191. SPN: My 12-metric dashboard a nonprofit CMO actually needs

👀 Agentic Fundraising -> a prediction and how to prep

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. You’ve joined a global community of more than 4k marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Orgs. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

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In this week’s SPN:

• Agentic is closing the Conversion Gap fast!

• The dashboard inputs your CMO actually needs 📈

• Watch this space → Agentic Fundraising

• And, plenty of Jobs & Opps

It’s a long one! Let’s jump in.

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UNFPA’s mission is global.
Their revenue engine wasn’t.

After switching to Fundraise Up:

→ 🚀 311% YoY revenue growth (12 months)
→ 🔁 Retention increased from 50% → 80%+
→ 💳 84% of donors cover fees
→ 📱 85% give on mobile

Global mission. Global-grade donor experience.

Game changer? You know it is. Talk to Fundraise Up today.

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The Conversion Gap is Closing Fast!

GenAI and non-AI conversion rates are nearing parity, with AI led traffic now showing higher engagement metrics and a higher value engine for growth.

• +32% more time on site: Users are moving from discovery to deep consideration.

• +10% more pages browsed: Conversational search encourages broader program exploration

• -27% lower bounce rate: When AI helps find exactly what a user needs, they stay.

The shift toward Agentic Commerce (and Agentic Fundraising) is accelerating, helping to close this conversion gap further. It was fascinating to see just how much Google referenced Agentic Commerce in its latest Ads & Commerce roadmap release this past week.

Historically, we’ve all traded speed for certainty. According to BCG new AI-first search experiences are removing that trade-off, allowing for “speed and certainty” to go hand-in-hand.

With Universal Commerce Protocol, AI agents can now manage the entire journey - from discovery to secure checkout - directly within interfaces like Gemini or ChatGPT.

I stumbled across Google’s “Direct Offers” this week - a tool helping brands deploy tailored bundles and loyalty perks at the exact point a shopper is ready to commit. Reframe that for a donor and Org, and stuff gets real interesting, fast.

Rather than closing the engine for growth, this is a moment that feels like tech is truly evolving and opening up to create better donor experiences. I’ve written an exploratory piece on Agentic Fundraising below the dashboard post.

Check out the BCG report (source of chart below) and the Google 2026 outlook in the Reads section.

Source: Adobe 2025

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Reads From My Week 📚

What to expect in digital advertising and commerce in 2026 (Google)

Agentic Commerce Is Redefining Retail - Here’s How to Respond (BCG)

Why even the top 1% need a CMO to reach the next peak (LinkedIn)

TikTok is tracking you, even if you don’t use the app. Here’s how to stop it (BBC)

TikTok Publishes New Guide to Effective Promotions (Social Media Today)

YouTube Revenue for Full-Year 2025 Topped $60 Billion, Making Video Platform Bigger Than Netflix (Variety)

The 6 things companies that are winning at Gen AI Marketing in 2026 have in common (David Jones, Brandtech)

Of course they’re putting ads in AI (A16Z)

OpenAI explain testing ads in ChatGPT in a blog post (OpenAI)

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The 12-Metric Dashboard Your CMO Actually Needs 📈

(and what each metric tells you to do next)

Most nonprofit marketing dashboards are decorative. They show hundreds of numbers in the brand color palette and help with exactly zero decisions. A good dashboard is like a compass – tells you where you are, and where you should go. For us in fundraising, these questions are –> along the donor lifecycle:

• Are we creating demand?

• Are we acquiring new donors efficiently and at a price that makes sense?

• Are we converting them on-site?

• Are we turning one-time into monthly?

• Are we retaining and upgrading more donors than we are losing?

At every Org I’ve worked with, I built – or asked my team to build - a 12-metric dashboard that I’ve dropped below.

1. Viewable eCPM (effective CPM). Cost per 1,000 viewable impressions.

Where to pull from:

• Google Ads: Reach / viewability columns for GDA, or view rate and viewable metrics for YouTube.

• Programmatic: viewability rate and vCPM.

What to do with it:

• If eCPM is trending down but downstream engagement is flat, move spend to placements with higher viewability, better creative formats, or tighter contextual targeting.

• If eCPM rises while engaged sessions grow faster, keep spending.

2. Brand demand index (branded search and direct intent).

Where to pull from:

• Google Ads: impression and click volume on your top branded keywords.

• GA4: sessions from source/medium = google / organic to your homepage.

• Search Console: branded query impressions (if set up).

What to do with it:

• If brand demand is down while you’re spending more, you’re spending too much on bottom-funnel retargeting ads. Increase the share of prospecting in a specific geo (for a quick & cheap test instead of nationwide) and monitor brand search.

• Social platforms (X, TikTok) obsess over DAU/MAU because it reflects user behavior regardless of revenue. Brand searches are Org’s “MAU”.

3. Engaged sessions. Percent of sessions that show meaningful intent. An engaged session is any session with at least one of the donation form view, video view, 4+ page views, or “About/Impact” page visit.

Where to pull from:

• GA4: build these as events, then create a segment: Engaged sessions / total sessions.

What to do with it:

• If traffic is up but the engaged sessions rate is down, that “new” traffic is junk – decrease spend on channels where you increased it last.

• If engaged sessions rate is up but donations aren’t, look into website conversion.

4. Donate start rate (sessions that hit the form). Donate form views, or donations start per 1,000 sessions.

Where to pull from:

• GA4: event = donate_start or donation_form_view.

What to do with it:

• If donate start rate is low, the landing page can be improved. Start messing (testing) the CTA and page structure – add a video, move image to the header, make the form automatically pop up.

• If donate start rate is high but completions are low, the form is the problem. Start changing $ amounts, make monthly a default option.

5. Donation completion rate. Donations completed / donation starts.

Where to pull from:

• GA4 Funnel exploration: Landing page to Donate start to Donate submit.

What to do with it:

• If completion rate declines, reduce the number of fields on the form, and look if any traffic sources had a spike in traffic that correlates with the decline. Some bots are getting smart and now “start” the donate process!

6. First gift net value. Median first gift amount minus processing fees (and refunds if you can include them). Median beats average to exclude the outliers.

Where to pull from:

• CRM or donation platform is the source of truth – ideally pull directly from Stripe or your payment processor.

What to do with it:

• If net value drops while volume rises, analyze the channels that drive most donations – targeting is wrong. You are most likely using PMax or Advantage+ that drives cheap conversions (CPA optimization), ignoring LTV / ROI.Where to pull from:

7. Cost per New-to-File Donor (CPNTF). Acquisition spend / number of first-time donors.

Where to pull from:

• Spend directly from platforms.

• New-to-file count from CRM based on first gift date.

• Use UTMs stored on the donation record to tie donations back to the originating channel.

What to do with it:

• If CPNTF rises but overall RoAS is flat, you are over-spending on existing donors – exclude them from Retargeting campaigns and increase the share of prospecting.

• If CPNTF declines but the value per donor is declining too, you are over-spending on Social – driving cheap donors with a high churn rate.

FWIW, CPNTF is the most important metric for Orgs to watch instead of RoAS to avoid confusing immediate performance with growth in the file.

8. Cost per reactivated donor (CPRD). Spend on reactivation campaigns divided by the count of lapsed donors who give again.

Where to pull from:

• CRM-defined “lapsed” donors (I recommend 12-month inactive).

• Spend from Meta/Google/email costs.

What to do with it:

• If CPRD is declining or stays under CPNTF: keep investing, your Org’s churn is preventable. Reactivation is a very fruitful tactic – but at some point, the pool will become too small to sustain it.

• If CPRD is higher than CPNTF, your pool of inactive donors is exhausted and you should pause those campaigns for 3-6 months.

9. 30-day monthly start rate. Percent of new one-time donors who become monthly within 30 days.

Where to pull from:

• CRM: one-time donors acquired in the period that started a monthly donation by day 30.

What to do with it:

• Aim for 20% minimum as your target.

• If it’s lower: revise your New Donor welcome journey in email and “monthly retargeting” ads.

• If it’s higher: release some restrictions on your CPNTF targets – the long-term value is paying off.

10. Month-12 survival rate for monthly donors. Percent of monthly donors still active after 12 months.

Where to pull from:

• CRM: count of active donors with at least 12 consecutive donations, divided by count of inactive donors in the same period.

What to do with it:

• If the survival rate is declining, dial up your active monthly donor communication strategy – and calculate marginal ROI.Where to pull from:

11. Payback window (time to profit). How long does it take for a donor cohort’s net revenue to exceed what you spent to acquire them?

Where to pull from:

• CRM cohort revenue over time. Net revenue is preferred (minus processing fees)

• Spend by week/campaign from ad platforms, matched to the cohort start week.

What to do with it:

• If payback is getting longer but RoAS is good, you are over-optimizing for RoAS – switch to the CPNTF as the main target.

• If payback is shortening, you can increase top-of-funnel spend.Where to pull from:

12. 12-month value per donor (by cohort, not blended). Total net revenue generated by a cohort over 12 months divided by donor count in that cohort. Track it by acquisition channel.

Where to pull from:

• CRM: cohort by first gift month + source/medium/campaign.

• Sum net revenue (all gifts, including upgrades) and divide by donor count.

What to do with it:

• Channels (and audiences) with the highest value per donor should be the first to increase budget on.

FINALLY:

Dashboard setup recommendations:

• One page with 12 tiles. On each tile:

  • Current value

  • 7-day trend line

  • 28-day trend line

  • YoY value for the same week

• For each tile, have several drill-downs:

  • By channel (Source/Medium)

  • By device

  • By landing page

  • By donor cohort month

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👀 Watch this Space: Agentic Fundraising

I’ve been thinking about AI agents and commerce a lot lately, specifically what happens when people stop browsing and just… ask.

You’ve probably seen it. Perplexity lets you search and buy in the same breath. ChatGPT is testing checkout flows. Google’s building commerce into Gemini. The shift is from “search → browse → compare → donate” to “ask → donate.”

Retailers have been quietly freaking out about this. Less traffic. Less data. Less control over the customer relationship. More dependency on platforms they don’t own.

And I keep wondering: what does this look like for nonprofits?

The journey is collapsing

Right now, the donor journey is pretty linear:

Ad → Landing page → Donation form → CRM

Tomorrow it might just be a conversation:

“Which Orgs are helping with the earthquake in Turkey?”
“Which ones have I supported before?”
“Who has the lowest overhead?”
“Can you increase my monthly gift to UNICEF by $20?”
“Done.”

The nonprofit website never loads. The brand video never plays. The donation happens inside the agent.

I don’t think this is sci-fi. I think it’s 12-18 months out.

Why fundraising might be more ready than retail

Here’s what’s interesting: giving might actually be better suited to this than commerce.

Three reasons:

1. Giving is intent-driven

People don’t browse donations the way they browse shoes. They give when they’re activated - emotionally, morally, situationally. Could be when a crisis hits, a friend asks, a value gets triggered.

AI agents are exceptionally good at:

• Detecting intent

• Mapping values to causes

• Timing the ask

• Removing friction

That’s basically the whole game.

2. Trust matters more than price

In retail, agents optimize for cost and speed. In giving, agents will optimize for trust, transparency, impact-per-dollar, and donor identity.

That’s good news for Orgs with clean data. If you can prove your efficiency and impact in a way an AI can verify, you win. Not so great for Orgs who can’t…

3. Monthly, recurring giving is built for this

Monthly donors are the perfect use case for agentic logic.

An agent can:

• Detect when your financial situation changes

• Suggest an upgrade at exactly the right moment

• Adjust cadence when life shifts

• Reallocate across causes you care about

• Prevent churn before you even think about it

Imagine an agent saying: “You usually increase giving in December. Want to move from $50/month to $65? That’s one more family with clean water each year.”

That’s agentic retention.

The risk: you become a backend utility

If Orgs don’t adapt, three things are likely to happen:

1. You lose discovery

The AI becomes the front door. Donors find you there, compare you there, decide there. Your donation page is just… plumbing.

2. You lose intelligence

If giving happens inside agent ecosystems, you lose behavioral signals, engagement data, the ability to test messaging. The intelligence layer moves upstream to whoever controls the agent.

3. You get commoditized

Agents will prioritize what they can measure: overhead ratio, charity ratings, speed, tax optimization.

Not your story. Not your brand film. Not your ED’s vision.

If you’re not structured for machine readability, you’re invisible. (This will be another SPN post soon).

From SEO to GGO

Retail is moving from SEO (search engine optimization) to GXO (generative experience optimization).

Orgs need to think about GGO → Generative Giving Optimization.

That means:

• Machine-readable impact data

• Clear cost-per-outcome metrics

• Transparent financials, updated quarterly

• Authority on Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia, earned media (because that’s where AI pulls from)

• Clean schemas for donation flows

• APIs that agents can transact against

If your program pages aren’t structured for an agent to cite, they won’t cite you. If your donation flow can’t integrate with an agent checkout, you won’t convert.

Agent-to-agent giving

Here’s where it gets wild. The real shift isn’t just donors using agents. It’s donor agents talking to nonprofit agents.

Imagine the following:

My AI agent reaches out to your Org’s AI agent.

My AI agent asks:
“How’s your performance vs. last year?”
“How fast do you deploy emergency funds?”
“What % goes to programs?”
“Can you accept Apple Pay in Kenya?”

Your agent responds with verified, structured data - instantly.

They negotiate:

• Gift amount

• Allocation

• Recurring cadence

• Matching opportunities

• Impact reporting frequency

As the donor, I just approve it.

That’s agent-to-agent generosity. Donors get the speed and clarity I reference above in the first post about CVR. Orgs get predictable revenue and cleaner data. The friction just… vanishes.

What to do now

I’ve been talking to a few teams about this, and the Orgs that feel even remotely ready are doing three things:

1. Win inside third-party agents

Optimize for AI discovery. Build authority in the places AI pulls from. Structure your impact data. Track “AI share of voice” the way you used to track search rankings.

Right now I’d bet you’re not showing up when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity “who should I give to for climate?” Nobody is consistently. Now is the time to begin this work.

2. Build your own donor agent

Not a chatbot that answers FAQs.

A real agent that:

• Understands lifetime donor history

• Predicts upgrade likelihood

• Automates stewardship

• Surfaces personalized impact stories

• Reduces friction at every touchpoint

Think of it as a donor intelligence system that actively grows LTV.

3. Build agent-ready infrastructure

API-first donation systems. Interoperable payments. Clean CRM data. Real-time gift intelligence. Ethical AI governance.

You can’t retrofit this in 2027. It has to be in the core stack now.

The real question

In agentic commerce, the retailer’s best customer might not be a person and so, in agentic fundraising, your most important stakeholder might not be a donor.

It might be the donor’s agent.

If that agent can’t find you, verify you, transact with you, or interpret your impact you don’t exist in the next layer of generosity.

A different kind of trust

Where agentic commerce optimizes for efficiency Agentic Fundraising has to optimize for trust.

The Orgs that win won’t have the best video or the most emotional story.

They’ll have machine-readable credibility, structured impact transparency, frictionless and agent-compatible giving, AI-native donor intelligence, ethical clarity around automated persuasion/negotiation.

The shift is human-led journeys → agent-mediated ecosystems.

And in that world, fundraising becomes:

• Continuous

• Predictive

• Context-aware

• Personalized at real scale

• Invisible in its friction

Final thought

I don’t think the question is whether this happens. It feels like the window’s open right now to at least be having these conversations and working through some of 1) what we know, 2) don’t know but have a decent sense of given what we can see coming down the Agentic Commerce pipe and then 3) don’t know and are willing to learn and tinker.

But the window won’t stay open.

Let’s chat! I’d love to hear what you’re seeing and thinking in this space.

That’s all for today.

I hope you’ve found one nugget today that you can put into play next week!

If you enjoyed this SPN, please consider sharing with your network. Thank you to those that do.

If a friend sent this to you, get the next edition of SPN by signing up below.

And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for donor experience that helps Org’s raise more money.

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Jobs & Opps 🛠️

Save the Children US: Senior Managing Director, Culture, Engagement & Inclusive Growth ($131,000 - $191,000)

Change.org: Head of Marketing & Communications, Elections ($234,000 - $276,000)

YMCA of the USA: Vice President, Brand Engagement

Omidyar Network (ON): Head of Comms

Give Directly: Senior Director, Philanthropy

American Red Cross: Senior Lead, Strategic Partnerships and Program Design

Fund The Climb Foundation: Chief Momentum Officer

Sesame Workshop: Senior Manager, Social Media

190. SPN: CDP 📊 vs the Polka Dot 👗

Plus, a melding of Mainstream and Creator Media ecosystems

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. You’ve joined a global community of 4k+ marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Orgs. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

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In this week’s SPN:

• Ikea inspired thought for the day: impact vs belief

• A melding of Mainstream and Creator Media ecosystems - infographic

• Stellar Donor Experiences beat CDP distraction

• Plenty of Jobs & Opps

Let’s jump in.

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When International Justice Mission UK outgrew manual CRM workarounds, data became a bottleneck - not an asset.

With Fundraise Up’s native CRM integration:

1. Donations sync in real time

2. Supporter records stay clean and accurate

3. Reporting happens faster, without manual fixes

Less data wrangling. Better decisions.

Fundraise Up → built to work with your CRM, not around it.

Game-changer? It is for me.

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Media Universe Map

Link: Worlds Collide infographic

Thought this was very well done this week. A wholly reshaped universe! Click the link or image and zoom in.

Note the collision of two different models - the Creator Economy and Traditional Media.

This melding of Mainstream and Creator Media ecosystems is driven by donors - consumers.

They see only one “content universe” when they turn on their screens → the one where Creators and the Old Guard coexist, across all platforms, at their fingertips.

How are you showing up?

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Thought for Today

- inspired by an Ikea billboard.

Ikea is running ads in the UK where they hide the price.

Instead, they lead with: “If you saw the price, you wouldn’t believe it’s solid wood.”

Quality first. Price second. The hypothesis being when the $$ ask shows up first, people subconsciously downgrade their expectations.

And it made me think about my own marketing.

I feel I’ve been conditioned to lead with efficiency:

• “93 cents of every dollar goes to programs.”
• “Your $25 does X.”
• “Just $10 a month…”

Efficiency is reassuring but is it motivating? Donors don’t just give because an Org is efficient. My testing showed that citing efficiency on a donation form was often a friction point and people would bounce to search what a good efficiency ratio was… People give because they believe the work matters. Because the mission feels urgent. Because the outcome feels real. Because the change feels possible.

Efficiency should remove doubt but belief should lead.

So maybe the question for all of us is:

Are we leading with operational efficiency when we should be leading with Mission and program conviction? It’s worth a test because among different audiences you might find some golden nuggets.

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Reads From My Week 📚

5 things marketers need to know from Google’s Search chief (THINK)

The Future 100: 2026 (VML)

Entertainment Industry Trend Reports (Luminate)

Is last-click costing Fortune 100s 6% of their marketing budget? (Substack)

What is Moltbook? The strange new social media site for AI bots (Guardian)

High Speed Internet Boom Hits Low-Tech Snag: a Labor Shortage (WSJ)

Manhattan’s Congestion Pricing Also Slashed Drive Times in the Suburbs (Jalopnik)

I’m Coding Again (AVC)

Stand Together Acquires Proto to Help Bring Social Impact to Scale (StandTogether)

Software Is Becoming Something You Speak Into Existence (Scientific American)

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Stellar Donor Experiences Beat CDP Distraction

CDPs were hotshots just a couple of years ago. Every Org “needed” one, and every tech firm offered one. Before C360 was even developed, Salesforce’s sales pitch was the most aggressive one I had to endure at UNICEF. Some who took the promise then are wonder if it was all for nothing. And just like the polka dot, I sense it’s coming right back into vogue.

The promise was simple: CDPs would solve every marketer’s issue in light of 3^rd party cookies going away. Technically, it meant “storing all the possible data about the donor in one database and stitching touch points from various online channels and offline events together thanks to a non-cookie-based solutions”. A digital filing cabinet for every email open, website click, and event attendance matched together - at least in theory.

Fast-forward to today, and the “CDP is dead” mantra is taking center stage instead. Lotame, one of the original CDPs, rebranded as a DCP (“Data Collaboration Platform”) to cut ties with the infamous category. The promise now is to create a space for multiple parties to share donor insights in the same filing cabinet.

Most of this is noise. But striving for automated, 1:1 digital marketing is doing more harm than good to most Orgs chasing it instead of focusing on what’s at hand.

→ So here are some recommendations to support achieving the same level of Donor Experience throughout the donor lifecycle WITHOUT the outlay ;)

Store What Matters in Your CRM

Use it to store meaningful insights about donors, alongside their donation history. The promise of CDPs/DCPs is that they enrich your own Org’s data with outside triggers to deepen the donor understanding e.g., catch that they just donated to another Org via the credit card data or that they have a child via their social networks data. That’s helpful but clean data “just” from donors’ interactions with your Org is 90% of the value.

A few ideas on what to track:

1. Categorize your Org’s mission into topics. For example, for a health organization battling a particular disease, those topics could be rehab, family support, research, or patient resources. Label pages on your website according to these topics and automatically label each donor according to which pages they visited the most. Each CRM allows for custom labels, and the page visit history can be easily matched between your web analytics tool and CRM using the Donation ID as the key.

2. Label each donor according to the intent of their donation. In last week’s SPN #141, I discussed time as the signal of intent. Create several custom labels in your CRM to assign automatically based on the time of year, month, and day a particular donor gives. For example, label them as “night owls” versus “mid-day givers” and “right after paycheck” versus “random.”

3. Over time, label each donor’s preferred means of communication. Using the same logic as with the frequency of visited pages, label donors as “texters”, “direct mailers”, or “social media browsers” based on the frequency of their clicks back to the website through a particular channel.

Don’t let 100% accuracy be the first hurdle to fall at.

Many Org’s have been overly conscious of implementing donor categorization because the data wasn’t 100% clean. That’s precisely what CDP models would do, labeling your donors based on their “predicted likelihood to look like XYZ category”. Procedurally, implement a random check process where somebody on your team goes into the CRM records every month and manually reviews 100 random records to make sure they make sense.

When Targeting Current-Donors, Align the Tactics Across All Channels

The promise of CDP/DCP’s 1:1 marketing is an omnichannel experience. The same can be achieved by aligning targeting and creative in communications with existing donors:

1. Send the same triggers to ALL the platforms you use to communicate with donors. The above CRM labeling can be exported to the email tool via direct upload, to Meta and Google via custom audiences, to direct mail via the matching solution, and so on.

2. Create a “donor dictionary” – a set of the same audiences used in every channel – via the labels. Other dimensions you’d need like recency, donation amount, etc are available across any of the major platforms.

3. For every creative message, create an option for each channel used. An omnichannel experience essentially shows donors a message with the same topic across all channels they use to interact with your Org. Achieve this by matching targeting definitions and creative assets across platforms. At any moment, serve the same audience with a similar topic across each platform used to target them - don’t send a substantial donation ask via email, while also targeting them with a “thank you” creative on Meta.

4. Set a rule to update all channels at once. If you change the email creative for a particular group, update the Facebook message that same day and push them live simultaneously.

For Prospects → Do Vice Versa → Cross-Exclude

Most Orgs already use PMax or Advantage+ for their prospecting and in all these algorithmic campaigns creative is your targeting (SPN #136). Chances are, if you upload the same assets and then use the same audiences to find “look-alikes” across Google and Meta, two platforms will reach the same people – but with double the frequency. Algorithms are fundamentally the same on the backend.

When reaching current donors, it’s not an issue; on the contrary, increased frequency and surround sound help lower churn. For prospecting though, the costs skyrocket before generating that first visit to the website. To mitigate:

1. Use the retargeting audiences from the previous step when creating look-alikes across all platforms - and match settings wherever possible. Eg, select “broader reach” versus “higher accuracy” in both.

2. Upload the same assets for automated creative generation in PMax, Advantage+, and other platforms.

3. Run these “same” campaigns across all platforms for the first month.

After the first month, pick one platform for each specific audience and actively exclude the same one from other platforms. Not only “don’t use it for targeting” but also “actively exclude the look-a-like of this audience across all campaigns”.

Add other channels back in once the return on campaigns climbs over 2:1. Increased frequency might help increase conversion rates for a few segments, but only after achieving the necessary return level will it save the budget for segments where it doesn’t.

Most Org’s don’t need a CDP or a DCP to deliver a stellar donor experience throughout the entire lifecycle. What they need instead is a commitment to always-on innovation and experiments.

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OK, that’s all for today!

Jobs & Opps below. I hope you’ve found one nugget today that you can put into play next week.

If you enjoyed this SPN, please consider sharing with your network. Thank you to those that do.

If a friend sent this to you, get the next edition of SPN by signing up below.

And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for online giving.

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Jobs & Opps 🛠️

Airbnb.org: Senior Lead, Programs & Partnerships ($200,000 - $250,000)

Ford Foundation: Director, Office of innovations of the Chief Innovation Officer ($212,000 - $230,000)

IOM: Deputy Director, Director of Media and Communications

Gap: Sr Director, Community Engagement & Purpose

The Canadian Red Cross: Senior Specialist, Donor & Market Research ($78,699 - $83,618)

Sierra Club: Chief Development and Marketing Officer ($275,000 - $325,000)

University of California, Berkeley: Executive Director of Marketing & Brand ($138,000 - $271,000)

MasterCard: VP, Social Impact ($222,000 - $366,000)

St Jude’s/ALSAC: VP, Direct Response

Okta: VP, Global Impact ($275,000 - $378,400)

189. SPN: Supercharge Major Donor Fundraising -> Individual Giving

Plus, under-explored opportunities for mass market fundraisers to help 🚀 Major Giving

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. You’ve joined a community of 4k+ marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Orgs. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

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In this week’s SPN:

• Capacity to Give vs Likelihood to Give

• How much Late Tax is your fundraising paying?

• How to supercharge Major Donor Fundraising via Individual Giving

• Plenty of Jobs & Opps

Let’s jump in.

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• Islamic-principled Zakat (gold or silver Nisab)

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Built for Orgs serving Muslim communities globally.

Game-changer? It is for me.

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Paying the Late Tax

How much Late Tax is your Fundraising Team paying?

Many Orgs are spending too much money reaching donors too late in their giving journey. Too much, too late.

Fundraisers and marketers often overpay for bottom-funnel conversions - paying a premium for donations that were going to happen anyway.

I call this the Late Tax. The later in the donor journey, the higher the tax.

→ The problem? It’s mostly invisible.

Click-based attribution doesn’t distinguish between incremental donations and gifts you would have received anyway. The Late Tax stays hidden until you measure incrementality.

Take branded search: studies suggest as little as 5% of those conversions are incremental. That’s a 95% Late Tax - paying to intercept donors who already intended to give.

And it’s getting worse.

Discovery is moving earlier in the journey. Search is moving later in the donor journey. Donors are asking AI assistants for recommendations first. They’re discovering your Programmatic work in their social feeds first. By the time they search, they've already decided.

If your budget is still weighted to search and retargeting, you're paying for donations that were already yours.

The question is: how much Late Tax is your Fundraising Team paying and how will you cut it?

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Reads From My Week 📚

How Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants - and how I built a dashboard to see through it (Lauren Leek)

Marketing at the Speed of Culture (HBR)

How AI is transforming agencies from creative partners into tech-fueled vendors (AdAge)

Gap Inc. Creates Chief Entertainment Officer Role (Gap)

Meta Previews Super Bowl Ad for Oakley AI Glasses (Social Media Today)

The era of traditional media planning is officially dead (Jarrod Allen)

ChatGPT needs Amazon more than Amazon needs ChatGPT (Gigi)

P&G prioritizes data, AI to tackle fragmented ‘new media reality’ (Marketing Dive)

Agentic Commerce Is Here: What UCP and ACP Mean for Retailers? (Medium)

Agentic Advertising Initiative (IA Tech Lab)

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🚀 Supercharge Your Major Donor Program

Most Orgs I’ve spoken to since SPN’s inception closely resemble the following Org chart:

Despite the diverse sizes, specific tactics, and potential focus on corporate partnerships or grant-making, a common trait often emerges - a distinct barrier between the IG/Mass-Market and Major Donor teams.

And yet it’s not uncommon for the Legacy team to receive a significant check from an estate executor of someone never considered a Major Donor. As it turns out, they were flying under the radar in the “IG donor” bucket – while likely giving substantial amounts away to other Orgs.

The above is clearly a missed opportunity. I don’t think the answer is to integrate the teams - the economics, ROI benchmarks, and acceptable cost per touch vastly differ between the two worlds. And most Orgs wouldn’t risk changing the setup that’s working either.

However, there seem under-explored opportunities for mass market fundraisers to help supercharge the Major program.

1. Major Giving is another step in the donor Lifecycle. Here’s that lifecycle image I first shared back in SPN #27, which doesn’t include a shout-out to Major. Although the image suggests otherwise, a donor lifecycle doesn’t have to end with a Monthly donation - some of these donors will inevitably contribute major amounts.

And there’s no way of knowing upfront who exactly that will be. I’ve been told too many memorable stories about old ladies who walk into Park Ave stores wearing a moth-eaten coat who then drop vast sums of money on the latest “it” bag to judge books by their covers! You really just don’t know.

Recommendation: Everybody should be afforded as close to Rolls Royce levels of attention and service from the get-go as possible. Amp up your level of donor support and understanding of “experience” regardless if donors give you $10. Embrace them! Create a personalized Thank You sequence to be sent right after the first donation, have your ED drop them a random thank you call, send a personalized video (AI can help create them at scale, even adding things like your Orgs’ ED avatar), and show them their impact irrespective of donation amount. Make it memorable.

2. The main difference between IG and Major donors is their Capacity to Give, which is different from Likelihood to Give.

   “Likelihood to Give” is a comparative metric that reflects the donor’s potential connection to your organization versus any other. It’s the essence of Look-a-Like audience modeling - target donors that are more likely than the general population to donate to your Org.

   In economic terms, Likelihood to Give measures whether a person is willing to contribute a certain percentage of their means to your Org. It’s a vital metric - marketers use it every day, knowingly and unknowingly. But it doesn’t help identify potential Major Donors.

   On the other hand, “Capacity to Give” measures the scale of a donor’s ability to donate aka the size of their wallet. The ideal major donor might have the same Likelihood to Give as a monthly donor but a much larger Capacity to Give.

   Capacity to Give also can’t be measured by examining only the donor’s behavior in ad buying or using web analytics tools available to your Org - it requires enriching the donor profile with income, net worth, and other signals.

Recommendation: A very small percentage of donors originating from your IG fundraising program have the means to become Major donors. And with those who do it takes considerable effort - the cost per touch is very high in the Major Donor world, with personalized 1:1 communication and in-person visits. One role of IG fundraisers is to identify who they should pass along to their Major Donor counterparts. But that information won’t live in your CRM system and requires some Enrichment.

I touched on how to measure Capacity to Give in SPN #41 - the best source is data from credit agencies, such as Experian, which includes income, net worth (primary indicator), credit score, etc. It’s important to regularly refresh this data too - at least once every year, especially since Millennials (most of whom are likely in the IG bucket right now ) are getting wealthier by the minute, as we discussed in SPN #90.

3. Find the basis for a Similarity Score of sorts. Having the Capacity to Give data for active IG donors isn’t enough to identify those who can become major donors. Take one more step and compare the dataset to existing, active major donors.

   If your Org has a CDP it most likely has built-in functionality to do so. But even without a CDP, most media buying tools have the so-called “audience similarity” report to compare your current donors to potential third-party audiences. Unfortunately, Google Ads doesn’t have this functionality, but enterprise-level DSPs do.

Recommendation: Get your hands on the Major Donor file from the Major Giving Team. Create several versions of the IG Donor file with different Net Worth ranges. Tier it into 20 files, each including 5% of the total donor count. Upload both the Major Donor and resulting IG Donor files to your media buying platform - or supply them to your Media agency - and run the audience similarity report to identify which ranges of Net Worth are most similar to your existing major donors. These reports aren’t ideally accurate, so seek a similarity score of 80%+.

4. Look into donor engagement history. Your IG program is a treasure trove for understanding these donors and informing future comms for the major fundraising team. What creative assets did they interact with the most on their journey to becoming monthly? Website pages? Emails? And so on. These bits of information are only available in the media buying tools or website analytics platform, and the IG Fundraising team is the only one with access to them.

Recommendation: Put a standing meeting on the calendar with the Major Giving team to regularly review current or potential Major Donors’ engagement with marketing content and assets.

5. Report on total donor LTV. Converting current irregular and monthly IG donors into major donors is a long shot, but when it happens, the impact is profound. Most Orgs separate Major and IG donors in their reports but it’s in the interest of the IG fundraising team to track whether any donors ended up significantly increasing their contributions.

Recommendation: Run an annual report of the total value of donors originating from the IG fundraising program out of the CRM, regardless of which bucket those donors currently fall into. It can significantly increase the program’s reported ROI, helping to find a common language with the CFO.

6. Close the loop. IG and Major fundraising relationship is a two-way street. Two examples of how the Major Donor data should be used in IG fundraising:

   a) Increase bids on prospects who look similar to both IG and Major donors. In your prospecting efforts, create an extra campaign that combines the look-a-likes of both IG and major donors. That overlap will be small, but for the people who fit both criteria, increasing bids even 2x is worth it. This will increase the Average Donation Value and, ultimately, ROI.

   b) Amplify the retention effort for monthly donors that look like Major donors. Similarly, include the Major Donor look-a-like as targeting criteria in your retention campaigns and increase bids at least 2x to prevent this subset from churning.

Anyway, that was fun to explore → there’s definitely a sizeable opportunity for Orgs to optimize their integration efforts - at the channel and paid media level. Don’t overlook the dynamic nature of donor engagement and giving.

Understanding the donor lifecycle as a continuum rather than a series of discrete segments helped me connect far more effectively with UNICEF’s Major Giving team. I hope it helps you too. Fostering a more bi-directional sync of sorts that can supercharge donor transitions into your Major Giving circles is a win for everyone. Mission included!

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That’s all for today.

Jobs & Opps below. I hope you found at least one nugget today that you can put into play next week.

If you enjoyed this SPN, please consider sharing with your network. Thank you to those that do.

If a friend sent this to you, get the next edition of SPN by signing up below.

And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for donor experience that ensures Orgs raise more money.

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Jobs & Opps 🛠️

University of California, Berkeley: Executive Director of Marketing & Brand ($138,000 - $271,000)

MasterCard: VP, Social Impact ($222,000 - $366,000)

St Jude’s/ALSAC: VP, Direct Response

Boys Town: Director, Digital Marketing

Okta: VP, Global Impact ($275,000 - $378,400)

SBP: Chief Advancement Officer ($200,000 - $240,000)

New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute: Development Director ($75,000 - $90,000)

Lighthouse Louisiana: Vice President of Development and Communications ($97,000.00 - $102,000)

188. SPN: Headroom Curves + How to Fix These 7 Things

Elevate creative, testing, donor LTV, strong visual identity, universal understanding, TOFU, better email setup

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. You’ve joined a community of 4k+ marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Orgs. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

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In this week’s SPN:

• Chart of the Week: Brand Marketing investment pays off

• Fix these 7 things

  • Elevated creative

  • Testing with rigor

  • Focusing on LTV, not CPA/CAC

  • Strong visual identity

  • Universal understanding of business results

  • Top of funnel

  • Poor email setup

• Plenty of Jobs & Opps

Let’s jump in.

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Christian Appalachian Project 4X’d conversions using Fundraise Up

— without changing their mission!

Before Fundraise Up: 6% conversion, limited payment options, stale one-page forms.

After:
→ 25% conversion rate (+319%)
→ 1,000+ new recurring monthly donors
→ Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo
→ Story-led, personalized donation pages

Modern donor experience turns intent into impact. Read the case study.

Game-changer? It is for me.

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Unlock Scale with Headroom Curves!

Fospha’s 2026 Marketing Planning Guide

Relying on backward-looking data means over-investing in the past while missing where future demand actually lives.

Headroom curves map exactly how performance shifts as you scale:

• Room to scale: Identifies steep curves where incremental ROAS remains high.

• Diminishing returns: Highlights where your spend adds little incremental return.

• Saturation points: Pinpoints when to reallocate before ROAS drops below target

Accurate cross-channel measurement is essential to making the most meaning from these curves.

Think about your Demand Gen efforts. I bet you they’re undervalued by over 90% under Last Click because they also build demand long before the donation.

I’ve used Demand Gen to fuel massive downstream fundraising performance. By increasing investment, we saw double digit uplift in ROAS across all our Google channels, more than a 50% growth in overall new donor conversions and double digit improvement in new donor acquisition costs.

The point is → effective planning isn’t just harvesting existing demand. It’s using saturation curves to find the headroom to create it.

Check out the Fospha’s recent 2026 Marketing Planning Guide (source of chart) - well worth a read.

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Chart of the Week

BCG: Building Lasting Brand Equity in the Age of AI

Side-thought: Trust is going to be one of the most valuable assets for Orgs for the next decade and brand marketing hones in on that. I’m curious to see the +/- percentage change in contribution to incremental conversions with the donor experience agentifying. That’s if/when agents (that don’t work on emotion) take up a bigger share of a donor’s journey.

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Reads From My Week 📚

Top digital marketing trends and predictions for 2026 (Think with Google)

Business and Technology Trends (Accenture Pulse of Change)

The most real channel for a most unreal age (Marketreach) - Direct Mail is back!

TikTok launches a new micro drama app called PineDrama (Techcrunch)

WPP CTO Stephan Pretorius on the agentic agency (tipsheet.ai)

Some thought starters for 2026 (Mercado Libre CMO)

Meet the Secret Strategist Behind Your Favourite YouTubers (YouTube)

Manchester United agree deal to create The Crown-style TV drama series - no comment (NYTimes)

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Fix These 7 Things

For those of you who aren’t familiar, Q5 is the period of time from post-Giving Tuesday until the first 3 weeks of January - it’s the real “Super Bowl” moment for Orgs.

→ Net-new one time donors hit the books and then you’ve a golden opportunity to upgrade them to monthly giving status. Generally, I find December to be 20% bigger than November for Orgs, so no matter your program, Q5 should be a strong period for you.

I started writing down thoughts from this past week, and after writing everything out, I came up with a list of what I find most Orgs miss.

These 7 things may not get you 100% there but if you have a great program that delivers on its promise, you have a reason to exist, you’re “competitive” to the market, and you genuinely care, then you’ve got all the foundational needs. After that, make sure these 8 things I talk about today are all checked-off too. That should get you 85% of the way there... the last 15% is a mix of grit and serendipity.

Whenever I talk to fundraising folks, I like to quickly learn the brand and understand context. I find out about their programs, how many, where they advertise them, to whom, how and why it’s valuable, what others think of it, what works on paid media, what works outside of paid media, what offers work best, and more. Within 10-15 minutes, I have enough context to feel like I can be in the cockpit with them. Usually, when growth has stalled, or they’re unable to continue growing efficiently, it comes down one of these eight things:

• Elevated creative

• Testing with rigor

• Focusing on LTV, not CPA/CAC

• Strong visual identity

• Universal understanding of business results

• Top of funnel

• Doing the bare minimum on marketplaces

• Poor email setup

Anytime I dive into this, I always preface by saying, “Don’t get offended by this. I say this out of love and with respect.” So that applies to you too. If you feel called out on one of these 8, focus on making it 10x better. You’ll see the results pay off in your sales numbers. Let’s get into it.

Elevated content & creative.

By default, people don’t like to spend real money on beautiful content. Why? Because it’s expensive. Well, not anymore with AI. While you can’t replace the photographer’s expertise, experience, an art director’s knowing of what works best or a lighting experts experience, you can try to match it to the best of your abilities with AI. If you haven’t already spent time playing around with Google’s Nano Banana model, or explored the Instagram page @mobileeditingclub, I highly recommend spending 6 hours diving in.

Your next Match, program launch or campaign assets can be generated entirely with AI. The secret/sauce here is knowing HOW to use AI tools - prompting. The better you can get at prompting, the more you will be able to do. I encourage you to spend that 6 hours, and go find prompts others have posted to Reddit, X/Twitter or forums.

This also works for copywriting. Your AI-written copy will sound like AI slop if you don’t give it better prompting on who is reading it, the tonality, style, etc.

Elevated content, both creative and copy, drives an immediate boost on performance marketing and overall brand building. You have to spend time making sure this is done well, it flows out through every part of the brand - website, emails, social media, how others talk about the Org, etc.

Testing with rigor.

When I see Orgs test channels with a measly $2,500 and then determine it’s unsuccessful, it makes me roll my eyes. By the time you spend $2,500, most people will have just figured out all the buttons they can press or levers they can pull inside the ad account. On top of a small budget, there’s no attention paid to the post-click site experience (a landing page for Meta traffic needs to be different than your plain Programs page), the Match offer, and testing a TON of creative to figure out the channel-creative fit.

For context, I’m talking about breaking out of just Meta and Google as your main channels. $10k is the smallest amount I recommend testing a new channel with. It gives you enough budget to rotate through a few versions of creative, where you send traffic, and what Programs you’re “merchandising”. To test a channel right, you have to invest in creative, good site development process/practices/speed to test quickly, and an understanding of measurement and success.

Channels like TikTok, Snap, CTV, organic YouTube integrations, podcasts don’t just “not work”... they don’t work because you likely didn’t test it properly. If your Program delivers on its promise, any channel that reaches your audience can work.

Building a process around testing, that includes your creative, media, and Development teams, is something that requires a time investment and a lot of attention-to-detail to get right. Once we built this mini-machine at UNICEF, it became a massive advantage.

Focus on donor LTV, not acquisition cost.

Yes, in an isolated chamber, like in your daily or weekly fundraising stand-ups, you want to talk about acquisition cost... CPA (cost per acquisition), CAC (donor acquisition cost), whatever you want to call it.

But if you’re acquiring cheap donors who aren’t good donors - they donate once, never come back again, low monthly donation rate, cause chargebacks, whatever - it’s not worth it. You have to understand if you’re driving quality donors, especially if you’re building a brand for the long term.

As a brand, you should have an attitude that you want quality donors, and you’re willing to pay slightly more for those. Don’t just be cool with an affiliate network donors because they’re a fixed cost but then drive up charge-backs and donor service issues in exchange. Yes the CPA might be low, but it’s not scalable, and nor is it good for business.

A strong visual identity.

Everyone has opinions when it comes to design, but it’s important to acknowledge that good design instills trust from the beginning (just like good creative or copy). It’s like someone who’s got their hair nicely cut, nails clean, well-kept beard, smells nice... more trustworthy! The same thing applies with a brand’s visual identity.

You might think you’re selling mission, you don’t need to invest in a nice brand book. But that nice brand book flows through every part of your brand - website, emails, texts, ad creative, packaging taps, collaborations, etc. A weak visual identity looks lazy and not something people want to be a part of. People want to be a part of big, huge, cool, exciting things.

It’s 2026 - you can use AI, agencies, freelancers, agencies overseas, or learn basic design yourself and build a strong visual identity. Not having one isn’t the end of the world, but why look lazy when it’s so easy not to, and it drives more fundraising revenue?

Some agencies charge $50k to $500k to do good visual identity work. But you can find freelancers and contractors who will help you get this whole project done for $10k (obviously not the same level but you can get 75% there).

A shared internal understanding of results.

It’s frustrating when the person who’s running organic social, the person who’s making decisions on how many bottles or boxes to purchase, and the performance marketer don’t have a shared understanding for what the high-level results are they need to hit. The Org likely has 1-3 high-level results, and everything else has to ladder back up to that.

When the organic social team doesn’t understand that using social to drive more site traffic or email subscribers, or high-retention social engagers within close friends or a IG community, well you’re just leaving missed opportunity on the table. PS, random - check out the socials of Drunk Elephant to get inspired and think differently. A delight.

Similarly, when the email team doesn’t understand the importance of driving repeat fundraising revenue or reducing subscriber churn, to help the overall goal of the Org, then these tasks go completely untouched.

Everyone needs to understand what the Org needs to achieve and be clear on how each function is going to go about doing that. It sounds obvious, but it’s not and it costs Orgs money through wasted initiatives, agencies, and media dollars. Not to mention, when you’re not on the same page, you’re likely missing out on low-hanging fruit opportunities.

Top of funnel & messaging.

Simply put, this is how you cut through the noise. Yes, you can make the first few million by a great landing page and good static ads, but after a certain point, you need to create top of funnel awareness.

This might be through a variety of ways:

• You run a wildly successful creator-seeding campaign

• You build your own network of creators who constantly put out high volume of content and create your top of funnel

• You do such a great job building the Programs and seeding it to the right editors and movers/shakers, you drown in positive earned media / PR / 3rd party content

• You run a ton of paid media and build the brand along the way

• You have an ED that knows exactly how to harness eyeballs

• You have top-tier retail distribution and your product overdelivers

• You run advertorials and whitelisted ads, all performance marketing, but just well-done funnels

• You spend money on upper funnel placements like TV, events, podcasts, influencer/celebrity collabs, etc.

What I want to illustrate by listing all these examples out, is that when you’re told to create more top-of-funnel for your Org, it doesn’t mean go and run reach & frequency ads on Meta, or go spend on a billboard campaign. It means get smart about how you’re cutting through the noise and reaching new eyeballs/donors that learn WHO you are, WHAT your programs solve, and WHY you exist.

This might mean coming up with provocative messaging or a “campaign” theme that you go to market with. It can also mean just testing new stories with advertorials. But if you don’t build more top of funnel awareness of your Org, you can’t continue to scale your performance ads efficiently. That’s why your CPA keeps going up. You’re reaching fewer donors who know your brand, conversion rate tanks, and acquisition costs go up.

That (likely) doesn’t mean the channel is dead, it means you need to switch your advertising strategy from just sweeping donors to your site who know what your Programs can do, to:

• Focusing on/highlighting the problem that exists

• Showcase/demonstrate how your Programs solve that

• Communicate the emotion (confidence, peace, clarity, etc)

Again, doesn’t mean go run CTV ads, but figure out what you can do, within your wheelhouse and skillset, that allows you to get the brand in front of other people, at scale.

Poor email execution.

Even if you’re an Org that runs heavy on performance marketing, email (and SMS) are still a massive lever in this operation.

Whether it’s testing and optimizing the pop-up to collect the most number of emails, maximizing how many anonymous donors you identify on top of that, or constantly A/B testing the welcome series flow to maximize revenue, email can NOT be something you setup and forget.

Most Orgs do this. You sprint to get all the flows setup in the beginning, then start running ads, focus on that, and email becomes an after-thought. You can’t do that! Email will make your MER (media-efficiency ratio, aka total ad spend to total digital revenue) more efficient because you’ll recover donors who you capture via email, but don’t buy on the first get. If your flows are bad, you’re letting fundraising revenue slip through your fingertips.

Whether you have an agency, a freelancer, one person internally, or a full team dedicated to retention, please encourage your teams to constantly push the boundaries and optimize the flows, leverage dynamic blocks within campaigns, increase the pop-up opt-in rate, and continue pushing donor LTV.

Don’t let email be a set-once-and-forgotten channel. It’s easy revenue.

That’s all for today.

Jobs & Opps below. I hope you enjoyed today’s SPN. I had a ton of fun writing it. While I talk a ton about optimized websites and using the best creative practices in your ad creative, you can’t build a brand without the rest of these elements (and obviously a great Program(s)). Hopefully one of todays points gave you an insight on something to test or fix this year.

If a friend sent this to you, get the next edition of SPN by signing up below.

And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for donor experience that ensures Orgs raise more money.

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Jobs & Opps 🛠️

St Jude’s/ALSAC: VP, Direct Response

Boys Town: Director, Digital Marketing

Houston Zoo: Chief Brand & Experience Officer

The National Gallery of Art: AI Product Manager

National MS Society: Director, Influencer & Entertainment Engagement ($90,000 - $110,000)

Plan International: Digital Fundraising Manager ($58,655 - $78,000)

UN Women: Social Media Video Producer

Fundraise Up: Senior Field Marketing Manager ($120,000 - $125,000)

American Physical Society: Chief Marketing & Comms ($276,000 - $376,000)

SPN. 187: The “Tobes Way” to Test New Channels

Plus, Funnel research, Offer creation, Creative planning and Experiment design

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. You’ve joined a community of 4k+ marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Orgs. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

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In this week’s SPN:

• The “Tobes Way” to Test New Channels

  • Funnel research

  • Offer creation

  • Creative planning

  • Web/destination planning

  • Experiment design

• Plenty of Jobs & Opps

Let’s jump in.

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📈 Personalization that converts - at scale.

In a crowded digital landscape, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger focused on timing, relevance, and donor experience.

Using Fundraise Up alongside Dataro, MAZON personalized appeals across direct mail and digital, aligning outreach to when donors actually give.

The results:
→ ~45% online conversion rate (vs ~28% industry avg,)
→ 60%+ above benchmarks
→ Growing donors and higher average gifts

Modern donor experience isn’t louder asks → it’s smarter, more human ones.

Game-changer? It is for me.

Speak to Fundraise Up today.

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How to Test New Channels

This email carries a theme that I tee’d up last week in SPN 186 - testing new channels.

Most Orgs, especially those doing between $5M to $25M in annual digital fundraising revenue, are stuck or reliant on 1 to 2 main channels, usually Meta and Google. Being honest with yourself, if you diversify your spending into other channels, it wouldn’t only be appreciated by your CFO and CMO, but it would also allow you to scale faster and balance budgets where it makes sense vs where you’re constrained to.

The best Org brands I know don’t wake up and lose it when their CPMs go up. Instead, they take their budget from one channel (maybe Facebook one day) and move it to another (CTV), because they have better CPMs that day. They can only do that if they have funnels, creative, and messaging that makes sense for the channel, and of course a killer mission and associated programming that delivers on its promise.

If 70–90% of your new donors come from two platforms - my bet is they do - then you’re not diversified, you’re dependent. The problem with how most Orgs in this stage of their growth approach testing a new channel, is they typically do it wrong. Not by any fault of their own... there just aren’t enough resources.

TikTok or LinkedIn don’t teach you how to think about how your donation ask should be specific to those channels, or how you need to change (or lessen) your catalog feed if you’re UNICEF Market to be successful on Snap. That’s what today’s SPN is going to be about. No longer will you say “This channel didn’t work for us” after a 7-day test and $10k spend!

Today I’ve shared how I think about testing new channels, or initiatives (whether it’s a media channel, organic TikTok or even an experiential IRL event).

The “Tobes Way” of Testing a New Channel

It’s too common I hear the sentence, “We tried it, but it didn’t work.” It’s usually in response to a question like, “Did you try {INSERT CHANNEL HERE}?” Or, “Have you tried out {INSERT TACTIC HERE}?”

Channels might be different media channels, and tactics could be anything from advertorials to landing pages to Exec Director-led content. In fact, when I hear, “We tried it, but it didn’t work,” I always ask for more context. It’s not unusual for there to have been much thought behind the test... it was executed the lazy way (using the same creative as another channel or measuring success the wrong way), and then that moment marked the end of that channel’s livelihood at your Org. Sometimes it’s even, “Well we tried it, but our ‘brand’ creative team briefed the assets to stay on brand and then gave it to our agency to run.”

Sorry Brand Marketing/Creative teams but unfortunately you should rarely be involved in these conversations.

Am I over-reliant? How do I choose a channel?

Once you’ve figured out what channel you want to test out, and you feel confident as to why you chose it, you need a systematic approach to going live. Here’s what I’ve termed the “Tobes Way” (it’s really just a way and I hope you find it valuable) to test new channels:

• Funnel research

• Offer creation

• Creative planning

• Web/destination planning

• Experiment design

Let’s walk through each of these.

Funnel Research

This is arguably one of my favorite parts of exploring or committing to testing a new channel. How are the best in the business doing it? A handful of brands I feel are at the forefront of performance marketing (but also have a good understanding of “brand” too). I like to go through their funnels. Most of the time I setup a NEW account (fresh/no prior interests baked into the algorithm), and then go in and start engaging with the platform.

→ Find the brands you know are good ones to follow, engage with them, maybe click their link-in-bio on their profile, signal what you’re interested in.

Your goal should be to click every single ad, look at each landing page, take note of all the creatives (especially those that catch your eye), and start to build a swipe file of what you consider to be well-done on that channel.

Every week, I message 50-100 different, great ads to myself that I find on Instagram, TikTok, Snap. I’m constantly building swipe files, and then whenever I have an Org like you reach out or a creative session on the books I open to see what “Good” looks like for that platform.

When it comes to the creative, it’s pretty self-explanatory of what you should look at. Hook rate, share of text to creative, aggressiveness, etc. When it comes to the website, take note of site speed, social proof badges, how the quotes are written out, the order of sections, what the content in those sections is, what the offer is, how many choices there are to click out, etc. Anything else you can think of, take note of it.

You know that quote, “Good artists copy, great artists steal?” You don’t need to steal (lame and lazy)... but take a hard look at everything you admire, and note it down. If you see a “Viral on TikTok” badge that catches your attention, jot it down. If you see social proof from younger donors when coming from Snap, note it down. You should effectively create a mini brief, compiling everything you like from the creative and the sites you visit when clicking on these ads.

Offer Creation

Creating the donation ask is arguably the most intricate part of the equation. All these pieces are vertical reels in a casino slot machine, but this one carries the most weight. Brands that are the best at creating scalable offers tend to be in the supplement, vitamins, healthcare, beverage, and really anything that has ongoing consumption. Why? Because as long as their product is good, they’re relying on the 3rd, 5th, 9th purchase to come back.

With that context, the goal is to create value and understanding up front for the donor that is SO good it lowers the barrier for someone to want to donate and advocate for your mission. Some ways these might be displayed:

• “Give 50% more with your first donation when you subscribe to give monthly.”

• Gift with donation EG “Donate $30 a month and get a branded Programs cap.”

• Access to an impact and programs newsletter. “Subscribe to A-B-C Newsletter and get access to impact reporting from the Field” for 60 days.” ($65 value)

• Get a free cancer wellness booklet or meal-prep book with your donation. ($19 value)

• Subscribe for 3 months upfront, and get another month Matched.

Now you might be thinking, these Orgs are just giving stuff away for free? No. In exchange, they’re targeting an AOV that is usually 2-3x higher than what their single-donation AOV might be. However, in exchange, they’re giving a slightly larger Match to a first-time donor. This creates a win-win for the brand and the donor. No one is left holding the bag.

• The Org wins by encouraging a slightly higher AOV to a new donor, likely coming from a paid media channel, where they can better offset their costs of donor acquisition.

• The donor wins because they get to experience how good giving feels, with enough content/advocacy/programs variety for a period of time, and with a free gift and/or Match.

You may already be running a smart offer to donors coming via Meta and Google, but if not, it’s something you should probably test. A solid donation offer enables scalable, efficient spend.

When testing donation offers on new channels, you want to make sure the offer matches the funnel stage, the donors mindset, etc. For example, if you’re coming from TikTok, you might need a donation ask more tangentially related to TikTok Shop bundles, or one that feels more gamified (bigger Match if you sign up to give monthly via TikTok). Whereas if someone is coming from Google, you can get away with a higher AOV focused donation ask and fewer freebies.

Creative Planning

This is oftentimes the toughest part for Orgs when testing new channels because they are usually stuck in their own ways, and/or their creative team feels the need to interject and own the briefing process.

Let me be the first to say, if your “brand-marketing-focused” creative team wants to brief a new channel’s test assets, you may as well take your media dollars and flush them down the toilet instead, respectfully.

As far as it goes with your creative, take the same brilliant minds who ideate your scaling creative, to ideate, brief, and produce creative you test in a new channel.

Do NOT just take what works in another channel and bring it to a new one. Take it one step further, don’t even just take a winning angle/concept/story from one channel and bring it over. Start fresh, from scratch. Use the research you did before looking at competitor ad libraries and understand how they have thought about the psychology of the donor on that platform, and let that inspire your creative.

Web/Destination Planning

Moving to the next vertical reel in the slot machine... where you send the traffic. For some reason, while the creative gets so much thought and effort put into it, the destination where everyone goes rarely does. Generally the first thought is, “Let’s send them to the same place they were going on Meta since we know that works.” But you’re forgetting that the donor has had an entirely different journey with your brand until they got there from a Meta ad.

Whether you’re sending them to a TikTok Shop or (now) a ChatGPT product card, or you’re sending them to a listicle (because they’re coming from CTV), you need to think about what that donor may or may not know by the time they get there, and fill the gaps.

If you are a subscriber to SPN, you know how much I stress having good landing pages. Landing pages might sound like conversion machines, but it doesn’t mean they always need to convert right away and drive the donation. Sometimes, the best landing page from a CTV ad is to drive people to a listicle where they can learn more about your programs. In other scenarios, you might want to use your landing page just to get newsletter sign ups for Program Updates.

If you’re driving donors to TikTok, make sure your visuals are optimized. Make sure that your monthly option has a badge to point out the first month Match. Make sure the product (or program) carousel is full of infographics, social proof, benefits, and reasons to donate and believe.

Experiment Design

This is where you decide budget, targeting, flight (how long it runs), what audiences you include or exclude, your bidding, placements, etc. It’s hard for me to comment much on how you approach this, other than what my general recommendation is:

1. Start with retargeting to leverage a shorter feedback loop.

2. Like a hawk, look for where the traffic “leak” is, and plug it. Use heat maps, user session recordings on web pages, etc.

3. As you find your funnel “clicking” and working, move the campaigns into colder audiences.

4. Test and iterate like crazy. Don’t just put it live and let it run.

5. If you find bugs in tracking, measurement, or anything that hinders the experiment from successfully running a test (whether it succeeds or fails), don’t hesitate and faff. Pause, fix and then turn it back on.

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Reads From My Week 📚

The real story behind Apple’s “Think Different” campaign (Forbes)

How Agents Are Accelerating the Next Wave of AI Value Creation (BCG)

McKinsey’s CEO breaks down how AI is reshaping its workforce: 25% growth in some roles, 25% cuts in others (McKinsey)

Your 2026 guide to creative excellence: 10 proven techniques winning with viewers (YouTube)

Branded entertainment will just be entertainment in 2026 (Fast Company)

Agentic AI dominated CES but competing standards could fracture ad tech (Ad Age)

Ad Tech Doesn’t Just Have A Transparency Problem. It Has A Courage Problem (AdExchanger)

Mythbuster: What AI is not about to do in advertising (Digiday)

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That’s all for today.

Jobs & Opps below.

If you made it this far, I appreciate you getting all the way here. There’s nothing I love more than writing newsletters on flights. As we get into the new year, find new channels that work for you these next few quarters, and allow your Q4/EOY to work even harder for you.

If a friend sent this to you, get the next edition of SPN by signing up below.

And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for donor experience that ensures Orgs raise more money.

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Jobs & Opps 🛠️

WFP: Internship - Government Partnerships Intern, WFP London Office

Uber: Head of Social Impact ($190,000 - $210,000)

Robin Hood: Special Assistant, Development, Marketing and Events ($83,500 - $88,000)

Nova Games Foundation: Founding Executive Director ($225,000 - $275,000)

Greater Good Charities: Email Manager ($55,000 - $60,000)

Lever for Change: Vice President, Strategic Partnerships ($159,000)

Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation: Vice President, Development ($180,000 - $195,000)

Girls Who Code: Chief Executive Officer ($364,000 - $416,000)

Every.org: Director of Growth & Marketing ($110,000 - $145,000)

URBN (Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie Group, Free People & Nuuly): Social Responsibility Coordinator

Lever for Change: Data & Learning Associate ($93,100)

Feed the Children: VP, Advancement ($165,000 - $175,000)