There’s a fundraising adage that says: “It costs more money to acquire a new donor than to retain an existing one.” And it’s true: the estimated cost of acquiring a first-time donor is five times that of retaining one. In other words, fundraising without donor retention is like trying to fill a water bucket with […]
Posted inHub Reports
Desert or Oasis? Assessing the NYC Digital News Landscape
Earlier this year, the News Revenue Hub was commissioned by the Charles H. Revson Foundation and the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment to assess the state of local digital news in New York City (NYC). Would we find a news desert or oasis? What we learned, of course, was a bit […]
Posted inNational Press
63 industry leaders, 40 organizations, and 5 opportunities for revitalization on the horizon of local news
The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard and the Lenfest Institute brought together several dozen leaders from news organizations, platforms, and foundations in May to brainstorm ways to bolster innovation in local journalism sustainability. Diversifying revenue, building a culture of philanthropy, and seeding growth development were some of the conclusions in […]
Posted inNational Press
Billy Penn, Denverite, and The Incline are all going after members. Can they become predominately reader-supported?
Last fall, Spirited Media was laying off staff at each of its three publications. Earlier this year, it shifted its strategy to seeking significant reader support, namely, membership (contributions, donations, gifts), a business decision that a whole slew of other sites both large and small, for-profit and nonprofit, legacy or startup, have converged on in […]
Posted inHub Reports
Metrics That Move the Needle
Spend any time around Hub staff or clients and you’ll be sure to hear the term “KPIs” batted about. It stands for “Key Performance Indicators” and they’re critical to developing a successful membership strategy. Here are the top three KPIs we recommend you track: # of email subscribers % of monthly donors # of individual […]
Posted inHub Reports
What is Stewardship? Why it Matters More Than You Might Think
Our philosophy at the Hub is simple: You should be cultivating relationships with your readers all year long, not just at the end of the year during your last major fundraising push. This kind of relationship building is what we call “stewardship,” and it just might be the most integral part of your membership program. […]
Posted inHub Reports
The Importance of Growing Your Email List (and How a Modal Might Help)
One of the keys to building a financially sustainable membership program is continually getting new email subscribers into your pipeline. Look at it this way: the more email addresses, the more potential donors. A few new subscribers a day, however, isn’t going to do the trick. Small organizations should net 300-500 new emails to their […]
Posted inNational Press
Five Reasons Your Org Should Send More Email Appeals
Recently, Hub clients joined Jesse Littlewood, the National Campaigns and Digital Director at Common Cause, for a webinar focused on the annual M+R Benchmarks Study. Below are Jesse’s findings (cross-posted from the Shorenstein Center’s blog with permission). By Jesse Littlewood Last week I hosted a webinar for the Shorenstein Center’s Single Subject News Project and […]
Posted inHub Reports
Hub Learning Laboratory: Putting Our Assumptions to the Test
Thanks to a grant from the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, we’ve been putting our assumptions to the test about what drives membership. Working with a data scientist, we were able to run several experiments based on theories we developed in our first year of business. We explored questions such as: what are the best predictors […]
Posted inHub Reports
News Revenue Hub Releases Local News Playbook
The News Revenue Hub, in partnership with Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, recently released a playbook for how to launch a local nonprofit news outlet—from fine-tuning your vision to identifying your audience and diversifying revenue streams. Building on the Hub’s experience with news organizations, industry groups, and researchers across […]