunities to encourage increased giving, such as through tiered recognition programs or impact-driven messaging.

Relying on a robust nonprofit CRM, such as one that offers features like donor segmentation, automated reporting, or real-time analytics dashboards, can make you a smarter—and more effective—fundraiser. For instance, tools that highlight lapsed donors or predict donor behavior using AI can help you target and re-engage supporters efficiently.

• For example, if you A/B test email series, you will quickly see which email resonates more than the other. 
• To identify what drives higher engagement rates, focus on specific elements, such as subject lines, call-to-action buttons, or email layouts. 
• Ensure the test has a clear objective and sufficient sample size for statistically significant results. 
• If a certain demographic has stopped giving, you can revise your messaging to engage those donors. For example, suppose younger donors have become less active. In that case, you might emphasize digital channels like social media or text campaigns, highlighting impact stories that resonate with their values, such as environmental sustainability or social justice initiatives.

Relying on a robust nonprofit CRM to collect and analyze data can make your fundraising efforts more fruitful.

6. Leverage a CRM with sustainer management capabilities.

Specialized CRM systems with sustainer management features can significantly enhance your nonprofit's recurring donation programs. The key benefits include saving staff time, improving donor engagement, and maximizing revenue collection rates. Here's how nonprofits can achieve these benefits:

1. Streamline Recurring Payment Processing:
   • Use a CRM with an in-house payment processor that offers tools like automatic rebilling for missed payments and credit card expiration updates. These features help maintain consistent revenue streams without manual intervention.
2. Enhance Donor Experience:
   • Provide online donor portals that empower donors to manage their contributions, update personal information, and access personalized content. This increases donor satisfaction and engagement while reducing administrative overhead.
3. Maximize Revenue Collection Rates:
   • Look for CRMs with proven high collection rates. For example, CharityEngine achieves over 98% sustained revenue collection, well above the industry average of 70% to 90%. This ensures that pledged donations turn into actual funds for your nonprofit.
4. Utilize Data for Strategic Decisions:
   • Measure and analyze donation trends and collection rates using your CRM's reporting tools. Understanding these metrics helps you identify opportunities for improvement and better predict future income.
5. Save Staff Time and Increase Efficiency:
   • Automate routine tasks like billing, donor reminders, and reporting. This frees up staff to focus on high-impact activities like building relationships and creating compelling campaigns.

By leveraging the right CRM technology, nonprofits can reduce administrative burdens, foster stronger donor relationships, and secure more consistent funding for their missions.

Sustained Giving Programs: The Bottom Line.

The size of your staff, the amount of your annual donations, even the cause you support—none of these are hurdles to creating and managing a successful sustained giving program.

It all comes down to caring about your donors, understanding their journey and why they give, and showing them how impactful their donation is and how much you appreciate their loyalty. Use technology to help you, whether it’s aggregating data points, using artificial intelligence for insights, or offering specialized billing software to keep the dollars coming in.

Finally, as with any effort, measure your results so you can amplify your success stories and find areas for improvement.

The scope of your sustained giving program is unlimited. If you want to see how clients, large and small, use CharityEngine’s software to create, sustain, and grow their programs, request a demo, and we will show you the tools in action.