SPN. 180: Deploying the “Long and Short”

Plus, Investing in Brand ✨ and 9 Actionable Tips to Build High Performing Landing Pages

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:

• Foundations of a YouTube strategy

• Why Brand Investment is Critical to Fundraising

• 9 Actionable Tips to Build High Performing Landing Pages

• Plenty of Jobs & Opps

Let’s jump in.

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🔐 Privacy That Builds Donor Trust

Fundraise Up is built for GDPR, CCPA, and global privacy compliance - reviewed annually and validated with partners like Thoropass.

✔️ Smart, region-based marketing consent
✔️ First-party cookies + built-in banners where required
✔️ Secure data rights: access, deletion, opt-out

Strong compliance isn’t just protection. It drives trust, conversion, and repeat giving. For donors and your compliance team, Fundraise Up is the safest way to fundraise online.

👉 Talk to Fundraise Up

Game-changer? It is for me!

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Deploying the “Long and Short” to Win

Wally Olins once said: “There’s only one true way to gauge the value of a brand, and that is to sell it.”

Many Orgs don’t ascribe a value to their brand because it’s not easy to measure it, so instead they measure the effectiveness of their marketing spend. You might recognize that your brand is doing something positive for your Org, but it’s challenging to pinpoint exactly what that “something” is.

What many fundraising leaders fail to appreciate (and I was one of them for quite some time #guilty) is that brand value accrues over a longer period of time than the immediate “value” generated by direct response-driven marketing activity.

Q4 has a strong focus on delivering conversions. It’s also a critical window to build brand that drives resilience and long-term growth into the new year.

Deploying a balanced approach to fundraising - combining Brand Building (The Long) and the Fundraising Activation (The Short) - will be key come January when the hype of EOY has faded.

→ Plan on an evergreen campaign. Consistently fund it throughout 2026. Measure your share of search and share of social engagement vs your peers, and track the incremental number of donors and corporates lining up to contribute period of period. For anyone who needs to hear it: brand has a longer look back window.

Why Brand Investment is Important:

1️⃣ Superior Financial Returns: Top-ranked brands, built on strong equity, outperform the world market by 74% (McKinsey). Brand is a driver of superior financial returns.

2️⃣ Massive Advantage: Brands perceived as meaningful and different grew their value by an average of $12.3 billion (nearly double the average). I enjoyed this: Kantar Brandz make the case for long-term brand-building investment.

3️⃣ Immediate & Future Payoff: Just a 1% increase in brand awareness delivers immediate benefits (0.4% lift in short-term) while securing the future (lift in long-term revenue 0.6) (Google/Nielsen).

For Orgs, long-term brand building and short-term fundraising activation should be closer to 60/40:

• ~60% brand (trust, familiarity, salience)

• ~40% activation (campaigns, appeals, EOY) you get to do more with less when you invest in brand. CAC goes down.

Most nonprofits operate at 5/95 and then wonder why Q1 always flatlines.

If You Can Only Do 3 Things in Q4 to Build Brand →

1. Show up in video, especially YouTube Shorts

2. Create a consistent donation experience because UX is part of brand

3. Tell one signature story repeatedly

Good read: How YouTube became essential to your audience and your brand growth. With tens of millions of donors accessing across all screens it’s a no-brainer to start your brand efforts here. YouTube is a distribution network.

Don’t stop investing in brand this Q4. You’ll pay for it in Q1 if you do.

Bonus thought:

Build your YouTube 2026 strategy around the following:

• Always-on brand creative for broad reach

• Mid-funnel transparency content (“where your money goes”)

• Conversion-led stories from the field or from Survivors

Understanding how to create dynamic short-form video - Reels, Shorts, TikToks - is the single most important fundraising skill for building Orgs of the future.

The future is being defined by short-form storytelling and you need to pair content creation with structure:

• Build a long-term narrative, not just short-term engagement.

• Target an audience that’s specific to your Org. Random views don’t convert.

• Design a fundraising (monetization) funnel that can scale past the initial burst of internet attention.

Short-form content sparks attention. Brand converts it into revenue. And brand is that compounding engine behind every great fundraising program.

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Reads From My Week 📚

Don’t overlook the “long”: building a brand drives performance results (Think with Google)

Wally Olins: The father of “Territory Branding” (Grapheine)

Some thoughts on AI (Gavin Baker)

The Big Dangers of Big Bubbles with Big Wealth Gaps (Ray Dalio)

Musk’s xAI and Nvidia to Develop Data Center in Saudi Arabia (WSJ)

The New AI Consciousness Paper (Astral Codex Ten)

The Next Evolution of Marketing Measurement (AdWeek)

Gifts You Can Give That Give Back (Nick Kristof)

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9 Actionable Tips to Build High Performing Landing Pages

This is what you need to focus on with your landing pages. Obviously, yes, the basics. But layer these 9 things on top, and you will 2-3x conversion rate. Here we go.

1. Sticky CTAs.

Design for the (right) thumb, it’s 85-90% of the population. On mobile, always have a persistent CTA button visible once a user scrolls past the hero section. Most of your traffic is on phones, so don’t make donors scroll back up looking for the CTA. A sticky footer bar with the program name, suggested donation amount, and a bold CTA can boost impulse taps. I’ve seen this simple tweak lift mobile conversion rates – it keeps the donation checkout just one thumb-press away at all times.

2. Answer Questions Before They’re Asked.

If donors frequently ask your support team “Does this come with X?” or “Where do you do Y?”, that’s an obvious sign to address it on the landing page. Take your top FAQs and bake them into your content (don’t hide them in a tiny FAQ dropdown no one reads).

Example: If everyone asks whether their gift stays local → add a clear line: “Your donation directly supports programs in your community.”
If donors worry about overhead → include a simple impact breakdown or a line on accountability.
If disaster donors ask how fast aid is deployed → spell it out: “Emergency teams mobilize within 24 hours.”
If monthly donors ask whether they can cancel anytime → say it upfront next to the recurring toggle.

Only half your visitors will scroll past the first screen, so make the essentials unmistakable. A landing page that anticipates donor questions removes friction, reduces uncertainty, and makes giving feel safe and obvious.

3. Segmented Pages for Specific Audiences.

One-size-fits-all pages are buzz kills… do you want the same thing everyone else got too? No one does. Create dedicated landing pages for each major audience or angle.

Example: The messaging that moves a long-time supporter (“Your continued generosity keeps families in housing all year”) won’t move a disaster donor (“Your gift delivers emergency relief within 72 hours”). A pet-loving donor wants to see animals saved. A climate donor wants proof of carbon impact. A corporate CSR lead wants brand safety, employee engagement, and reporting.

When donors land on a page that feels like it was made for them, relevance shoots up and so does conversion. Think of it as putting every donor on the fast track that matches their reason for giving, instead of forcing everyone down the same hallway.

4. No Escape Navigation.

Treat your landing page like a high-converting mall kiosk, not a full “store” website. That means stripping out the top nav and any unnecessary links that let people wander off. Every extra link (Home, About Us, random program categories) is an invitation to lose the user to another page, and one that isn’t conversion-oriented, either. Keep the journey linear and focused. The only clickable options should either answer a burning question or lead the user closer toward the donation checkout. No detours, no leaks in the funnel. It’s the express train to checkout.

5. Micro-Commitments & Opt-In.

Get your visitor to say a small “yes” before the big “YES.” Interactive elements like a quick quiz (“Find your perfect program in 3 clicks”) or a build-your-own-bundle step can work wonders. Another easy place to do this is your email opt-in; don’t just ask for the email, ask a question first. It engages the user… instead of passively reading, they’re actively clicking and investing effort. This “foot-in-the-door” tactic makes the eventual donation feel easier.

6. Exit-Intent Rescue.

I don’t see this get activated nearly enough. Don’t let them leave without a fight. If a visitor drags their mouse toward the close tab button or shows exit intent, trigger a last-second hook. This could be a special Match, a helpful prompt, or an monthly offer to keep them in your ecosystem. The idea is to catch the maybe-later donor and give them a reason to stay or return. You’d be surprised how many almost-donor you can save with a thoughtful exit popup. You’re not begging, you’re extending a friendly note to show you deliver on our mission.

7. CEO/ED’s Note.

Put a face and name behind the promise of your mission. A short, sincere note from your CEO.ED can humanize the page and build trust at scale. It could be a few lines near the bottom or make it a full section of its own, talking about your Org and its programs. Include a small photo or signature for authenticity. It’s like someone shaking your hand and giving you a personal guarantee. It’s harder to doubt an Org when the person who runs it is looking you in the eye saying, “I stake my name on our ability to deploy long term impact.”

8. Badges and Endorsements.

It’s bigger, better, meatier social proof. If your program or Org even is certified, awarded, or expert-approved, shout it out. Trust marks/badges are conversion steroids - they instantly communicate legitimacy. Same goes for any noteworthy endorsements (for example, a quote from an expert in your field, etc.). Place them repeatedly throughout the page and near key decision points (CTAs + wherever you see scrolls stopping). They function as silent fundraisers, whispering your programs are legit and work.

9. Big Swing A/B Tests.

You already know to ABT (always be testing), but make sure you test meaningful swings. Don’t stop at button colors. Test completely different angles or layouts when you can. Try a bold new headline that focuses on a different stumbling point or swap the hero image with something radical (program-only vs. lifestyle-beneficiary-in-action).

The biggest wins always come from big changes. If you find a whole new angle that resonates, you might double your conversion rate overnight. And if a wild test flops, who cares? Never assume your current LP is as good as it gets. The best teams treat a landing page as a living, evolving asset. Continuous iteration is the secret weapon. 1% improvements add up over time.

Everything I think about with landing pages ends up coming back and laddering up to these 9 constant things. If you have funnels going for the Holiday season, sprinkle in some of these battle-tested steps and watch your your performance 🚀.

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That’s all for today.

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

If there is only one thing you can do, duplicate your pages, and try to make angle-specific URLs/donor journeys. It’s what your future donors want, and it’s what Facebook’s algorithm wants too ;)

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 🛠️

Trust for Public Land: Institutional Giving Director (IGD) ($90,000 - $105,000)

Girl Scouts Nation’s Capital: Chief Experience Officer (CXO) ($225,000)

Wikimedia Foundation: CEO ($500,000)

Getty: Deputy Director, Advancement ($200,000 - $225,000)

World Central Kitchen: Chief Branding & Marketing Officer ($220,000 - $240,000)

Gates Foundation: Deputy Director, Giving Pledge ($227,400 - $352,400)

All State: Social Impact Enablement Lead

Climate Cabinet Action: Senior Development Director ($145,000 - $165,000)

Youth Inc: Chief Development Officer ($220,000 - $250,000)

Fundraise Up: Senior Customer Marketing Manager ($150,000)

SPN. 179: Your Donation Flow Needs Video. Here’s Why (and How).

Plus, a thought for the day and plenty of Jobs & Opps.

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. You’ve joined a community of over 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:

• Where (and How) video belongs in your Donation Experience

• Capacity building

• And, plenty of Jobs & Opps

Let’s jump in!

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UNFPA turned complex, resource-heavy global fundraising into a streamlined, high-performance engine using Fundraise Up:

🌍 Dozens of global payment methods across 130+ currencies
📱 85% of donors now giving on mobile
💸 84% of donors covering fees
🔁 Donor retention lifted from 50% ➝ 80%+
📈 311% year-over-year donation revenue growth

When giving gets easier, donors stay longer.
Fundraise Up → global-ready, donor-first, built for scale.

Read the case study.

Game changer? It is for me!

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A Capacity-Building Tool.

Every nonprofit has a list of great ideas that sit below the line because there aren’t enough people, time, or resources to make them happen.

AI changes that dynamic. It’s wild that Orgs can now expand their capacity with fewer tradeoffs, especially with CHatGPT 5.1 released this week. Work that once required entire departments can now happen faster with smaller teams.

This week I was privy to a few conversations with senior marketing and fundraising operators talking about AI. It was being framed as a cost savings tool (rather than as an engine for growth).

Isn’t that a scarcity mindset, one focused on preservation: how to protect what already exists, spend less, scale back?

In every sense AI is a tool of abundance. It gives us the power to do more and create at a scale we’ve never known.

Orgs that approach AI as a way to multiply what they create will be so much more successful in delivering impactful results against their mission than those that use it to subtract.

Of course AI will generate efficiencies, but it can do so much more than that. If one Org is busy reducing its workforce by half, and another is using AI to double its capacity, which do you think will thrive?

→ Field notes from tinkering with 5.1 this week:

Marketers
Set a chat style once and test Instant versus Thinking to feel the speed difference.
Don’t rewrite prompts to adjust tone; change it in Personalization instead.

Writers
Add punctuation and tone rules to custom instructions before drafting.
Don’t expect its default style to match your own brand guidelines.

Fundraisers
Keep briefs inside one thread; cache holds memory for 24 hours.
Don’t split discussions across chats and lose continuity.

As ever SPN is watching for the green shoots:

From Campaigns to Business Value: How AI Will Transform Marketing (BCG)

Amazon’s Ads Agent Is Here, Alongside a New Ads Interface (Adweek)

Era of Answer Engines: Generative AI’s impact on search experiences and online safety (Ofcom)

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Reads From My Week 📚

Fab 4 minute Christmas Waitrose (UK supermarket) ad: Keira Knightley stars with Joe Wilkinson in Waitrose’s ‘mini romcom’ Christmas advert

Meta’s Generative Ads Model (GEM): The Central Brain Accelerating Ads Recommendation AI Innovation (Meta)

Retail media doesn’t need more ads; it needs smarter creativity (The Media Leader)

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show (Reuters)

Affiliate links, personalized ads, and chatbot revenue optimization (Mobile Dev Memo by Eric Seufert)

The Amazon Ads Unboxed event - lots of news and product innovation (Amazon)

The 2026 TikTok Playbook (Fospha)

Behind Unilever’s creator and social strategy for next year’s World Cup (Digiday)

The New Wave of Agency - Emerging Agency Opportunities: Ideas from APAC Innovators (Meta)

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Your Donation Flow Needs Video. Here’s Why, and How.

People live in video.

Social is proof.

Video is the default language of the internet. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram Reels account for more than 80% of online attention across major platforms.

Why? Because motion and voice create understanding faster than text ever can. And for your Org, this isn’t just about storytelling it’s about fundraising performance. In my experience, video lifts conversion, and increases average gift size and donor retention when integrated directly into the donation flow.

Here’s how to make Video core to your donor experience.

Bonus thought right up front - before recording anything, decide who owns video internally. Is it digital fundraising, brand, or regional comms? A shared library sounds great - it is - but building it and maintaining is the work of the work. Commit to it and it’ll pay dividends if you get the commitment to properly see it through. Be pedantic in favor of collecting metadata for format, tone, and results from creative testing. It’ll avoid duplication and more importantly ensures that a great video recorded in you-name-where doesn’t die in someone’s Google Drive.

1) Test placing a 45–60 second “why your donation matters” video on the donation form

A simple, concise, human + slides video that answers three things: the problem your programming is solving, your Orgs unique approach to solving it, and one key stat. Vary the stats for A/B testing and place the video player directly above the donation form. (A note on slides - I’ve seen TikTok promoting this format heavily at the moment. And LinkedIn. Two distinctly different social platforms with different audiences both tapping Slide format. At the very least this is a format your donors are used to).

To start, why not have a member of your fundraising team recording in the office. Host it on Vimeo or Wistia, or even as an unlisted YouTube asset, and pick the screen with the stat as the thumbnail.

To measure:

• In Google Tag Manager, enable the YouTube Video trigger.

• Turn on built-in variables: Video Title, Video Current Time, Video Percent.

• In GA4 create custom events video_start, video_25, video_50, video_complete

• Build a Funnel Exploration report: Landing page > Donation start > Donation submit, split by “Watched ≥50%.”

What you’re watching for is a higher form start rate and a higher conversion among watchers.

Global tip: Optimize for low bandwidth. MP4 under 2MB, auto-quality CDN delivery, subtitles on by default.

2) Use short Loom-style clips to explain your Program stats

Record a series of human + slides videos that demystify the statistics you reference in your promotional materials - such as “What a 25-dollar monthly gift funds in 30 days,” with a couple of charts and a voiceover.

Unlike the first video, put these ones onto the campaign landing pages, in email, and as the lead asset in LinkedIn and Meta posts.

To measure:

• Track click_video and video_complete as events.

• In GA4, build a free-form report with Donation CVR by “Viewed Loom clip”, yes/no trigger.

3) Add staff mini-interviews for credibility

Record short Q&A with field staff or program leads answering one question each: “Where does my gift go in 30 days?” and “What changed last month?”. Create a library of 20-30 of these clips and have them pop up as the “are you sure you want to leave?” windows for someone who filled in at least one field on the donation form but chose to drop off. Rotate different clips for A/B testing.

To measure:

• In GA4, add a segment for “Played staff clip,” and look at the Conversion Rate metric, mentally renaming it “Recovery Rate” (that’s purely incremental conversions that would otherwise result in a drop-off).

4) Donor-to-donor video asks

If your Org is doing offline events, record a series of short “Why do you donate to Org XYZ?” blitz videos. Post these to Instagram Stories and TikTok as part of your creative rotation, especially in remarketing and one-time-to-monthly campaigns.

To measure:

• In Meta, run side-by-side ad sets: staff videos vs donor videos vs standard remarketing creative. Set the algorithm to Maximize Conversion Volume and monitor cost per completed view and assisted conversions.

• In GA4 tag sessions with utm_content=donor_video, and watch Average Donation Value and Share of Monthly Donations from those sessions.

5) Program-recipient storytelling

If your Org is hosting offline dinner events, those events are likely already including stories from program recipients. Ask for consent to record those speeches – and use them as paid TrueView assets on YouTube and on Meta, as well as include them in Anniversary emails for monthly donors.

To measure:

• Track the average gift for people who landed on the website after watching the video as a stand-alone segment

• Compare to the website average (from experience it will be up to 3x higher)

6) Use AI for infographics, not “fake people”

VEO3-type tools are becoming really, really good. Use AI where it makes you faster and more consistent: draft scripts, create live infographics from boring stat slides, and add voiceover to them. And don’t use it to resemble donors - or program recipients.

Good tools to try:

• Descript for editing and cleanup.

• Runway or Pika (by Pollo) for cinematic shots for B-roll and transitions

• ElevenLabs for voiceovers

To measure:

• Track the time it takes you to organize the production of one minute of live video - even if it is a staff interview. The gain will be staggering.

Governance tip: Create a simple AI checklist. For instance, disclose synthetic content, store prompts, and ensure human sign-off.

7) Thank You email with dynamic impact stats and a personalized micro-video

Replace the generic CEO thank you with a short, data-driven recap that mirrors the “order recap” pattern common in e-commerce. The email should show three clear stats tied to the gift and include a 20–30-second personalized micro-video that greets the donor by first name and reflects their gift amount and chosen program, which is only possible by using AI.

How to do it:

• Build a small data feed from your CRM with first name, gift amount, program tag, city or state, and an impact stat lookup from marketing materials.

• Use a template-based editor to assemble scenes with text overlays and b-roll, then render variations automatically.

Helpful tools:

• Descript for scenes and captions

• ElevenLabs for neutral voiceover

• Vimeo or Wistia for hosting with per-viewer analytics

For a full personalization at scale experience, tools like SundaySky or Idomoo can auto-render per-recipient versions. They can get very expensive very quickly.

8) Thank You page

Add a 30–45-second gratitude clip that can be generic and doesn’t need to address the donor by first name. Keep it human. This is the most important asset to invest in for production. Record your ED or Program Leader wherever and have them share a meaningful, grateful, mission-related piece to camera.

To measure:

• In GA4, build a Funnel exploration starting at the purchase event and branching to “Monthly start within 7 days” and “Click share buttons” events.

• Compare cohorts with and without the Thank You clip for two weeks.

I hope you’ll see a positive engagement and donation pattern emerge when you enact some of the above.

Video is a multiplier. Start with one test, learn fast, and keep going.

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That’s all for today.

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 🛠️

Nat Geo: Chief of Staff Campus Experiences ($190,000 - $200,000)

Generosity X: Donor Experience Strategist ($70,000 - $90,000 CAD)

Girls Scouts USA: Director, Movement Communications ($80,000 - $130,000)

British Red Cross: Business Development Lead (£59,030 - £63,195)

San Francisco Symphony: Deputy Director, Development ($168,800 - $193,500)

National Cryptologic Foundation (NCF): President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) ($175,000 - $225,000)

Gates Foundation: Officer, Audience Engagement (2 Year LTE) ($140,000 - $229,000)

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): Managing Director, Institutional, Global, and Corporate Philanthropy ($230,000 - $250,000)

Mercy Corps: Associate VP, High Impact Philanthropy ($185,000 - $200,000)

The Partnership To End Homelessness: Vice President, External Relations ($175,000)

Mission 44 (Lewis Hamilton’s): Chief Engagement Officer (£90,000 – £100,000)

SPN. 178: Building a Landing Page Machine

Plus, why Snap deserves a test budget and plenty of Jobs & Opps

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:

• SNAP!

• Building a Landing Page Machine

• Plenty of Jobs & Opps

Let’s jump in.

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CAMFED turned a fragmented giving experience into a unified, global engine for growth using Fundraise Up:

🌍 Multi-currency giving that saves hours in reconciliation
💳 77% of donors covering fees
📈 206% more tributes sent in Giving Season

All while lifting conversion 47% after an A/B test on their main site.

Fundraise Up → frictionless for donors, effortless for teams.

Read the case study.

Game-changer? It is for me!

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SNAP!

Snap is criminally underestimated, especially by nonprofit advertisers. I’ve written about them a few times:

SPN 143: Maximizing Performance with Better Creative

SPN 13: Donor LTV: A Deep Dive

Their most recent shareholder letter holds good insight:

Our investments in AI and machine learning are delivering measurable gains for
advertisers. We advanced Dynamic Product Ads with large language models that better understand products, driving over 4x higher conversion rates compared to baseline fo certain campaigns. As a result of these and other improvements, purchase-related ad revenue grew over 30% year-over-year, reflecting higher attribution accuracy and better campaign performance. For example, Comfrt, a lifestyle and apparel eCommerce brand, leveraged Target Cost and Max Bid in their Snap campaign to scale faster and reach an incremental audience that delivered an 85% lift in site visits, a 79% increase in new customers, and a more than 3x ROAS improvement as measured by WorkMagic since the start of their 2025 campaign.”

Orgs should be paying attention. Snap’s ad platform is quietly evolving into one of the most efficient environments for performance-based storytelling, especially for younger donor acquisition.

With its AI-driven dynamic creative and conversion optimization tools, Snap now behaves more like a commerce engine than a social network. That’s a huge opportunity for Orgs willing to experiment with creative built for native, vertical storytelling.

Imagine pairing a $5 “tap-to-give” micro-conversion ad with a short impact reel or using Snap’s AR lenses to visualize a donation’s impact. The CPMs are still low, the targeting precise, and the creative bar delightfully high. For Orgs serious about building next-gen donor pipelines, Snap deserves a test budget.

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Reads From My Week 📚

Impact of Visual AI on Ad Effectiveness (Google)

Improving productivity: Improving productivity: Perplexity at Work (Perplexity)

Snap shares jump after $400M deal with AI (LinkedIn)

Ex-McKinsey Consultants Are Training AI Models to Replace Them (Bloomberg)

How AI browsers sneak past blockers and paywalls (Mashable)

AI Doesn’t Have to Mean Revenue Hit for Ad Industry (WSJ)

Meta has an AI product problem (Tech Crunch)

Claude Just Made Prompting 10x Easier - And It Works in ChatGPT! (Nate Jones)

The Business Case for Rethinking Transparency and Trust in the Agency World (AdWeek)

Women’s sports are on everyone’s radar. For marketers, this creates a new tension (Campaign)

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Deep Dive: Building a Landing Page Machine

Building landing pages in a systematic, efficient way isn’t just a fun side project, it’s often the difference between an Org that plateaus and one that breaks through to the next level.

If your teams can develop a repeatable process with predictable timelines and clear quality standards for each step (research, copy, design, dev, etc.), you’ve unlocked a growth superpower. And you will raise more money. Instead of landing pages being a bottleneck or a one-off fire drill, they need to become a reliable growth lever you can pull whenever you have a new program or Match or audience to target.

If you look at some of the fastest-growing consumer brands, many of them scaled quickly because they were smart about their funnels… nailing their messaging, creative, CTAs, and understanding retention and churn. At the core of those funnels are dedicated landing pages. Why? Because landing pages let you streamline the customer journey and boost conversion rates by reducing friction and educating the customer along the way.

Building on last week’s SPN deep dive, today I’ve broken down how I created a cost-effective, conversion-focused landing page process that scaled my digital fundraising efforts to $50M annually.

→ Scroll down to “My Step-by-Step Process for Building Landing Pages” if you don’t need a reminder that content is king (not tools).

Why Landing Pages Matter for Scaling

A good landing page is an essential part of your marketing funnel. Rather than sending ad traffic to a generic homepage (which can work sometimes depending on a host of factors), a focused landing page can guide a prospect from first click to donation with minimal detours. Fewer clicks means fewer chances for people to drop off – naturally increasing your conversion rate because you’re removing distractions and friction in the donation process.

But it’s not just about reducing clicks. A landing page also gives you the space to properly educate a supporter about your mission and programs. You can concisely explain why they should trust you, how your programs solves certain challenges for the beneficiaries of your Org’s work, and how it will enrich their life. By the time they reach the “Donate” button, they’re informed and confident.

In other words, a great landing page rolls out the red carpet for the donor: it delivers the right information at the right time, building trust and desire, so the donation feels like a no-brainer. For Orgs looking to scale up, mastering this kind of donor journey is a game changer.

Strategy Over Tools: Content Is King (Not Fancy Tools)

When our team first decided to build landing pages to improve conversion, the initial route we took was to whip something up quickly and cheaply. Someone on the team suggested using a drag-and-drop landing page tool, we tapped our agency, and we went through a few freelancers on Fiverr too who designed a page for a few hundred bucks.

These tools and quick fixes can be fine to get a campaign started but it’s worth remembering that the tool you use or how “pretty” the page looks is far less important than having the right strategy, messaging, and content. We put the cart before the horse on a number of occasions while we built out this process.

You absolutely must get the basics right – the CTA, the copy, the donor experience (UX) flow, and the messaging hierarchy. Those elements will make or break your page’s performance. The functionality or shiny UI elements come second. If you don’t have a clear strategy and compelling content, even the most expensive landing page builder or the trendiest design template won’t save you. (As I mentioned last week, having a very clear brief is the first step. Without clear direction on your audience, angle, and goals, the landing page will miss the mark).

Let me emphasize the difference: UX vs. UI. UX (User Experience) is how the page works – how easy and intuitive it is for a visitor to navigate, understand your message, and take action. UI (User Interface) is how the page looks – the aesthetic design, colors, fonts, images, etc. A beautiful UI can enhance trust and reinforce your brand identity, but a pretty page alone won’t convert if the UX and content are poor. An ugly page with great copy and flow will outperform a gorgeous page with confusing messaging every time.

The takeaway: Don’t get distracted by tools or over-fancy design. You can use basic landing page tools or simple templates to start, that’s fine. But what really matters is the substance: a clear angle and audience, strong copywriting, a compelling CTA, and a smooth donor journey. Nail those, and even a “ugly” page can print money. Miss those, and no amount of good design will save your conversion rate.

→ My Step-by-Step Process for Building Landing Pages

Over time, I’ve developed a process to crank out effective landing pages with minimal wasted effort. Here’s exactly how I do it, step by step:

Define Your Angle & Audience:

Start by clearly identifying who you’re targeting and what core angle or emotion you’re leveraging. Every great campaign begins with a simple truth: you’re not talking to everyone. Identify exactly who this page is for - lapsed monthly donors, peer-to-peer fundraisers, corporate match partners, etc. Then define the emotional driver that will resonate most with them: urgency, pride, community, empathy, progress.

For example, if you’re targeting mid-level donors for an animal welfare appeal, your angle might be “Rescue one more pet before winter.” That emotional clarity should shape every headline, photo, and testimonial on the page. Defining this upfront should result in all messaging staying laser-focused and relevant to the people you want to convert.

Brain Dump All Your Ideas (Copy First):

Open a blank document and brain-dump everything that could belong on the page - the story, impact stats, beneficiary quotes, program breakdowns, visuals, FAQs, and social proof.

Get it all out before you start designing. Once you have your raw material, refine it into clear, donor-centered copy. The idea is to create a massive content sandbox to play in. The goal is to show:

• Why this matters right now

• How the donor can help

• What impact their gift makes

Once it’s all out on paper, you can always trim and refine.

SPN tip: if you use AI tools in your workflow (for example, to analyze customer feedback or to polish copy) you can even feed this rough doc into an AI assistant to see if it suggests any improvements or spots anything you missed. The AI isn’t there to write for you, but it can help you refine your raw material.

Outline the Sections & Story Flow:

Now step back and organize that brain dump into a rough outline or wireframe on paper. Think about the sections of your landing page as chapters of a story that smoothly guides a supporter from ignorance to interest to desire to action.

A typical flow might look like: Hero (headline, subheadline, call-to-action) → Problem/Challenge → Solution (your program) → Key Benefits & Features → Social Proof (donor reviews, beneficiary testimonials) → Comparison (why you vs. peers or vs. doing nothing) → Match/Donation/CTA → FAQ → Final CTA. There’s no one-size-fits-all formula, but whatever structure you choose, make sure each section logically leads to the next.

At this stage, focus on what content goes where, not how it will look visually. Arrange the copy from your doc under these section headings. Cut any fluff that doesn’t serve the core angle or that creates detours. This outline is essentially your wireframe in written form – the skeletal blueprint of the page.

Craft a Wireframe (UX Layout):

Next, organize that content into a logical, emotional journey:

Hero section: Headline, visual, CTA
→ The problem: What’s at stake
→ The solution: Your program or response
→ The proof: Real stories or data
→ The action: What the donor can do
→ Reinforcement: Matching offer, testimonials, or FAQs
→ Final CTA

Think of this like writing a great appeal letter. You’re leading someone from awareness to action, one scroll at a time.

You’re combining your marketing strategy knowledge (what makes supporters click and donate) with everything you know about the donor and the angle, plus all that raw content you gathered, and molding it into a logical flow. Don’t be discouraged if it takes several tweaks – this is where A/B testing and conversion rate optimization come into play over time.

Even our experienced designers rarely nailed the perfect layout on the first try, which is why you have to continuously test and refine. If you have access to a conversion-focused UX designer (someone who’s designed landing pages for paid traffic before), this is a great time to get their input or have them draft the wireframe. The goal is a page structure that makes it stupid-simple for a supporter to go from skimming the headline to entering their credit card info without confusion or extra clicks.

Design the Page (UI):

Once the wireframe (the what-goes-where) is approved, it’s time for the UI design, making it look like a polished, on-brand web page.

In this phase, you’ll apply your brand’s visual identity to the wireframe: the color scheme, fonts, button styles, imagery, iconography, whatever else. The key here is to maintain the integrity of the wireframe’s layout and flow while making it brand-consistent.

Don’t let design “creativity” derail the functional layout. Every design choice should still serve the goal of converting the donor. If you have specific content pieces (program photos, charts, graphics, testimonial pics), plug them in. Make sure the design is clean and uncluttered. The need here is to enhance trust and clarity, not distract or overwhelm!

By the end of this step, you should have a dev-ready design file of the landing page.

Build Within Your Core Website (Not a Subdomain)

Avoid spinning up donation microsites or using subdomains that break tracking. This was always a conversation for every campaign I produced. The winning argument is: Keep everything under your main domain so analytics and CRM tracking stay intact.

You must preserve data integrity, it’s critical for optimizing campaigns and reporting ROI. When your data is fragmented, your insights disappear…

Integrating campaign pages directly within your CRM or giving platform also allows for better A/B testing, retargeting, and donor journey automation.

I’ve seen Orgs doing 3M to $50M/year in digital fundraising unknowingly sabotage their data by running pages on a different domain, causing Facebook and Google to receive muddled signals (and once those platforms get bad data, you can’t exactly “cleanse” it later; it hurts your optimization).

Bottom line: keep it all under one roof for accurate data and easier maintenance.

QA Everything (Mobile, Desktop, Tracking):

Before you send traffic to your new page, test it rigorously.

Check the page on all major device types and browsers. Mobile phones (iPhone and Android), tablets, and various desktop browsers. Ensure the layout is responsive and looks great on small screens (where likely 70%+ of your traffic from ads will be). Click through every link and button. Take the journey you’re expecting your donor to take.

Also double-check that all your tracking events are firing correctly (page view, subscribe, add-to-cart, donation, or whatever events you expect).

On a custom-coded page, sometimes the usual events don’t fire by default, so your developer might need to manually trigger the pixel at certain steps. It’s worth running through a test donation (or five) while having your analytics debug tools open to verify this.

If you’re offering a Match on the landing page, test that the code works at the donation checkout. You want to catch any glitch or friction before a real donor hits it. It’s a terrible feeling to spend money on ads only to realize later that your “Donate Now” button wasn’t working on mobile or the Meta Pixel didn’t record any of the donations. It’s an experience I don’t wish to re-live nor do I wish it on anybody!

Launch, Monitor, and Optimize:

With QA passing, push the page live and start sending traffic to it. In the first day or two, keep a close eye on performance and any donor feedback.

Monitor your analytics: Is the bounce rate reasonable? Are people clicking the CTA? How’s the conversion rate vs. your main site? Often, things will work perfectly, but if something is off, you want to catch it early. Also watch for any unexpected behavior e.g., a flood of donor service tickets or DMs saying “it keeps timing out” or “the code isn’t working” (unlikely if you tested well, but stay vigilant).

Assuming all is well, you can start gathering data and possibly set up A/B tests on elements of the page (headline, images, etc.) to keep improving it. One of the beautiful parts of a dedicated landing page is that you can optimize it specifically for your paid traffic audience, so use that advantage over time.

Educate, Don’t Pressure (Build Trust for the Long Term):

As you refine your landing pages, continue to walk your donor down a red carpet. The page should feel like a helpful guided tour, not a high-pressure donation trap.

Avoid gimmicks that might boost short-term conversion at the expense of trust like fake countdown timers, spammy pop-ups, or “limited Match time” nonsense that resets every visit. Those tricks might squeeze a donation out of a skeptical donor once, but they won’t make them feel good about the donation or come back for more.

Donors want transparency. Pages that teach, uplift, and respect the donor’s intent build lifetime value.

When your campaign pages feel like an invitation rather than a transaction, you’re not just raising money, you’re building brand and program advocates.

The best Orgs I know are growing because they’re actively building fans, not just “supporters”. Fans are created through positive, trust-based experiences. So focus on education and value, and the conversions to donate will follow.

Final Thoughts

This process helped me and my team test and scale campaigns rapidly, feeding our paid acquisition funnels with high-converting pages. It removed a ton of friction in working with other team teams too because everyone knew the playbook for launching a new page. Ultimately, it meant we were in-market faster which allowed us to test earlier, launch earlier, learn faster and raise more funds, without losing momentum.

So, invest the time in building this landing page machine. As someone who’s been in the weeds of performance marketing and funnel building, I can tell you it’s absolutely worth it. Get the team aligned, follow the steps, and soon whipping up a killer landing page will feel like second nature. Your future self (and your digital fundraising goals) will thank you when you’re scaling from $1M to $10M to $50M+ without breaking a sweat.

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That’s all for today.

Phew. That was a lot. I hope you’ve 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 🛠️

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Deputy Chief Officer for Patrons ($125,000 - $150,000)

Council on Foundations: Director, Philanthropy & Engagement ($90,000 - $110,000)

Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE): Development Director

Change.org: Director, Conservative External Affairs ($218,000 - $230,000)

University of Southern California: Senior Director, Foundation & Corporate Relations ($132,000 - $148,000)

Save the Children US: Head, Mass Market Fundraising & Engagement ($154,000 - $210,000)

Robin Hood: Senior Manager, Partner & Engagement Strategy ($123,000 - $136,000)

Task Force: Senior Director, Events & Experiential Marketing ($150,000 - $200,000)

World Cancer Fund: Digital & Content Manager (£40,000 -£45,000)

Coca Cola: Director, Social Impact Partnerships

U.S. Soccer Federation: SVP, Business Development

Canadian Red Cross: Director-Digital & Sustainer Marketing ($115,223 - $122,425 CAD)

The HALO Trust: Strategic Philanthropy Lead (£65,000)

SPN: 177. Your Design Process is Hindering Your Ability to Raise $$$

Plus, Smile Curves; the 5-Question landing page framework; and, plenty of Jobs & Opps

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:

• 5 questions → design process → helping or hindering $$$

• Chart of the Week

• How to write a winning Brief

Let’s jump in.

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🧠 Every fundraiser says they test. But do you actually know what works?

Now you can.

Fundraise Up’s A/B Testing Hub is a live library of real experiments run across thousands of donation pages showing what actually drives conversion (and what quietly kills it).

Inside you’ll find:
→ Proven lifts by element: forms, copy, CTAs, modals, and more
→ Wins and losses by device, audience, and geography
→ Actionable insights you can test this week

If you care about CRO, CVR, and donor experience, this is your new secret weapon.

🔎 Explore it here → Bookmark it.

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Chart of the Week

Retention curves like this are almost unheard of:

Smile curves for ChatGPT: Source

This chart commits what I call “y-axis crime” - the y-axis doesn’t start at zero. But in this case, the y-axis crime actually hurts ChatGPT! The curves are even better when you realize the worst cohorts asymptote (then “smile”) in the mid-40s.

These types of curves are typically reserved for marketplace or social products that have network effects, meaning they improve as more users join the platforms (e.g., Uber improving with more rider / driver density, or Instagram improving with more of your friends on the app).

Even putting my obsession with lifetime value aside, it’s wildly impressive to have this sort of retention for a “single-player” product that hasn’t launched social features (although they should imo).

All the more reason I enjoyed watching Dan Frommer speak at the recent BRXND event for data on how consumers are actually using AI, what they’re willing to pay for it, and the unexpected generational sentiment shifts.

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Reads From My Week 📚

Episode 322: Turning Cultural Trends into Career Momentum (Jesse Kirshbaum)

The Animation Industry Is Strapped For Cash, What’s Next? (Variety)

How Taylor Swift Rewrote The Business of Record Sales (WSJ)

Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The Results Are Profound 💡 (New Yorker)

What if there were a universal ads API? (Brian O’Kelley)

‘Of Course It’s a Bubble’: AI Start-Up Valuations Soar in Investor Frenzy (FT)

Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Ventures (404 Media)

Claude Skills Are Awesome, Maybe a Bigger Deal than MCP (Simon Willison)

Elf Cosmetics First to Test Twitch’s New Livestream Shopping Ads (MarketingDive)

The New World: Joshua Kushner, Thrive Capital, and The American Dream (Colossus)

Insights from Shopify’s 2025 Holiday Report (Shopify)

Orea-Maker Mondelez To Use New Generative AI Tool to Slash Marketing Costs (Reuters)

YouTube Paid out $8B to the Music Industry in the Last 12 Months (TechCrunch)

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How to Build an Efficient Design Process

For today’s longer post (which turned into a bit of a deep dive) I hope I can convince you of the NEED for sufficient design resources.

• Speed and Iteration

• Designers vs “Conversion Designers”

• Great Design Starts with a Great Brief

• Empower with Data

• The 5-Question Landing Page Framework

Whether you hire an agency, build a hybrid with internal/external resources, or hire all these roles internally, growing a nonprofit brand without a web/UX/UI design process is like having a Formula 1 car with no one to change the tyres or fill your gas tank during the race.

Great Design Starts with a Great Brief

Here’s an all-too-common scenario: an Org engages a freelance designer or agency, throws them a one-liner like “We need an on-brand landing page for our new program,” and then feels underwhelmed with the result. Garbage in, garbage out. A strong design process begins long before anyone opens Figma. It starts with the internal brief.

A good brief is not just a list of specs; it’s a transfer of inspiration and insight. Your team’s “secret sauce” lives inside your heads – the nuances of your Orgs brand voice, your donor psychology, what angle made that last campaign spike, the story that always gets folks excited. All that context needs to be distilled into the brief.

If your designer is spending half their day just chasing down context or clarifying vague briefs, the problem is your process.

You need better inputs. The brief should clearly state the goal, identify the target audience, describe the Match or program, outline the key messages to convey, and specify the desired action. If your brief could be swapped with any other brand’s and still make sense, it’s not specific enough. I like to include internal insights like:

• Positioning

• Donor insights

• Proven hooks

• Tone of voice/messaging parameters

A brief doesn’t need to be a novel, it needs to be clear.

If you tell a team “Make it cool,” that’s so vague it’s basically a Rorschach test – everyone will interpret “cool” differently. But if you say “We want to help busy parents feel more confident about their morning routine”, suddenly every creative decision falls into place. The designer knows the vibe. The copywriter knows to reassure and solve pain points.

A good brief narrows the problem and sparks the right solutions. If you’re working with external agencies or freelancers, this is even more important. They can’t read your mind. They don’t sit in your all-hands meetings and absorb your vision every day. You have to hand them the insight on a silver platter.

What’s your Orgs reason to exist? What’s the angle you keep nudging on internally? Tell them! A little extra effort upfront to write a thorough brief can save weeks of back-and-forth later. If your best designer is spending time clarifying vague briefs, that’s an operational failure, not a talent issue.

The Digital Shelf Is Won by Speed and Iteration

If we were in the business of traditional retail we’d be fighting for limited physical shelf space. Online, the “shelf” is infinite, and fiercely competitive.

Your mission and its respective programs aren’t sitting pretty in a store; it’s one of dozens of tabs on a donor’s browser. The Orgs that win are the ones that can test and iterate creative rapidly.

Why? Because each test = new learnings, and faster learnings = an edge in a market where donor attention is gold. There’s no store aisle here – your website is your storefront, and you can redesign that “storefront” as often as you want.

The faster you experiment, the faster you discover what resonates with donors (and what flops). The fastest way to validate a marketing hypothesis is to test it, but when creation takes weeks, testing becomes a luxury. We can’t afford that. Speed is the strategy.

This is about building a process that shrinks the cycle time from idea to execution. In a fast-moving digital fundraising landscape, being responsive in real-time can make or break your monthly CPA or pacing. If the need arises on Tuesday to create a Veteran’s Day bundle, I want a live landing page by Wednesday, not next Friday. If an A/B test on a mission page shows variant B with a program comparison chart module converts 20% better, I want to roll that out across the site ASAP. Agility wins on the digital shelf and comes from a process that enables rapid testing and iteration.

A faster design process doesn’t mean more chaos; it means more control. With defined templates, reusable components, and a shared design system, your donor experience becomes both faster and more consistent.

Designers vs “Conversion Designers”

One huge bottleneck I’ve experienced first-hand: most Orgs hire “designers” but not “conversion designers.” What’s the difference?

A designer might make things look beautiful. A conversion-focused designer makes them sell. This isn’t a knock on designers at all, it’s a call to empower them (through data) with a conversion mindset.

Outside the growth world, people think a designer is a designer. Conversion designers blend visual design, UX, and CRO (conversion rate optimization) skills. They’re trained to ask: “Does this layout direct the donor’s eye to the right message and call-to-action? Does the page address the donor’s psychological triggers and concerns?” These folks live at the intersection of art and science, making pages aesthetic and persuasive.

Many Orgs inadvertently create a bottleneck by expecting a single graphic designer also to be a master of UX, analytics, and persuasive copy. It’s like expecting your general practitioner to also be a cardiologist and a neurosurgeon.

The solve? You need that conversion specialization. If you don’t have it in-house, consider training your team or bringing on a consultant who thinks in terms of hypotheses, user research, and A/B testing. Once a page is live, it’s an ongoing optimization process: learning from donor feedback, coming up with new hypotheses, and testing.

The Orgs that treat design as part of growth (not a siloed “creative” project) are leaping ahead.

And if you lead a design team, here’s a pro-tip I’ve learned from experience: good design isn’t a solo act. Pair your designers with your marketers, web analysts, and copywriters. Form little conversion squads. When a designer can riff with a marketer on “What if we move the form higher because our scroll map shows 80% of visitors never see our CTA to subscribe?” that’s the magic combo of aesthetics + analytics in action.

Share the Secret Sauce: Empower Creators with Data

I worked with a large Org this year that was struggling with its landing page results. They had great designers and even copywriters involved. The pages looked beautiful and on-brand, but performance was meh. When I dug in I found the creative team was flying blind. The marketers were running Facebook ads to these pages and hoarding all the data on the backend, while the designers got just superficial feedback like “It’s not working, can we try a different hero image?”

This is way more common than you’d think. Creators, the designers, copywriters, video editors, and maybe even developers, should have direct access to performance insights to build intuition. If you have the time, I recommend walking them through it, too.

If your designers and writers can’t rattle off your last landing page’s conversion rate, or haven’t seen a heatmap of how users scroll that page – that’s a missed opportunity. How can we expect them to iterate intelligently if we don’t close the feedback loop?

One of my wins at UNICEF was ensuring we had our creative folks swim in the same data as our digital marketing folks. We’d literally show designers the heatmap recordings or user-session recordings from a page they designed, so they can see “oh wow, nobody is scrolling past the first section, maybe our intro isn’t compelling enough” or “people are rage-clicking this non-clickable element; it looks like a button”.

When creators see real user behavior, it’s like a lightbulb moment every time. They start designing with those learnings in mind, which means each version gets better. It shortens the feedback loop dramatically. Your internal data is part of your secret sauce. Share it (and ideally with your own insights layered on top). That means giving creators access to:

• Analytics/dashboards (how is that page converting, where’s the drop-off in the donor funnel?)

• A/B test results (what variations have you tried and what were the outcomes?)

• Donor feedback (donor support tickets or survey responses)

• Session recordings and heatmaps (where do they scroll, where do they pause, where do they bounce?)

One of the biggest wins we had was when a copywriter on our team started sitting in on bi-weekly performance review calls.

She’d hear things like “Version X of the landing page beat Version Y with a +22% digital revenue lift” and, more importantly, why we thought that happened. Her copy drafts started pre-empting the issues we usually caught later, because she had developed a nose for what works by absorbing the data. This is what I mean by building intuition. When creators internalize the metrics, they start making micro-decisions that move the needle, without always being explicitly told.

Data informs creativity; it doesn’t replace it. Your team’s gut feelings and bold ideas still lead the way, but now you’re validating and refining them with evidence.

Test, Learn, Repeat… or leave performance on the table

If you’re not testing new landing pages or page variations on a monthly or quarterly basis, you’re almost certainly leaving money (or at least performance upside) on the table. “Set it and forget it” is not a strategy on the digital shelf. Yet I see so many Orgs launch a single landing page and then just drive all traffic there for months.

One practical tip: duplicate and modify. If you have a landing page that’s performing decently, use it as a base to test a new angle rather than starting blank. Duplicate landing pages and test new angles constantly.

Testing isn’t only about big, dramatic redesigns. Some of my best lifts have come from seemingly minor changes e.g. adding the extra line “Your gift makes an impact today - not someday.” It mirrors the shipping speed + trust guarantee vibes that ecommerce uses with their “Free 2-day shipping + hassle-free returns” messaging.

The 5-Question Landing Page Framework

One framework I swear by is making sure any landing page answers 5 key questions that every donor subconsciously asks. If you’ve been around my content, you’ve probably heard me harp on these.

Different people phrase them differently, but here’s my take:

1. What is the mission? Don’t assume the visitor magically knows. Tell them in clear, simple terms. A confused visitor never converts.

2. Why do you exist? What are you solving for? Answer, “Why does this Org deserve to exist?” at every touchpoint.

3. How will it make me feel being part of something meaningful? Arguably the most important. This is where a nonprofit’s “benefit” becomes emotional, not transactional. Donors may not get something in return but they feel something. A sense of agency, impact, connection, or relief that their action matters.

   Your page should answer the donor’s subconscious question:

   “If I give, what change will I create and how will that make me feel?”

   Spell it out:

   • “Your gift provides 3 days of clean water to a family in need.”

   • “You’ll help one child get lifesaving treatment this week.”

   • “You’ll join thousands of supporters rebuilding homes for veterans.”

   • “You’ll stand with survivors and show them they’re not alone.”

   Those are benefits framed as impact: clear, immediate, and emotional. The key is to connect the donor’s action to a tangible outcome, and that outcome to a personal emotional reward. Because at every second, the visitor is subconsciously asking:

   “Will this act make me feel like a difference-maker?”

   If your page doesn’t quickly answer that - through visuals, copy, or stories - they’re gone.

4. How fast does my donation get distributed? This is the logistics/immediacy question, and it matters more than Orgs realize. In a world trained by Amazon Prime, people do wonder: “If I hit buy, when will this arrive?” Address it upfront: “we put your generous donation to work where the need is greatest effective immediately, and we will keep you up to date on our programs every… week/month/second Tuesday.”

5. Why should I trust this brand? Last but definitely not least, build trust. New visitors are naturally skeptical. So your page must answer, “How do I know you’re legit and confirm that where you say my money goes it does?” This is where social proof and credibility markers come in. Include things like:

• Donor reviews / testimonials

• Press logos / influencer endorsements

• Trust badges (Charity Navigator stars, secure checkout icon, etc.).

• Awards

• Transparent details

Trust elements should be woven through the page: a review snippet near the top, a dedicated section with testimonials or logos, etc.

Final Thoughts: Design Process as a Competitive Moat

I’ll close with this: in fundraising, your ability to test and iterate quickly on design and creative is one of the few sustainable advantages you have.

When you foster a culture that’s always learning from the donor, always pushing out new experiments, and rapidly doubling down on what works, you create a virtuous cycle.

Each week you’re a little smarter and a little better than last week. Do that for 52 weeks and you’re playing a different ballgame than a peer Org who refreshes their site once a quarter.

In an environment with no physical shelves and essentially infinite competition for donor attention, the brand that learns fastest wins. The machine that turns ideas into learnings is your design and creative process. So invest in it. Audit it. Fix the leaks in it. Hire not just great designers, but enable them to be great conversion designers. Hand them great briefs infused with the donor insights only you have. Feed them the data to sharpen their intuition. And give them a workflow that lets them go from idea to live test in days, not weeks. Do this, and you’ll not only see better metrics, you’ll feel a change in your team and drive more fundraising dollars as a result.

There’s an excitement when the creative folks and growth folks are in lockstep, pumping out winners. It’s that feeling of momentum!

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 ensures Orgs raise more money.

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Jobs & Opps 🛠️

International Planned Parenthood Federation: Global Head of Individual Philanthropy ($160,000 - $170,000)

National MS Society: Director, Email ($95,000 - $110,000)

Educators for Excellence: Executive Director ($213,000 - $249,000)

IRC: Director, Strategic Initiatives & Delivery ($70,000 - $145,000)

The Rockefeller Foundation: Manager, Innovation ($157,000 - $181,000)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Deputy Chief Officer for Patrons ($125,000 - $150,000)

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation: Director, Foundation Relations (Institutional Giving) ($140,000 - $155,000)

Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Bay Area: Vice President, Development & Advancement

Teach for America: Managing Director, Development

Fundraise Up: Chief of Staff, Marketing/Director of MarOps

176. SPN: Giving Tuesday Checklist

Plus: learnings from Heineken’s brand campaign; plenty of jobs & opps

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. You’ve joined a community of nearly 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:

• Can you treat consistency as a creative advantage?

• Giving Tuesday checklist: email, web, sms, paid media, social, data and reporting, influencers.

• And, plenty of Jobs & Opps.

Let’s jump in!

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Reliability isn’t just about uptime, it’s about trust. And when generosity surges, Fundraise Up keeps it flowing.

Talk to Fundraise Up about how they deliver a donor experience built for the moments that matter most.

Game changer? You know it is.

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Brand Campaign / Loneliness

Watch Heineken’s revival of urban spaces campaign with, LePub Singapore and LePub Milan

Heineken’s Rooftop Revival campaign reframes urban loneliness as an opportunity to reclaim the city rather than escape it.

Regular readers of SPN will know I’ve a lot of respect for how Heineken turn up (despite not being a fan of their beer). This month they transformed Seoul’s unused green rooftops into open-air spaces for shared meals, performances, and workshops.

→ In other words they turned isolation into sociability that the brand could authentically own.

They grounded the campaign in research that showed 57% of 10,500 of Seoul’s residents reported feeling lonely, with nearly half of Gen Z and millennials spending a week without social interaction. Seoul was chosen for what they termed its “proximity paradox”: a dense city where people live close but feel disconnected, and for its abundance of flat, underused rooftops.

The aerial photographer Tom Hegen took overhead imagery, which the campaign published across Seoul’s digital billboards to reinforce messaging.

Each location was pinpointed via Maxar satellite imagery and marked with Heineken’s trademark red star → a handy beacon for connection if there ever was one.

What’s clever is how the brand keeps it constant while flexing the context around it. In Seoul, it marked rooftops; earlier this year, it lit up Trust Bars (self-serve pubs for 4 a.m. Champions League matches, see SPN #161). In both, the red star served as a literal signal guiding people toward social connection.

A lot of Heineken’s recent campaigns have prioritized in-person interactions. I liked this comment from their cmo:

“We believe in balance. Online connections matter and help spark conversations. But we encourage people to remember the importance of connecting in real life, embracing the realities of modern life. This is part of a bigger vision of reclaiming space for human connection long after the events have ended. Wherever the place, we believe that small changes in how we use our cities can create significant opportunities for socialization and togetherness.”

My takeaway? Brands that endure don’t reinvent their messaging every year but they do lean into new media, technologies, and leverage cultural moments.

Heineken’s partnerships with musicians, chefs, and artists extended its social reach. Orgs can build similar relevance by working with creators and trusted community voices.

Heineken’s story and campaign - bringing people together - remains constant while the execution evolves.

As you plan your EOY campaign can you give it more legs? Can you treat consistency as a creative advantage → refresh formats, build on what’s worked, and evolve the message rather than start all over again in January?

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Reads From My Week 📚

China’s Phone Makers Are Chasing Xiaomi, Not Apple (Bloomberg)

Great content wins - The Élite Heat of “Blackbird Spyplane” (New Yorker)

Keep Calm and Collapse the Wavefunction - Google’s quantum computing (Saany Aojha)

Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica says Meta smart glasses boosting growth (Entrepreneur)

How YouTube ate TV (Fast Company)

What Top Ad Buyers and Creators Want From YouTube (Mike Shields)

The Gen AI Playbook for Organizations (Harvard Business Review)

Meta Andromeda: What It Means for Your Ad Strategy (Jon Loomer)

Digital-First Storytelling and Fandom-Driven Distribution at MIPCOM 2025 (Variety)

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Giving Tuesday Checklist

Giving Tuesday may have become a bit of a reflex for some Orgs - yes, you participate but do you truly prepare?

There are two things we can control: preparation and coordination. I built this checklist to help cover both, so my team can focus on what matters most → conversion and donor experience.

Email and SMS Strategy & Execution

Preparation decides everything with your email and SMS strategy. Make sure you have all your emails written, designed and ready to fire as soon as possible.

• Here are the main ones to have ready, per campaign:

  • Campaign announcement. Optional, but I’ve seen this do very well. It preps your donors to hold a spot in their wallet for you.

  • Campaign launched email and SMS blast. This goes to everyone to notify them of the campaign, what it is, how to donate, etc.

  • Mid-day campaign blasts to those who engage. You can decide if you want to send this to everyone, just openers or just clickers. And, whether you want to send an SMS as well (this can get costly). Be sure to exclude any donors and subscribers.

  • Campaign ending soon or 24 hour notice email. This can be the same as the above email, but just add a big sticker saying “24 hours left”.

  • Last call campaign email. Same as the above, but swap messaging for “Last call - 1 hour!” or something similar.

  • Technical difficulties email template. This is a plain-text email to have handy, just in case something goes wrong.

  • Shipping delays email template. Same as the above. If you’re shipping a swag of any kind this is a plain-text email to have handy.

  • Post Giving Tuesday “Thank You” email. Optional, but just a simple email thanking your donors for participating in a campaign and making it a success for everyone. Talk about how the campaign supported your programmatic efforts.

• Update dynamic banners in flows to include campaign messaging, wherever applicable.

• Update your new donor welcome series. Ensure you really educate donors who come in new to the file over Cyber Week.

  • Typically donors who come through Giving Tuesday have a lower LTV, so educating them early is important, especially before you begin sending donation asks to them at the end of December.

Campaigns/Promos

Have you locked in what campaigns you plan to run for the Holidays?

Rather than getting caught in the milieu of Black Friday sales, kick off your Cyber Week with Small Business Saturday and run through the Wednesday after Giving Tuesday.

It could offer you a nice corporate partnership play too - you’ve 6 weeks to get this locked in.

• Promo ideas - these should be easy to understand, not complex. They must pass the “Can my Grandma understand this?” test.

  • Site-wide Match. Automatically applied; clear language what “match” means in the context of the donation.

  • Donation with Purchase. Once someone donates over a certain threshold, or even without a threshold, they receive a gift in their order.

  • Bundle sale. Got product? For UNICEF Market I built bundles including best sellers and applied a discount higher than anything I’d run during the year.

  • Multiple Bundles. Very similar to the above, but you have a few bundles that you merchandise specifically. This is great when you have a hefty number of new donors to bring in who you can offer a $5 donation to at checkout.

Website Updates

• Site Banners

  • Homepage. Your homepage hero banner should reflect the EOY campaign and any Match messaging.

  • Announcement bar. Your site wide announcement bar should reiterate the campaign message and definitely the Match.

  • Make sure it doesn’t get too thick on mobile.

  • Email Capture Design. Mentioning any Match or promotion in the email pop-up yields a higher opt-in rate. Test it and see if you get the same result.

• Promotions

  • If you’re in PST start your campaign promotion 3 hours before it starts, to account for EST. For example, if your campaign starts on 9/30, you should enable it to go live at 9:00pm PST on 9/29 (midnight EST).

  • Make sure all campaigns are active. Double/triple check everything is live when it should be, and is spelled correctly.

  • When applicable, like with a site-wide Match, apply Matches automatically for the donor vs requiring a Match code.

  • Don’t forget to account for all time zones. (I’ve made this error in the past hence repeating it 3 times here!)

  • If you’re in EST, end all your campaigns 3 hours into the next day. For example, if your campaign ends on 9/30 at 11:59pm EST, you should keep it enabled until 2:59am on 10/1 (11:59pm PST).

• Code Freeze

  • Set a Pens Down Date.

    • On your website and with any apps in your tech stack, don’t push updates.

    • If you absolutely need to push an update, test it thoroughly in a staging environment and then go live with those changes.

    • Remind everyone that no last-minute creative tweak is worth breaking the donation flow.

• On-Site Pixels

  • Ensure your pixels are all properly firing.

  • Don’t forget to check that your heatmap is properly capturing web user data for you to analyze later.

  • Post Donation Survey. Be sure you have one active and updated with any Creators/Influencers/EOY Partners you want to try to understand performance from.

Paid Media and Ad Creative

• Ad creative for different campaigns

  • Some creative should be exclusive to any Match promotion. For example, loud, bold, chunky text highlighting the % or dollar Match with an image from paid media that you’ve proven converts.

  • Merge your best performing donor prospecting ads with campaign messaging.

  • Test including any Match promo code in your headline on Meta and Google (this could be a cool one to run an incrementality test with).

• Submit Your Ads ASAP

  • Especially given that we’re in an election year, you need to upload ads ASAP to ensure they get approved in time.

    • Don’t get stuck in “pending approval” or “disapproved”-land, you can make the necessary changes with time to spare now.

Data and Reporting

• Predefine success metrics (donations, conversion rate, AOV, cost per new donor).

• Build real-time dashboards in GA or your CRM so you’re not flying blind on the day.

• Tag all links with UTMs for campaign and channel attribution.

• Prepare a simple post-campaign report template now, otherwise you’ll never retroactively clean the data.

Organic Social Media

• Post the campaign across organic social media - stories, links in bio, pinned posts, highlights.

• Update any product or brand swag catalogues with any Holiday prices so they reflect “promo prices” inside Meta and TikTok shops.

• Preload your social calendar and have your designer queue templates for reactive posts (e.g. milestones hit, match met, last-hour push).

Affiliate/Creators/Influencers

• All EOY Partners, creators and influencers have URLs that auto-apply Match codes where applicable.

  • Their Match or campaign promo codes should be easy to remember if someone saw it on a billboard and had to remember it 6 hours later.

  • If possible, use branded links for each affiliate/creator/influencer, for example: unicef.org/ferrari versus unbranded links that are hard to remember.

• Confirm each influencer’s link actually tracks - do a live test donation before launch.

• Talking points are updated, understanding of the campaign/mission/promotion is clear, all questions are answered.

• Comment moderation is on lock from the creator pages or a plan on how you plan to respond to post comments.

• I’d also email your campaign and all its details to publishers who have an affiliate arm (BuzzFeed, Teen Vogue, Insider Picks, etc) too. You never know. A little bump in organic publicity is often more within reach than you think.

Cross-Team Coordination

• Lock your internal comms plan: who owns what on campaign day (email, social, data, tech).

• Create a single Slack/Teams channel dedicated to “Giving Tuesday Ops.”

• Schedule a 30-minute post-mortem the following week while data and insights are fresh.

• Share outcomes with partners, agencies, and execs. This is what gets you next year’s budget.

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 🛠️

Comic Relief US: Director, Corporate Partnerships ($140,000 - $150K,000)

National MS Society: Director, Website ($95,000 - $110,000)

eBay Foundation: Senior Manager, Partnerships ($162,000 - $216,300)

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

British Red Cross: Public Affairs Officer (£27,810 - £29,305)

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: Assistant Vice President, Philanthropy Brand Communications ($217,441)

Visa: Impact Programs – Europe Social Impact & Sustainability Director

GivingTuesday: Partnerships & Community Manager ($70,000 - $80,000)

Gates Foundation: Deputy Director, Strategy, Planning & Management ($394,700)

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative: Director, Strategic Partnerships ($193,000 - $265,100)

The Rockefeller Foundation: Vice President, Civic Innovation ($248,200 - $284,500)