NPR Digital Services Blog

Quick Pledge, our industry-specific online pledge system, has an enormous impact on results…and it gets better each year.  Just take a look!

During the Fall 2010 drive months (Sept-Oct) stations using Quick Pledge raised  $7.7 million online, with 75,000 donor transactions at an average pledge of $103.

This fall during same time period, stations using Quick Pledge raised $9.6 million in some 89,000 donor transactions with average pledge amount $107 .

That’s a 25% increase in dollars raised and a 19% increase in the number of individual transactions!

Looking at the past full year (Nov 1, 2010-Oct 31, 2011), our stations as a whole raised a total of $31 million with Quick Pledge. That’s a whopping 292,000 pledge transactions, with an average pledge amount of $106.

Last year’s numbers in comparison were $22.6 million in 227,000 transactions with an average pledge amount of $100. That makes the increase 37% for dollars raised and 29% for number of transactions

Quick Pledge has some great real-time reporting features that let you review and analyze your transactions and drive results. All pledge data excluding the credit card numbers are available and searchable via the Quick Pledge reporting tools.

Log in to Quick Pledge Admin and go to Reporting Options section.

• Search/Export Pledges: Search all pledges by time of pledge broken down to the minute, source, date, name, premium, and more!  You can also set up saved reports and retrieve them easily.
• Today’s Pledges Quick View: Click Today’s Pledges Quick View to see the day’s totals (since the previous midnight). This tool is handy for quickly seeing transactions as they come in during your drive, or for your hosts to read names on-air real time.
• If you are using the volunteer back office form, click ‘Search/Export Pledges’ to run reports based on specific premiums and programs by source (web or phone).

Are you entering each of your pledges from Quick Pledge manually?

You have the option to receive pledge data in a consolidated in a daily batch file that you can import into your membership database or upload for processing, and we recommend this option.

With the secure encrypted batch files, the pledge data comes in once per day, allowing you to receive and process the day’s pledges all at once, rather than tracking and processing individual donations throughout the day.  Batch pledges files are easier to import into your membership database as well, and can be formatted to match your membership database.

Data filters are available for:

• Allegiance
• Enterprise
• Memsys
• Scout
• Team Approach
• Custom formats and more

You can always get up-to-the-minute results with the real-time reporting tools in Quick Pledge and via the pledge email notification option so you keep track of your totals.

Reporting Only access to Quick Pledge administration tools allows you to create separate logins for staff members or volunteers who need access to view your pledge totals or run reports, but should not have access to editing your pledge forms or premiums.

For example, show hosts could view real-time pledge totals during pledge drives.

• To add a Reporting Only user account for Quick Pledge, email help@ds.npr.org and include your Quick Pledge Station/Account ID and the preferred username and password for the new login.
• We’ll set that up and get back to you.
• Log into Quick Pledge administration tools using the same url http://secure.publicbroadcasting.net/xxxx/pledge.pledgeadmin and see links to the reporting tools only.

Quick Pledge™ Certificate Install

If you are unable to open or decrypt your pledge emails or batch files, the security certificate may need to be reinstalled. This is often needed if you purchase a new computer or change email programs.

To Install or Reinstall Security Certificates:

• Contact us by filling out this form: http://digitalservices.npr.org/support.html
• We’ll be in touch with the proper files and walk you through the installation process. It’s simple and it doesn’t take long.
  

A sustaining membership program, in which memberships auto-renewing each year, is a great way to cut down on fundraising costs and provide a steady monthly income to your station.

With Quick Pledge, there are two ways you can collect sustaining memberships:

1. Set up a separate Sustaining Member form that lists out donation levels in monthly giving levels
2. Combine sustaining membership option with your one-time donations on a single form.

Option 1: Set up a separate Sustaining Member Form (example)

• On the Form Settings page, select ‘Sustaining Only‘ option from the form template pulldown menu.
• Customize pledge levels as monthly amounts.
• If you assign premiums to the form, note that while the premiums get entered into the system as Annual Pledge amounts, they will get automatically translated into monthly amounts on the Sustaining Member form. For example: $120 gift level premium will be displayed as:
  $120 gift on your default form.
  $10 gift on your Sustaining Membership form.

The fund drive season is upon us! As you are getting ready for your drives, please check the blog for tips and reminders about how to use Quick Pledge to its fullest.

ALSO: If you anticipate needing any help such as batch file revisions or training for new staff members, we ask that you give us 2 weeks notice to be able to accommodate all requests in our development schedule.

You can submit your request by emailing help@ds.npr.org

Please contact us with additional questions. Hope your drives go well!

We are very excited to be part of DEInteractive Online Fundraising Cooperative starting this fall.

The cooperative is a joint venture between DEI, leading online fundraising consulting firm Donor Digital and NPRDigital Services, partnering with a select pilot group of NPR member stations. The goal of the cooperative is to reactivate lapsed donors and bring in more revenue to stations by developing and testing email appeals and donation forms, and testing the timing and frequency of email messages to improve retention and recapture of lapsed donors.

NPR Digital Services is providing the tools for this project:

• Quick Pledge for taking in online donations
• Pulse email marketing to send out the e-solicitations

We hope this project and testing around optimized appeals and donation forms will lead to results and best practices that will benefit everyone.  Stay tuned for more on this project as it gets on the way.

Quick Pledge offers a number of template options for your pledge forms. You can create, edit and save up to ten pledge forms in your account, based on any of the following templates. Here’s a quick review of all of them:

Radio Template: Pledge type and donation levels are listed first, followed by premium and personal information. Premiums are optional on this form. (Example)

Television Template: Premiums are listed on top of the form and the value of the premium chosen determines the donation level. Pledge levels are not listed separately. (Example)

Back Office/Phone Template: Special template designed for use by call centers or volunteers during pledge drives.  Personal information is listed first, followed by pledge details. (Example)

With the spring fundraising season wrapping up, I wanted to share some stats on how our Quick Pledge stations did as a whole with their online fundraising. The results are so impressive, we double- and triple-checked the numbers just to be sure.  Congratulations to all stations on your successful drives!

SPRING:
During the 2011 spring drive months (Feb-Apr), our stations worked hard and raised an amazing total of $11 Million in 105,300 transactions online, with the average gift of $105. Dollars raised increased by a whopping 56% and the average gift amount  increased from $98 to $105 compared to the same time frame last year!

YEAR:
Looking at the past 12-month period, Quick Pledge stations brought in over 264,000 pledges and raised over $27 Million. The average gift was $103. This is an increase of 35% over previous year!