Federal Funding Messaging Spurs New Donor Growth
CDP, in partnership with ROI Solutions, launched Epiphany Benchmarking in September with 14 public media organizations and nine large national nonprofit organizations signing on for our premiere benchmarking season.
Already our Public Media benchmarking participants are crunching the data (updated monthly), determining the drivers for trends, and making decisions based on their findings.
When a participant noticed that their results were around the median, or in the middle, for new donor growth this year, they wondered what impact their federal funding messaging strategy could have had on their results compared to their peers.
So we created a quick questionnaire and surveyed the group. We asked folks to describe their approach to federal funding messaging as:
We avoid it as much as possible.
We were avoiding it as much as possible until the vote to rescind. We now include the lost revenue as part of the case for giving but keep our tone neutral.
We have been and continue to mention the federal funding threats and rescission but do our best to maintain a very neutral tone.
We have been and continue to mention the federal funding threats and rescission. Our tone can sometimes be more emotional.
The results were illuminating.
Most participants (8) were a 3 (on-going, neutral messaging), and the YOY change in new donors ranged across the spectrum from 25th percentile into the 75th percentile.
One organization reported a 2 (no messaging until the recission). New donor growth for this organization is in the 25th percentile.
Four organizations were a 4 (on-going, sometimes emotional messaging). Their results start at the median and go into the 75th percentile.
To be clear, every public media Epiphany benchmarking participant (and most public media organizations in the National Reference File) are seeing strong new donor growth this year. And every organization has to consider carefully their approach to messaging around any sensitive topic.
As you’re considering your Giving Tuesday and End of Calendar Year campaigns take this unscientific, but very interesting learning into account when deciding how hard, or even whether to lean into the federal funding crisis. Clearly, within this group, it was a good idea to talk about federal funding, and our guess is that it still is.