NPR Digital Services Blog

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.

We created a special sustaining membership pledge template based on industry best practices.

To see an example of what this simplified monthly sustaining membership form looks like, click here:
http://secure.publicbroadcasting.net/demo/SustainingMember/pledge.pledgemain

To take advantage of this new option, we recommend that you:

• Build a separate sustaining membership form using your Quick Pledge admin tools
• Provide links on your website for both donation options: one-time donations and  monthly sustaining memberships.

If you prefer to combine both options on one form as in the past, rest assured, we haven’t taken any of that functionality away.

Pledge Data:

The monthly sustaining membership data will be sent to you in your daily batch file, exactly as in the past.

The amounts are calculated in the database to annual totals and the installment type and sustaining member flag will be passed to you the same way as in the past.  The change to monthly amounts only affects the end user experience of the donation.

The latest Quick Pledge improvements:

Sustaining Membership Template

We created a special sustaining membership template.  The pledge levels on this form are listed in Monthly amounts, so donors choose an ongoing monthly amount instead of choosing the Annual total. This will make it clearer to see the ongoing monthly donation amount, without confusing it with the annual total.

Form UI

Improved premium selection, state drop down defaults to your state, new submit graphics, and more!