Parents Together: Valuable Lessons From Donation Tests

Parents Together provides families with the news they need by covering the latest research, policies, and trends affecting kids and families. Parent-led and parent-powered, ParentsTogether reaches over 2.5 million parents via Facebook, SMS, email, and the web. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, they saw an opportunity to engage new and existing donors by demonstrating their support of parents during this unprecedented time.  ​

With a grant and strategic support from Progressive Multiplier, ParentsTogether devised a strategy to maximize subscriber donations from their Facebook Messenger community.
They started testing one-time asks versus monthly asks, placed at various points in the message stream, and issue versus parenting content paired with donation asks. After four months, they saw that despite 4:1 return on investment, asking for donations reduced subscriber engagement with content — a core component to furthering parent involvement on critical policy issues like childcare affordability. 

Even after reducing their frequency by half, asking for donations still substantially impacted subscriber engagement, driving ParentsTogether to refocus their efforts on raising money through corporate campaigns. Other key learnings centered around making assumptions: Based on other groups’ experience, ParentsTogether thought monthly asks would be the most lucrative but learned through this experiment that they were not a good fit for their organization. 

ParentsTogether is a 501 (c)3 nonprofit organization providing independent reporting and commentary on issues that affect kids and families. They cover the latest research, policies, and trends so that busy parents have the information they need to help their families thrive.