In 2011, a group of public broadcasters created the Contributor Development Partnership as a means to draw on each other’s fundraising experience and data. By establishing benchmarks in areas such as pledges, online giving, and membership retention, public radio and television stations across the country are learning from each other and finding ways to boost revenue.
At the center of the effort are quarterly reports, known by the acronym ROAR (for Revenue Opportunity and Action Report), which give each participating station or network a one-page snapshot of its performance in a couple dozen fundraising categories.
The report uses traffic-light colors to alert stations at a glance how well they are doing compared to their peers. A red circle means a station is performing significantly below average in a certain fundraising category. Yellow means it is about average, while green indicates it is performing significantly above the norm.
Here’s how two stations are going for the green:
UNC-TV, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
Red light: In the second quarter of 2013, revenue from vehicle donations accounted for just .63 percent of annual gifts to the station, less than half the average for all stations in the benchmarking group.
Changing colors: The station switched from the car-selling vendor it had been using to a vendor that the Contributor Development Partnership had negotiated with for a favorable deal for participants. Paying a much smaller fee to the seller and offering donors a much better customer-service experience improved the station’s revenues.
Green light: By the second quarter of this year, UNC-TV’s vehicle-donation earnings accounted for more than 2.5 percent of all gifts, a nearly fourfold increase from a couple of years ago and well above the industry average.
South Dakota Public Broadcasting
Red light: In the fourth quarter of 2012, fewer than five percent of all the station’s donors were sustainers.
Changing colors: The station rebranded its recurring-gift program, giving it a name, Evergreen, and marketing it through its mail and email solicitations and on-air drives. It also ran a yearlong matching-gift campaign, in which a major donor matched the contributions of all new sustaining members.
Yellow light: By the first quarter of this year, sustainers were up to nearly 17 percent of the donor file, just about at the industry average. The good performers were at about 26 percent, with the very best topping 45 percent.
Getting to green: The station wants to improve its sustainer rate to at least 30 percent, and is continuing to plug Evergreen. This month, it changed its website settings, so when a visitor clicks on the “donate now” button, making a recurring gift is the first option offered.
