Blue Future: Donor Growth Strategy

Blue Future is a national organizing program run by the Youth Progressive Action Catalyst, America's largest progressive, youth-led political action committee. After experiencing reduced giving from their network of funders, they wanted to engage in various tactics to grow their independent revenue generation and diversify revenue streams. 

With a grant from Progressive Multiplier, Blue Future developed a multi-pronged approach to build a base of small-dollar donors, deepen their engagement, and retain them over time. The first aspect of their project focused on the acquisition of new donors. They spent $8,000 acquiring new names for their small-dollar email program, and over a year, those individuals generated nearly $25,000 – tripling their initial investment. 

Blue Future also knew that alums were a potential source of giving. With funds from the grant, they conducted research with the organization’s network of 2,000 youth activists across the country, exploring the value of programmatic offerings that could be accessed with a paid membership. By piloting an alum program, they were able to start building a base of engaged individuals that they can expand on in the future. 

Finally, to continue creating additional revenue streams, Blue Future developed a new service that represents the full scope of its mission: education and training for progressive movement leaders. Recognizing that leadership development, especially around “soft skills,” is a real gap for younger leaders and is often expensive and inaccessible, Blue Future piloted its own peer-to-peer leadership coaching program. The interest in the pay-what-you-can experience showed the potential for a more extensive program.    

For Blue Future, the lessons from this project will impact the organization for years. 

The mission of Blue Future is to continuously engage, mobilize, and connect young people across race and place to progressive campaigns, equipping them with the resources, tools, skills, and network to be effective volunteers, organizers, and community leaders.