collaborative fundraising for public media

A bar chart showing the CDP effect on cumulative net income improvements to participating stations. It increases from $1.5 million in fiscal year 2012 to $75 million in fiscal year 2019.

Founded as an initiative within WGBH in 2011, CDP is now an independent public benefit corporation working on behalf of more than 230 public radio and television stations to share data across the system, analyze fundraising performance, and develop best practices.

The “CDP idea” was born from an initiative by the Major Market Group of Public Television. With support from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting and GBH, a group of stations built the industry’s first and only National Reference File, a tool used daily to help stations better understand areas of opportunity to increase their fundraising effectiveness and efficiency.

Breakthrough Solutions

CDP is constantly developing ways to better the public media system. A few examples:

Featured

Customer Relationship Management — Nearly 40% of all public broadcasting donors are now managed through CDP’s supported platforms.

Donor Insight and Engagement — CDP helped to introduce the concept of PBS Passport, the video-on-demand service available to public media donors, and we built the data analytics engine that enables stations to understand and measure Passport usage among viewers. Together, these advanced platforms provide unprecedented insights into donors’ personal preferences, behaviors and philanthropic histories.

Scaling Major Donor Relationships — CDP has pioneered a service using artificial intelligence to better support major donor development. Results are clear, this approach more than doubles the capacity of a major gifts officer – causing significant increase in major gifts.

Donor Acquisition — CDP helped build and manage the canvassing organization that has generated nearly a half a million new donors within the last 5 years. We also designed the industry’s only mobile app for door-to-door fundraising to improve the quality of conversations and integration of the data collected.

Collaborative Success

CDP is the only comprehensive collaboration in membership fundraising. We share our successes with more than 240 member stations, working with them to raise $0.18 of every membership dollar in public media. This has resulted in a total of $210 million in new net revenue for stations. Every dollar raised means additional resources stations can then use to strengthen their connections to their local communities. At CDP, “more for your mission” is our sole purpose.

Diversity Statement

At CDP, we believe everyone has something incredible to contribute. This means we continually celebrate the dynamic community cultivated by diverse individuals. As an equal opportunity employer, we stay true to this mission by ensuring that our place can be anyone’s place. View our complete diversity statement.