Hidden in your current membership program are thousands of dollars in excessive expenses and unrealized potential that, if tapped, could provide a budget for emerging fundraising techniques that could raise even more net revenue.

Where is that money? 

Before I answer that, I’m going to suggest that we think of our membership & development departments as a small ‘family business’ within a business.  When framed that way, it shifts the focus toward advocacy for the station mission in a way that feels personal.  Rallying for the success of a family business makes us scrappy and nimble; it causes us to look in the nooks and crannies to find profitable, effective ways to both reduce the cost to raise a dollar and increase the ultimate NET we can invest in the overall business.

Simply speaking, stepping back to look at our budgets anew is strategic.  It’s kind of heroic.

So, where is that extra money?  For one, it’s built into the cost of your direct mail.  Whether the creative is written by staff, printed & posted by the station, composed by an agency or third party, or sent ‘for free’ by the university advancement office, there are both hard costs and opportunity costs built into the mail that reduce your ultimate net revenue. 

A quick analysis of your mail budget on a piece by piece basis will likely find that CDP’s direct mail option will show a 20-30% decrease in mail expenses.  CDP’s REN, LAP and AG mail includes an entire e-solicitation series that complements each campaign.  The opportunity cost savings are different with each station, but the ability to shift staff time to deeper relationship-building LOCALLY will pay off big.

Vehicle donations have likely been a ‘set it and forget it’ channel of fundraising for most stations.  Let’s go back to the family business analogy: if you knew that your business could earn 85-90% from each vehicle donated, instead of 60-70%, does it make sense to continue to earn less when budgets are so tight?  As fundraisers, we’re always asked to raise more, and doing so by switching to the CDP flat-fee model will help you raise thousands more with almost no effort.

What can you do with the savings?  If the money doesn’t go toward programming, you could invest it in CDP’s new Conversational Texting program that leverages real human beings to answer inbound and send outbound messages that enhance your pledge, sustainer, renewal, addgift, and other efforts throughout the year.  The program is seeing high ROI.

You could invest in Public Media DigiPass, a turnkey search engine optimization program showing 3:1 ROI for stations using it during campaign periods. 

The budget, as it stands, may not be there to venture into new areas for your ‘family business,’ but strategically approaching your budget to wrest savings from various efforts can free up that money and make you and your team into budget heroes.