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Member Services Bureau

 

YOUR FULL-SERVICE, OUTSOURCING OPTION

 
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To help public broadcasting thrive, CDP strives to optimize the efforts of national service providers and local stations. When core fundraising programs are left to a centralized service like MSB, economies of scale generate more net income and faster file growth for your station. Freed from managing the day-to-day details of membership programs, your staff can focus on the high-touch activities at which they excel: development strategy, community engagement, local programming and major donor development.

Why should your station join?

  1. Grow Total Membership Revenue: MSB stations collectively increased membership revenue in 2018 by 6.9%, raising nearly $71 million, compared with an increase of 4.1% by non-MSB stations.

  2. Improve Donor Retention: Second- and third-year donor retention among MSB stations rose an average of 6.8% and 6.5%, respectively. Among non-members, the increases averaged 3.7% and 5.1%.

  3. Maximize First-Year Donor Acquisition: First-year donors increased by an average of 11.6% among MSB stations compared with 6.1% among non-members.

  4. Recapture Lapsed Donors: Through aggressive recapture programs and donor stewardship, MSB achieved a 2.1% decrease in lapsed donors between 2016 and 2018. Among non-MSB stations, lapsed donors increased by 16% during this period.

  5. Increase Major Donor Fundraising: Once in the Bureau, station staff can refocus on high-touch fundraising. Stations that joined MSB in 2016 increased the number of major donors by 33% from 2016 to 2018 compared with an 18.2% increase among non-MSB stations.

 

Compelling Reasons to Join the Member Services Bureau

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Boost Major Donor Fundraising

One of the tenets of the MSB value proposition is that, once in the Bureau, station staff are allowed the bandwidth to focus on high touch fundraising.  There is no greater example of this than major donor fundraising.  Stations joining the MSB in 2016 have increased the number of major donors by an average 20.2% from 2017 to 2019 compared to an average increase of 16.8% among stations in the benchmark cohort.  This increase in major donors contributed to a 33.8% average increase in major donor revenue from the MSB group, compared to 23.8% average growth rate for stations in the benchmark group.

 
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Leverage On-Demand/Passport Fundraising

Passport has become a lucrative source of revenue from first year donors over the past several years. With 2016 being the first year for many stations, we are just now getting a glimpse into year-over-year growth in Passport revenue in the period following acquisition. Among nearly 50 stations in the benchmark group, Passport revenue accounted for 3.5% of total revenue compared to 4.5% for the MSB stations in our cohort.  Passport revenue at the benchmark stations showed an average 5.3% increase in 2019 vs 2018 while stations in the MSB cohort reported a much more robust increase of 21.5% on average.  The average amount of Passport revenue raised among MSB stations was $173K compared to $148K among stations
in the benchmark group.

 
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Increase Sustaining Members

MSB has consistently outperformed the benchmark cohort in increasing both the number of sustaining members and the overall revenue from sustainers.  Our cohort of stations completing 2 full years with the MSB reported a 65.5% increase in the number of sustainers and a 66.8% increase in sustainer revenue compared to the 54.4% and 45.1% average increase among stations in the NRF benchmark.  This 21.7 percentage point difference between the MSB cohort and the NRF benchmark meant an additional $1.4 Million in sustainer revenue for these MSB stations.

 
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Optimize Web Fundraising (Web, Web Pledge, Passport)

Web fundraising has proven critical to the success of the MSB.  For stations completing 2 fiscal years in MSB, fundraising from Web, Web Pledge and Passport, as a percent of total membership revenue, has outpaced the benchmark cohort in each year.  Specifically, for the 3-year period from 2017-2019, MSB stations outpaced the NRF benchmark by 0.7, 0.8 and 5.1 percentage points respectively.  The aggregate lift over the benchmark during these 3 years resulted in nearly $1.6 million of additional online revenue for the MSB station cohort relative to the benchmark.