MSB Co-op and PBS Federated Form Insights
We're sharing this message on behalf of our colleagues on the CDP digital marketing team, led by Frank Auer.
At the recent PBS Annual Meeting, we observed the excitement around the PBS federated form and of the appeal of a centralized giving experience, as seen with features like one-click donations on FireTV. While ease of giving is always a priority, it’s essential to balance that with other aspects of the donation process, donor relationships, and your local brand. We wanted to take this opportunity to provide some insights and explain our thinking on how to maximize station fundraising and enhance your brand's position with your audience. Currently, based on our data and monitored performance, we have determined that the combination of Springboard and ACD forms delivers the best value and performance for public media organizations (PMOs). Federated forms are just one of the many tools in our comprehensive toolbox.
Access to data and limited flexibility. The lack of customization options, limited number of forms available, and inability to integrate additional code or perform ongoing A/B testing may result in generic and less effective fundraising initiatives. Hosting on the PBS website also means significant user data is gathered by PBS, not the local station, further complicating their ability to manage donor relationships.
Local brand and community. Hosting the form on the PBS domain may confuse donors, undermining local branding and lowering engagement and revenue for your organization. While the PBS brand is a great asset, we believe the local brand should lead. Every opportunity to highlight the local brand is beneficial. The centralized approach of the federated form can weaken the autonomy of local organizations by requiring uniform design and content, ultimately accruing valuable brand equity to national brands rather than to your local station. In a world where consumer brands are worth billions simply for their brand value, it is crucial to consider the importance of maintaining local brand equity.
Overreliance on Passport. A significant portion of the federated form benefits accrue to Passport. Understandably, Passport has been a significant asset to public media, but it is only one tool in our fundraising toolbox. With increasing challenges to streaming services and more people cutting services to save money, it is crucial to diversify fundraising efforts. Although Passport is a member benefit, many donors perceive it as a subscription, making diversification through events, local community engagement, major donors, planned giving, and other initiatives essential. CDP was established to help PMOs focus on diversification, and as financial pressures increase, it's crucial to concentrate on this aspect of fundraising. Diversification often requires additional forms and unique features, which aren't available with federated forms.
At CDP, we recognize the importance of providing centralized support while enabling PMOs to maintain their own brand equity and necessary customizations. We work collaboratively with our PMO partners to modify and adjust donation forms based on their needs, ensuring that PMOs can effectively serve their communities, optimize fundraising strategies, and provide a consistent and effective donor experience tailored to their unique audiences. Our vision for the future involves collaborating with PMOs to test and optimize forms, using their local input and guidance. We have found that our most innovative ideas often originate from local organizations themselves. Our role is to test, refine, and scale these ideas, placing stations at the heart of our form strategy. While the federated forms approach does solicit input from stations, we believe the evolution of the federated form is not widely built through A/B testing on station pages or with extensive station input, making it challenging to create forms optimized for real-world, local market-driven conversions.
We encourage you to carefully consider all aspects of the PBS federated form before making a change that may have unintended impacts on your organization, your donors, and your local community. We are excited about the continued innovation in digital giving and plan to continue collaborating with PBS and others to find the best possible solutions. We believe that federated forms fill a critical gap and are indeed useful, but they should not be applied indiscriminately across the board. Maintaining ownership of the majority of your forms via CDP is the best path to a successful future for your local station.
Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to continuing our partnership and supporting your fundraising efforts. If you have any questions about maximizing the value of your online donation forms, please feel free to reach out to me or to your client services representative.