153. SPN: Donor Attention -> short-form content 👀

Plus, YouTube’s Nonprofit Program; Brand anarchy on TikTok; and, plenty of Jobs

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers.

You’ve joined a community of just over 3k marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Org’s. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

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In this week’s SPN:

• Is your donor engagement strategy fit for purpose?

• The most interesting thing in brand marketing right now

• Deep Dive: YouTube

  • shout out to YouTube’s Nonprofit Program

• and, plenty of Jobs & Opps that took my fancy this week

Let’s jump in!

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Fundraisers, now even more powerful.

Fundraise Up just rolled out new features to make Fundraisers - supporter-created fundraising pages - even more effective.

Your supporters can now:
→ Tell better stories with longer descriptions (up to 280 characters)
→ Upload larger, customized images
→ Drive more revenue for your Org

I love what Brienanne Repp from Bringing Hope Home shared: “Fundraisers were almost so easy to use that I felt like I was missing something.”

And now? It’s even easier!

👉 Explore the Fundraise Up platform.

Game-changer? You know it is.

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UK Viewing Numbers

NewTV and Donor Engagement

Recent Ofcom data shows the profound difference in watching TV by age group.

It’s all TV - just a lot is newTV. But the average covers up the crisis facing established broadcasters - watching as their viewers and therefore donors choose to watch in different ways.

The BBC business correspondent wrote a good piece on the challenges facing the TV industry this week “How can traditional British TV survive the US streaming giants?”

Over in Hollywood things aren’t going that well either. Research shows that people are watching and paying for less services than with one line. Feels like a classic situation of if you’re not daily you’re disposable.

According to TiVo’s Q4 2024 Video Trends Report, average service usage in the U.S. dropped from over 11 to 9.9 streaming sources per household. Monthly spend is down nearly $20 year-over-year, and more viewers say they have “just the right amount” of services.

In short? The era of “collect them all” is officially over. But here’s where it gets juicy - people aren’t cutting back because streaming is bad. They’re cutting back because they’re saying they’ve had enough.

In response it seems like there’s a lot of housekeeping going on.

So how else to attract new donors - without paying (top) dollar for headliner content?

Bloomberg’s article As Hollywood Shrinks, Studios Look to YouTube for Help prompted today’s deeper dive into YouTube below. Streaming services, talent agencies and studios seem to be throwing money at social media influencers (and their managers). And after the success of Mr Beast and others… it seems like every Org is trying to figure out a way to raise more money from YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

So here are some thought-starters before diving deeper into YT:

The age of NewTV requires a rethink of where (and how) we reach donors

• Insight: Traditional TV continues to lose relevance.

• Implication: If you’re still crossing your fingers for remnant space in linear TV PSAs or you have an agency continuing to push for traditional media buys, you are missing your next-gen donors entirely.

• SPN Tip: Shift budgets toward creator-led, on-demand, and short-form video platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels. Have a think about native content collabs over traditional ad spots.

Donors Want Daily Value

• Insight: Just like households are canceling streaming services that don’t deliver daily value, donors are more selective about where they give - especially in a crowded marketplace where there’s more than a handful of Org’s delivering on the same mission.

• Implication: Your content needs to be providing ongoing relevancy and value through storytelling about impact and efficiency. A single, one-off annual appeal won’t cut it. Always-on and evergreen are key.

• SPN Tip: Treat donor attention like a subscription: you have to keep earning it. Can you build daily touch points into your content calendar - even if light? Tap Instagram stories, TikTok updates, or behind-the-scenes YouTube Shorts.

Bold content plays win attention

• Insight: Hollywood giants are embracing influencer content and YouTube-native creators because they deliver reach and relatability.

• Implication: Your content doesn’t have to be expensive - it needs to be authentic, consistent, and channel-native.

• SPN Tip Empower your program staff, impact stories, and community voices to become on-platform creators. Experiment with lo-fi storytelling that matches the norms of each platform, rather than repurposing glossy campaign videos.

The media landscape is fragmenting and we need a re-think ahead of our big spending Q4. Attention is consolidating around platform-native, personality-led, short-form content - especially among the next generation of donors.

Is your donor engagement strategy built for a world where YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are the new broadcast networks?

It’s always time to start building!

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Originality Still Matters

Talking of newTV, KFC Portugal’s TikTok is pure visual anarchy - and it might be the most interesting thing in brand marketing right now.

@kfc_ptDeliciouuuus 🤤

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External to an industry wringing its hands over AI’s impact on creativity, check out KFC Portugal throwing the rulebook (and maybe the Colonel himself) out the window.

Their TikTok presence feels like a Gen AI-powered fever dream - Colonel Sanders in drag, cats morphing into chicken wings, deserted diners rendered in noir-style surrealism. It’s unhinged. It’s hilarious. It’s art?

They’re not shy with the tools either. Leaning into AI to remix internet archaeology with post-modern absurdity. Some posts are tagged, some not. The platforms ask for disclosure (sort of), but KFC Portugal just runs with it.

The result? It’s attracted attention on Reddit and clearly resonates with TikTok users. KFC Portugal have 1M followers and 18M likes - outperforming bigger markets - the US have 1.1M followers and 3M likes and the UK has 1.3M followers and 2M likes. These are also much more orthodox marketing markets, with a focus on product and offers.

This is also more than brand content. It’s an experimental cartoon for the chronically online. It’s chaotic, meme-soaked, maybe even slightly nightmarish. And yet, it clearly works. Because in a sea of polished sameness, this mess actually captures attention. They clearly know their audience.

If you look at KFC Portugal’s Instagram, you’ll also find pretty weird content, especially compared to KFC accounts from other countries. It begs the question of who came up with this strategy?!

Was it the CMO of KFC Portugal? Or did their TikTok strategy slip through the cracks and the responsibility fell to a young intern? This might be the bold moves of a visionary, risk-taking marketing exec or an example of what happens when the inmates run the asylum!

Zooming out, this is just a lot of fun. As opposed to Org’s who might take themselves too seriously, KFC Portugal is treating TikTok as a fantastically wild creative outlet you don’t see elsewhere.

Either way, it’s a signal. And it’s inspiring. In a landscape dominated by Org templated TikToks and AI anxiety, this was the reminder I needed this week: originality still matters. Especially when it’s something new, different and exciting.

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Jobs & Opps 🛠️

Wikimedia Foundation: Senior Product Manager, Fundraising CRM (US$104,691 - US$161,585)

Anti-Defamation League: VP, Marketing

Disney: Director, Content & Inclusion (Disney Branded Television) ($151,000 - $202,500)

Project HOPE: Vice President, Corporate & Foundation Partnerships, Development and Communications (starting at $176,000)

Colorectal Cancer Alliance: VP, Mission Impact & Partnerships ($160,000 - $180,000)

Great Ormond Street Hospital: Deputy Director Fundraising Planning & Performance (£86,800)

→Plenty more jobs on SPN’s sister site: www.pledgr.com

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YouTube Remains an Untapped Goldmine

What is the first platform that comes to mind when you think of “largest platforms for digital marketing?”

• Meta is high up the list.

• Google Ads – both Search and Performance Max.

• Maybe TikTok.

• But how high – or how low on your list is YouTube?

YouTube isn’t just the largest video streaming platform globally - it’s larger than Netflix. It’s essentially multiple platforms bundled into one:

• a Netflix competitor for long-form entertainment video consumption

• a MasterClass competitor for educational videos

• Second-largest search mechanism, behind only Google’s own…Google

• a TikTok and Reels rival with Shorts

• a podcast powerhouse, rivaling Spotify and Apple Podcasts

YouTube ads typically cost more than those on Meta or TikTok. Yet, a higher price doesn't necessarily mean lower return. Engagement on YouTube is also far greater:

• Users spend an average of 40 minutes per session on YouTube, compared to Facebook’s 3 minutes 42 seconds and TikTok’s 10 minutes 38 seconds.

• YouTube ads have an 84% higher attention rate compared to Facebook ads.

The metric I always revert to in my head is “Cost per Engagement,” where Engagement is defined not by the platform itself (Meta describes it as a user taking any action with a post! Hovering over it, liking, commenting – anything), but as a real, thoughtful “view”, “listen” or “interaction”. And through that lens, YouTube has very few competitors.

But over the past few years, the bar for YouTube content has soared. Viewers got used to and now expect a near-cinematic quality of videos.

So how can Orgs, keeping a tight budget, still leverage YouTube as a tool for awareness and fundraising?

Here are 7 actionable tactics:

YouTube as a Search Engine for Prospects: Your Org’s prospects are already searching on YouTube for the same things they’re using Google for. “Best deforestation charity to donate to”, “donate to deforestation”, “deforestation or lack of clean water - what has more negative impact on our future?” – if these search queries show up on Google Trends, they show up on YouTube.

I pulled some search queries on Google Trends - a general rule seems to be that for every nine searches on Google, there’s one on YouTube. Treat your YouTube channel’s organic videos as your SEO articles - create short, simple, educational videos about your cause that answer common search queries.

Just have your staff members talking to the camera for a minute, one video for each of your top 100 search queries, and that will be more than enough. Title these videos like “What is the Impact of Deforestation?” or “Why is Clean Water Important?” and leverage “YouTube SEO” → start experimenting with titles, tags, and description texts the same way you would with your paid search placements.

Impact Reporting for Current Donors: Take your most recent Impact report, break it into sections, and ask your Board members, Major Donors team, Management team, and any other staff members who are used to speaking with donors and the camera to review it over a short video.

Opt for straightforward production – a tripod in your office, with the logo in the background, is more than enough to start. You can even publish these videos as “hidden” on the channel and set a TrueView campaign targeting all your current Monthly donors.

YouTube as a Social Media Network: Micro-influencers are the name of the game on TikTok and Instagram for every Org with limited funds.

YouTube is no different. Identify 100-200 smaller YouTube influencers, with 10,000 to 50,000 subscribers, passionate about your cause – those who commented on topics your Org is working on. Reach out directly, ask them to record a one-minute endorsement video, and send them a small token of appreciation via direct mail as a thank you.

• SPN Tip: Start by looking up channels associated with your current Donor File and reduce the threshold to 5,000 subscribers for any of your current donors.

Behind-the-Scenes Content: Cut raw, unedited b-roll from program sites with your staff members serving the programs you’re fundraising for. Pick a page from the Reel playbook – add text captions and use an automated text-to-voice generator to create the audio track.

Use AI for Content Production: Tools like Descript or Runway, or even ChatGPT’s Sora, are becoming increasingly powerful every day. They aren’t yet at a nearly-cinematic quality level – but that’s a good thing. Use these tools to create several video iterations, starting with a simple “overview of the Org,” and test them as Paid Ads on YouTube. Denote in the title and description that you’ve used AI tools to lower the cost of production and pass more money directly to your programs.

Ask for Freebies: The creative agency industry has numerous awards. Cannes Lions is likely too large to reach out to, but try one of the following: The One Show, Effie, Shorty, Webby, or Drum. Most of these have “creative competitions” as part of the program, where creative agency talent work pro bono or at a very low fee on a specific task. Organizers love it when that task is a social good cause!

Leverage the YouTube Ad Grant: Most Orgs are familiar with the Google Ad Grant, offering up to $10,000 per month in compensated media spend. Google also offers the “YouTube for Nonprofits” program. While it doesn’t allow you to run paid ads for free, it does allow you to put a “donate” button into videos served organically or via paid ads through so-called “YouTube Giving” features. No-brainer, if you ask me! Read more here.

Once your Org launches its YouTube channel, keep an eye on the dashboard in the account, especially:

• Video Completion Rate - assess content relevance and engagement level. For short videos, the target should be 75% or above. Analyze the videos above this threshold and try to replicate their features throughout.

• Audience Retention Graphs by video - identify exactly where viewers drop off. What’s causing it? And are they seeing your logo before the point of drop off? If not, move it forward.

YouTube is more than another platform that your Org might or might not be on. It’s already the largest streaming and education platform in the world, and will soon be the largest podcasting platform.

If your Org is experimenting with Digital, it needs to be experimenting with YouTube as well.

OK, 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 online giving.

Now onto the fun stuff!

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Weekly Reads 📚

The Big Shift 2025 (LG Ads)

Digital ads are absolutely f’ing awful. Our industry needs a MAGA movement (The Drum)

Sonos CEO says it didn't understand the real world (9to5)

He calls it a batch: What strategists need to know about location (The Media Leader)

Over Half a Trillion Dollars, 3.4 Million U.S. Jobs Linked to Meta’s AI-Driven Ads Technologies (Meta)

Five charts to end the TV debate (ThinkTV)

Empowering businesses for a future that is conversational, personal, and agentic | Microsoft Advertising and closing down their DSP - from next February (Microsoft)

AI Has Upended the Search Game. Marketers Are Scrambling to Catch Up (WSJ)

The BookKeeper – Exploring Wrexham’s finances and how Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney run a club like no other (The Athletic)

152. SPN: Landing Pages Deep Dive -> CVR 🚀

Plus, Meta goes on the offense and plenty of Jobs & Opps that took my fancy this week

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers.

You’ve joined a community of nearly 3k marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Org’s. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

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🚀 Launching June 3: A smarter way for donors to manage their giving.

43% of donors increase their gift when prompted.

That insight inspired Fundraise Up to reimagine the Donor Portal - giving supporters more control and delivering better results for your Org.

✅ Self-service tools for real-time updates
✅ Smart nudges that drive upgrades
✅ A frictionless, intuitive experience

👉 Best part? It’s included with Fundraise Up. No dev work. No added cost.

Game-changer? It’s gonna be!

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If you’re a Mom in the U.S. happy Mother’s Day to you! You have the hardest job and most of the tough times are never attributable appreciation. Your juggling talents are out of this world and I don’t know how you do it! Thank you 🙏

In this week’s SPN:

• Walled Gardens

• Meta tech could replace your need for an agency entirely

• Deep Dive: Landing Pages (2X your CVR)

• A magical Stripe Sessions convo with Sir Jony Ive

• and, plenty of Jobs & Opps that took my fancy this week

Let’s jump in!

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Walled Gardens

Meta, phwoar! The size of the grey bubble, bottom right hand corner, ^ ^ represents $1B gross ad spend. Look at the size of Meta’s Walled Garden. Juggernaut.

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META

Whilst Google are reeling, Meta is on the front foot. A Zuck interview with Stratechery, which he repeated at Stripe Sessions last week (see below), got lots of attention - mainly on this bit!!

MZ: …we’re going to get to a point where you’re a (nonprofit), you come to us, you tell us what your objective is, you connect to your bank account, you don’t need any creative, you don’t need any targeting demographic, you don’t need any measurement, except to be able to read the results that we spit out. I think that’s going to be huge, I think it is a redefinition of the category of advertising.

Which got interpreted as bad news for Agencies.

I was in the room and he essentially said that their goal is to eliminate digital agencies - their planning/placement function and eventually their creative function. He wants Org’s to come to FB directly.

The Verge were more forthright - “Mark Zuckerberg just declared war on the entire advertising industry.”

That said it’s not that different to the way Meta have talked for a while and it’s how they operate. Of course Meta turned their PR machine on real fast following Zuck pouring out his intentions:

The role of creativity is more important than ever… At Meta, we like to say that creative is the new targeting... So many marketers I hear from spend much of their day on non-core tasks that take away from creativity… We believe AI will enable agencies and advertisers to focus precious time and resources on the creativity that matters…

It’s super interesting that Zuck is running in this direction. My guess is it will happen, but it won’t take the majority of agency work market share (AI will take a larger share) and it’ll serve mostly small Org’s who don’t have digital SME’s.

Google has tried to do this many times since 2010 and it’s never worked. GAFA et al have a conflict of interest because they profit off Org’s ad spend, so third-party/in-house experts have always done a better job (for starters they care about improving ROI more, even if it’s good).

Also, advertising is a fluctuating bid marketplace based on competition levels. It’s not a few replaceable tasks. If one “mega agency” manages everyone’s ads, how do you stand out and be different to win the ad auction?

And how do Meta decide who gets the donor if two identical competitors bid on it, and have the same ads? And if one Org’s ads are more effective, is it fair?

I for one would want more control than this.

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Jobs & Opps 🛠️

Care for the Homeless: Director of Marketing and Communications ($120,000 - $130,000)

Breast Cancer Now: Senior Digital Community Officer (£33,500 - £40,304)

Central Park Conservancy: Senior Vice President for Communications & Marketing ($250,000 - $275,000)

Feeding America: Director, Omnichannel Marketing ($125,000 - $130,000)

Prostate Cancer UK: Senior Virtual Products Executive (Fundraising) £34,300 - £37,300

Great Ormond Street: Deputy Director of Fundraising Planning & Performance (£86,800)

Koko: Head, Partnerships ($180,000 - $220,000)

Mozilla Foundation: Manager, Grassroots Fundraising ($102,200 - $143,615)

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2X Your CVR: Landing Pages Deep Dive

I’ve put out a lot of content about landing pages over the last few years, and it’s a hill I’ll die on (that you should be using them); they’ve never let me down. Has every page been a home-run? No. But plot all the landing pages on a graph, and they’ve generated tens of millions of incremental fundraising revenue.

For today’s longer post, I want to take all that secret sauce and share it with you. My hope is that you spend 2 hours this week putting together a landing page with all the nuggets in this email, and it, at a minimum, doubles your conversion to donate rate.

For everyone who talks about “Growth marketing,” they’re almost always just speaking about paid media. “Growth” sits at the intersection of efficiency and full-funnel marketing. It’s not just about Meta ad efficiencies, it’s also about the post-click site experience (inclusive of landing pages), the pop-up, what happens on organic social, the email list, etc.

Out of that, one of the biggest levers that increase efficiency is what happens after the ad. Org’s invest hundreds of thousands, even millions, into good ad creative and ad campaigns, and then their website either looks like it was made from a template, it hasn’t been updated since 1990, or that they have no clue how to speak to new donors.

The landing page is like a kiosk at a mall, versus the website is like a full store. With a kiosk, you need to be much more efficient with your fundraising pitch, you have to have something for them to “sample”, and you need to have a reason for them to donate before they leave.

Here’s what I’ve explored below:

• 2 donor funnels

• Types of landing pages to build

• Different sections to include on a landing page

2 Donor Funnels

At any time when you’re fundraising or marketing something, there are 2 funnels you could be playing in. If you’re not aware of which one your donor is coming to you through, it can be confusing, and you can mis-message your prospective donors. Here are the two funnels:

Funnel One: You’re educating someone on why there is even the need for the mission and program you’re advocating for. You’re focused on getting someone to understand what the problem is you’re Org is solving for.

Funnel Two: You’re trying to win a donor who’s educated and interested in the category you’re operating, but needs to be sold on why YOU are the best Org to carry out the program. With this funnel, your messaging should be completely different, and focused on what makes your programs do better or more innovatively than others.

Take inspo from Halo Top ice cream who seems to be in every freezer I walk past at the moment and are now chasing me around the internet! They don’t care to educate people on why they should be eating ice cream, their entire focus is on how their ice cream is significantly better than traditional ice cream with ~200 calories per pint.

A lot of times, your website will be focused on the first funnel (education of what you do) and landing pages will be focused on the second funnel (why you should be the Org solving the problem). Once you get clear on which funnel you need to build for, you can decide what type of page is best fit for you, and what content modules should be on the page.

This same thinking of two funnels applies to your ad creative too. If you’re seeing low CTR on your ads, you may be playing in the wrong funnel with your messaging and angles.

Types of Landing Pages

• Listicles

• Collections-Style LP

• Social Proof

• SMS Collection or Pre-Campaign Launch

• Article/Blog-style LP

(I think) these were pioneered by BuzzFeed, and always went viral because people wanted to find their own connection to the content in assets like, “21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity”. As soon as us marketers realized how much engagement and trust listicles bring, we began using them for our own good.

In the case of a landing page, a listicle should take the top 5 aha moments that people mention in your donor testimonials, and sort them from most loved to least (although, it’s top 5, so it’s all kinda very loved). Make a tally of “benefits” that donors mention, and whatever has the most tally’s is where you start - giving, giving with a match, giving monthly, program impact highlights, beneficiaries.

Listicles do much better in media channels where you’re still trying to earn someone’s trust - TikTok, native ads, upper-funnel Meta-type ads.

Collections-Style LP

A regular collections page? Pretty boring.

Do you sell swag?

Most Org collections pages lack so many obvious conversion hacks.

• Add a donate button

• Add reviews

• Explain the collection at the top, etc.

Social Proof

Whether you’re selling to an older or younger audience, sometimes it’s nothing you say that will convert someone to donate, but it’s everything that everyone else says.

Meaning - social proof takes a higher priority than what else is on the page.

This means embedding Instagram stories, TikTok clips, and other social posts to show the efficacy of the programs you’re fundraising for. I’m also totally a fan of taking screenshots of FB ad comments or text conversations and pasting them in. Frankly they also feel harder to fake, which has a higher trust with the person on the other side of the screen.

SMS Collection or Pre-Campaign Launch

When you want to build a list or get people excited about an upcoming seasonal campaign, build a landing page just to collect people’s emails, phone numbers, or other first-party data.

The beauty of using a page like this is you can also run ads with your conversion objective being the email/number submission, and understand what types of headlines, imagery, video, ad copy, and targeting have the highest probability of converting your donors when you launch. These insights can inform the site copy on your homepage, program pages, etc.

In a perfect world, these pages should sync directly into your email platform and CRM so you don’t have to download and upload lists (it's also not safe to keep playing with data like that).

Article/Blog-style LP

These are generally known as advertorials. You’re either hosting content on a publisher site where you have a story that you’re pushing, where the Org becomes the punchline, OR you’re hosting an article-format LP on your own domain.

In the advertorial LPs, you have the ability to tell a story to earn someones time, and then integrate your fundraising pitch into the content naturally. You might start by sharing the story of a mother who couldn’t afford cancer treatment and felt completely alone (which draws the reader in - the editorial), and then introduce how your Org stepped in to provide support, guidance, and financial help when it mattered most (the ad). That’s why it’s called an “Advertorial.”

Different LP Sections

• A Good Angle

• Stellar Copywriting

• Social Proof

• “Why Donate”

• and, Brand throughout

Over and over again, this is what you need to answer on a landing page:

1. What is this program

2. Why does it exist

3. Who does it benefit

4. Why is it the best choice

5. How soon can my gift make an impact

I also like to make sure that every section of the landing page is alternating with a push and pull section. A push section is where you're pushing out information/education/content for someone to learn about why they should consider donating to you. A pull section is where you're asking for a donation, you have a CTA, you’re looking for something from the site visitor.

Similarly, every ad that goes out should answer those 5 questions (that's how you keep the click-through rate high), and each ad coming into a landing page should match what's on the page itself. Most of your post-click drop-off can be lowered by simply making sure that whatever's in your ad, is also available on the page it's driving to.

A Good Angle ;)

The first ingredient for any good landing page is a hook or an angle. Exactly like ecommerce, you can sell a great product, but without an angle or a reason for someone to buy, you might not get someone over the finish line.

Your Org helps fund clean water access in rural communities. You could promote it as simply “a charity solving the water crisis,” or you can craft tailored hooks for different landing page tests based on donor segments:

• The fastest way to turn your birthday into clean water for 100 people

• The most meaningful wedding gift: donate in honor of your guests

• The best way to teach your kids about giving back

• The easiest way for your company to offset its water footprint

In 30 seconds, that’s 4 donor entry points with different motivations and values. Without a strong angle, you’re just asking for donations.

Stellar Copywriting

Good copywriting is often the difference between a donation page that converts at 2% and one that converts at 9%. One simple mental model: imagine your page’s copy going through a conveyor belt.

At the start of the belt is the core message. Next comes the specific donor segment you're speaking to. And finally, the emotional or practical benefit they receive by giving.

Program value → The donor you’re speaking to → The benefit they feel

Your LP should almost always emphasize the benefits and outcomes of your programs, not just the programs themselves.

Ask yourself… what is this person really giving to when they donate?

If you’re fundraising for clean water, they’re not just funding pipes and purification systems. You’re also:

• Giving a mother peace of mind that her child won’t get sick

• Letting a girl go to school instead of walking six miles for water

• Creating a ripple effect that strengthens entire communities

Social Proof

There are 3 types of social proof that should always be on a landing page:

1. Donor testimonials

   Your LP is going to tell people your Org is doing impactful, important work and that you’re the best positioned to solve the problem at hand. What’s more powerful than you saying it is obviously a donor or beneficiary saying it on your behalf.

   When you include testimonials, look for ones that clearly show how someone’s experience was changed because of your program.

   A meh testimonial might sounds like:
   “Great people doing great work!”

   A strong one sounds more like:
   “After setting up my monthly donation, I started receiving updates about the children my gift supports. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt connected to where my money is going. I’ve since increased my gift and even got my coworkers involved.”

   That kind of quote highlights:

   • A donor’s emotional connection

   • Increased commitment over time

   • The spread of impact through word of mouth

   • Real value delivered, not just promised

   The goal here is storytelling that builds trust, inspires giving, and improves conversion. Let others tell your story - ideally, in a way that reflects the transformation you’re promising.

2. “Established” sources

   I put this in quotes because “established” means different things to different people. Normally this is just press logos, but it depends on WHO you’re marketing to, again.
   
   If you’re marketing to an older demographic, you might use news sources like CNBC, Forbes, Town & Country, New York Times, etc. Places where older demographics get their news from and have built-in trust - the whole idea is to leverage the trust that someone already has with a source.
   
   If you’re marketing a campaign to younger audiences, replace the press logos with YouTube channels, influencers, comments screenshotted from social media, etc.
   
   Depending on who you’re talking to, make the sources of the content relevant to them.

3. Donor-generated content (UGC)

   I'm not talking about the UGC-for-hire people here. I’m talking about taking TikTok’s from the wild or screenshots of what people put on their IG stories and pasting it into a landing page itself.

   This can even include screenshots of content posted around the web, if you want to lean into “community” vibes (does well for conversion in my experience).

“Why Donate”

• Make the impact obvious
  Whether it’s “$25 provides 50 meals” or “$100 delivers clean water to a family for a year,” use concrete, visual language to reinforce value. If there’s a match, lay it out boldly: “Your gift is DOUBLED today only.”

• Show cost per impact, not just donation amount
  Some donors want to feel the impact per dollar: “$10/month = school supplies for a child all year.” The trick is knowing which ones.

• Reinforce key “benefits”
  This isn’t just a donation - it’s a way to change lives, join a movement, or leave a legacy - use bullet points.

• Add trust signals
  Just like eCommerce sites show “Ships in 2 days,” build trust by showing: “Instant tax receipt,” or “Monthly donor updates delivered in your whatsapp group,” or “Join 12,000 others who give each month.”

Brand Throughout

This is a critical component. Your Org story needs to be weaved throughout the LP. The tone of voice, the personality, all of it. Is it easy to do? No. And that alone is a good enough reason to invest more time and resources here to ensure you’ve got a clear narrative humming up, down and across your LP.

That narrative doesn’t need to be a classic “founder story” or a personal anecdote from the executive director. It just needs to reflect your why - why your Org exists, why the thing that you’re solving for matters, and why your programs are uniquely positioned to solve it.

You need to prove efficacy and sell efficacy. Your mission, programs, and impact have to be front and center. If you’re demonstrating meaningful outcomes and reinforcing a clear, consistent brand story, donors will give generously and repeatedly.

Lead with results.

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OK, 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 online giving.

Now onto the fun stuff!

---

Weekly Reads 📚

I didn’t read enough this week but being in the room and listening to this conversation was life-affirming.

151. SPN: The Swiss Army Knife of Fundraising Analytics

Plus, inspiring Battersea Dogs Home creative; connecting DX to purpose; plenty of Jobs & Opps

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers.

You’ve joined a community of nearly 3k marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Org’s. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

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In this week’s SPN:

• GA4: turning web analytics into a decision-making engine

• A new platform that lets users delegate their online (fundraising?) tasks to AI

• 5 dashboards to build and 4 metrics to toss

• Targeting AI chatbots as donors switch from Google search

• and, plenty of Jobs & Opps that took my fancy this week

Let’s jump in!

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When Digital Strategy Meets Revenue Growth

• 24% increase in recurring revenue.

• 99% donor retention during migration.

• $2.3M CAD in new income from mobile wallets.

These aren’t stretch goals - they’re actual results the Canadian Red Cross achieved after switching to Fundraise Up.

Fundraise Up’s donation platform gave CRC the modern tools they needed to grow recurring giving: frictionless checkout, upsell nudges, and a self-serve donor portal.

Digital transformation doesn’t have to be slow, risky, or manual.
It does, however, need the right tech!

👉 Explore the Fundraise Up platform.

Game-changer? You know it is.

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AI & Digital Experiences

The big thing in AI this week? Maybe the Meta announcement of their new AI app? You can watch Uncle Zuck intro it here in a reel. And the WSJ put out a little more background under the headline Meta Launches New Standalone AI App, Rivaling ChatGPT - which seems a little over blown. It’s really just Meta catching up.

Or is it this paper on Era of Experience? Written by a Google researcher the paper argues we’re entering the third era of AI - building on Alpha Go and ChatGPT with a way to sidestep the scarcity of training data by having AI learn from experience.

The impact of AI on fundraising is going to be profound and the big players continue to roll out tools - and hiring accordingly. Congrats to Nathan Chappell and Virtuous.

Visa shared that they partnered with AI giants to streamline online shopping. I’d argue donors have the same need today:

Visa is partnering with tech heavyweights, including Microsoft and OpenAI, to roll out a new platform that lets users delegate their online shopping tasks to AI agents.

New research from the FT this week was a good reminder that search is in flux - Brands targeting AI chatbots as people switch from Google search. Now, more than ever, harnessing the power of AI to craft digital experiences powerful enough to connect people to purpose will be the difference-maker. I wrote about how to prepare for an SGE-driven donor experience in SPN #95 - probably worth another read.

Research from consultancy Bain found that 80% of consumers now rely on AI-written results for at least 40% of their searches, reducing organic web traffic by up to 25%. Check your Org’s GA4 stats (more on that below). About 60% of searches now end without the users clicking through to another website.

However, Google’s parent company Alphabet just announced its core search and advertising business grew almost 10% to $50.7bn in the first quarter of the year. Billion!

And Perplexity CEO says its browser will now track everything users do online to sell ‘hyper personalized’ ads...

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From “Analytical” to “Aww!”

Battersea’s campaign was recognized for pushing creative boundaries and media integration to create a memorable experience.

“Look Ahead” is an outdoor competition that media agency Global host with Transport for London and Battersea Dogs & Cats Home scooped the Create Change category.

The competition brief challenged entrants to push the limits of digital OOH media - transform the medium into a strategic bottom-to-top story for outdoor spaces.

Congrats to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home - one of the UK’s oldest and best known animal rescue centers - and readers of SPN too! - who nailed their entry. WINNERS!

And a mighty clever idea → show and tell rescue animals’ journeys to their forever homes with millions of commuters as they make their own way home. Battersea set the campaign exclusively for evening display too, featuring the message “As you make your way home.” In the winning verdict blurb judges praised that journey home aspect, and highlighted its strong integration with the media platform - talk about a highly contextual idea!

On the tube/subway platform

The judging panel said that Battersea shared a narrative that resonated so deeply with them that it shifted the energy in the room from analytical to “awww”! One line I read was “If you walked into the station and saw it, you’d just immediately feel the impact.” Bravo! 👏

The campaign is also set to incorporate interactive elements i.e. visuals of adopted pets whose fur appears to blow in sync with tube arrivals and departures!! If I needed another excuse to return to London this summer then this is it!

I’m imagining this dogs fur blowing in sync with arrivals and departures

For two weeks Battersea’s winning concept will dominate the gateways, runways, and escalator ribbons at Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, and Farringdon Elizabeth line stations.

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Jobs & Opps 🛠️

Central Park Conservancy: Senior Vice President for Communications & Marketing ($250,000 - $275,000)

Mozilla Foundation: Manager, Grassroots Fundraising ($102,200 - $143,615)

UNICEF Canada: Senior Officer, Individual Giving (Retention) ($51,000 - $60,000)

HumanGood: SVP, Philanthropy ($200,000 - $265,000)

International Justice Mission: Global Director, MarComms

REI: Vice President, Integrated Marketing

Make-A-Wish Foundation of America: Manager, Peer to Peer Fundraising

United Nations Foundation: Director, Partnerships & Strategic Initiatives

National Grid: Head of Social Impact & Community Engagement Operations ($203,000 - $258,000)

charity: water: VP, Global Partnerships

Protect Democracy: Director, Partnerships ($182,000 - $257,000)

ADL: VP, Leadership & Volunteer Engagement ($200,000 - $225,000)

→Plenty more jobs on SPN’s sister site: www.pledgr.com

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Google Analytics 4: The Swiss Army Knife of Fundraising Analytics

There are only a handful of genuinely indispensable tools for digital fundraising teams.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) - even the free version - is undoubtedly one of them. Its functionality far exceeds simple web traffic volume measurement, punching way above its weight.

Correctly set up, GA4 can become your Org’s Donor Analytics Platform, Dashboarding Platform, Remarketing Audience “DMP”, Donor Journey and Lifecycle Analytics Tool, Marketing Analytics Tool and Website Analytics Tool all in one:

• Donor Analytics Platform, acting as a basic audience research tool across demographic and psychographic dimensions.

• Dashboarding Platform, centralizing several key dashboards for all team members to use daily.

• Remarketing Audience “DMP”, creating, administering, and distributing remarketing audiences across Google-owned advertising platforms. For small Orgs without multi-platform budget figures, Google stack (a walled garden with lots of moral and monopoly repercussions) offers an unmatched level of capabilities for no (explicit) cost.

• Donor Journey and Lifecycle Analytics Tool, tracking donors’ journey on the website and progression from prospects to one-time and recurring donors.

• Marketing Analytics Tool, evaluating channels, campaigns, and creative performance.

• Website Analytics Tool, diagnosing the website's conversion rate bottlenecks and technical issues.

3 Essential Metrics x 3 Dimensions to Watch:

Dimensions:

1. Session Source / Medium - the most accurate dimension for last-click donation attribution. Most Orgs still rely on last-click attribution in internal CRMs / revenue tracking systems but using the Source / Medium report in GA4 allows you to get as close as possible to that view in real time for faster decision making e.g. what ask follows what behavior, when?

2. First User Campaign - The opposite of last click, this dimension highlights the “first click” a user had to get onto your Org’s website. It’s immensely valuable for scaling donor prospecting campaigns.

3. Event Name - unlike “total events”, “individual events” are the absolute holy grail of data. Use it to slice and dice the conversion rate further by steps in the donor journey.

   1. SPN Tip: The most important events for every Org to track are the “engagement stages” before somebody becomes a donor. My list of 5 is:

      1. “About Us” page visit

      2. Any 4-page visit

      3. Donation form visit

      4. Monthly donation (separate from one-time)

      5. Any video view

Metrics:

4. Sessions – the most accurate, deterministic volume measure for each channel, campaign, device, location, etc. Use it instead of “Users” on every possible occasion.

5. Revenue per Session – a much better metric than “conversion rate” that helps you measure actual dollars brought in by every session instead of donations.

6. Donor Retention Rate (calculated as “returning users donating again”) is a much faster way to compare recurring vs. one-time donors than pulling data from the CRM. This is the only metric I use the “users” number for.

Caveat Emptor! Like any powerful tool, GA4 can quickly overwhelm your team with meaningless metrics and become a time suck instead. Here’s a shortcut through that noise ->

4 Metrics That Distract:

1. Bounce Rate - Bounce rate in GA4 is tricky. Classic bounce rate is a “number of sessions with no interactions” divided by “total number of sessions”. In GA4, it’s the inverse of “engaged sessions” – a made-up metric, defined by Google as “a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, involves at least one conversion event, or includes at least two page or screen views”. The devil is in the details – for most Orgs’ websites, bounce rate is inflated since every landing page visit from paid ads with no donation will most likely be a “bounce”. The time counter doesn’t work for a single-page session, no donation means no conversion, and there are no two pageviews on the landing page.

2. Users (especially Total Users) - GA4 user counts are modeled (blended between deterministic and probabilistic data). Precise user counts aren’t available and will change depending on the particular dimension chosen for the report. Sessions remained a deterministic metric. Key ratios such as conversion rate should be created as custom metrics, dividing “donations” by “sessions.” The Default Conversion Rate metrics are calculated using the modeled “users” metric instead of the deterministic “sessions” metric.

3. Average Engagement Time, sitewide - this metric seems insightful. Still, it’s flawed as it’s calculated off the wrong time counter, off the modeled “users” number instead of “sessions”, and can vary between report instances due to inaccurate modeling. Use it only with a “page” dimension.

4. Total “Events” - event tracking is an excellent feature, but most Orgs have too many events, counting scrolls past a certain point, clicks of a random button, or a 3-page session as an event. Looking at “events” as a metric – by session, user, or page – leads to wrong decisions based on inflated, meaningless metrics.

5 Dashboards I Build in GA4 to Drive Decisions:

1. Website “Health” Dashboard: A quick view of the website’s technical health to identify anomalies beyond 404 errors.

   1. Dimensions: Device Category, Landing Page

   2. Metrics: Sessions, Engagement Time by Landing Page, Load Time, Error Events

   3. Graphs (all on a 14-day rolling scale):

      1. Traffic volume line graph (Sessions over Time)

      2. Engagement time bar chart (Top Landing Pages by Avg Engagement Time)

      3. Load time table (Landing pages by Avg Load Speed)

      4. Error count (Event Type, count by URL)

2. Donor Journey Dashboard – view of the in-session donor behavior.

   1. Dimensions: Landing Page, Next Page Path, Event Name, Source / Medium

   2. Metrics: Sessions, Revenue per Session

   3. Graphs:

      1. Funnel visualization (Landing Page > Donation Start > Donation Complete)

      2. Heatmap (Session drop-off rate by page)

      3. Sankey diagram (Typical paths from entry to conversion)

      4. Bar chart (Sessions by Channel by Landing Page, Sessions by Channel by Campaign, Sessions by Channel by Audience)

3. Donor Lifecycle Dashboard – view of the cross-session donor behavior as they progress from first donation to lifetime value.

   1. Dimensions: Audience (New vs. Returning, Monthly vs. One-time), Campaign, Session Source

   2. Metrics: Returning User Revenue Per Session, Revenue per Returning Session

   3. Graphs:

      1. Retention cohort analysis (Monthly returning donors over time)

      2. Revenue breakdown pie chart (Monthly vs. One-time)

      3. Line graph (Conversion Rate by Donor Audience)

      4. Bar chart (New Users by Channel by Landing Page, Returning Users by Channel by Landing Page)

4. Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard – by-channel performance view, mostly matching the source of truth with real-time data availability.

   1. Dimensions: Session Source / Medium, First User Campaign

   2. Metrics: Sessions, Revenue per Session, CPA

   3. Graphs:

      1. Horizontal bar chart (Revenue per Session by Source / Medium)

      2. Line graph (CPA trends by Campaign)

      3. Table (Campaign by Sessions, Revenue per Session, CPA, Revenue)

5. Donor Insights Dashboard – identify high-level audience view

   1. Dimensions: Audience Name, Device Category, Landing Page

      1. SPN Tip: “Audience Name” is a custom dimension you create using filters. I usually start from a basic demographic breakdown (age, gender) + First User Campaign.

   2. Metrics: Revenue per Session

   3. Graphs:

      1. Table (Audience segments ranked by Revenue per Session)

      2. Scatter plot (Engagement Time vs. Revenue per Session by Audience)

GA4 isn’t about “reporting.” It’s about turning web analytics into a decision-making engine for your fundraising campaigns. If you can’t act on something, don’t measure it.

OK, 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 online giving.

Now onto the fun stuff!

---

Weekly Reads 📚

How AI Agents Will Reshape Retail Loyalty Programs (Medium)

WhatsApp’s new Netflix doc on F1 is a master class in turning advertising into entertainment (Fast Company)

There’s a Feeling We’re Not in Hollywood Anymore (NYT)

Spotify Has Paid More Than $100 Million to Podcasters to Take On Competitors - is this sustainable? (Mashable)

Humans as 'luxury goods' in the age of AI (Choudary)

How Facebook Marketplace Became Ubiquitous, Essential, and Unhelpful (Dwell)

Apple aims to source all US iPhones from India in pivot away from China (Guardian)

Big Tech Braces for Tariff-Induced Advertising Slowdown (WSJ)

Is the era of brand over: Scott Galloway vs Rory Sutherland on the Uncensored CMO podcast

Google will soon start letting kids under 13 use its Gemini chatbot (Tech Crunch)

🎉150. SPN: Distribution, distribution, distribution

Plus, spend efficiency; craft vs creativity; lots of Jobs

Today marks the 150th edition of SPN 🎉

Thank you for making SPN part of your weekly reading. Whether you’ve been here since the early days or just recently subscribed, thank you for your trust and letting me play a part in how you keep sharp and stay curious.

A huge thank you as well to Fundraise Up for their continued sponsorship and support — they make it possible for SPN to keep growing and reaching more operators like you.

Here’s to the next 150 editions! 🥂

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In this week’s SPN:

• How to reduce CPC/CPA overnight

• No one wants to see brand content. Whitelist more!

• Craft vs Creativity

• Refresh your Email snd SMS flows

• and, plenty of Jobs & Opps that took my fancy this week

Let’s jump in.

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When the Rainforest Trust adopted Fundraise Up their numbers exploded!

50% ⬆️ increase in online giving year-over-year

25% ⬆️ increase in donors giving in international currencies

6% ⬆️ increase in recurring donations, month-over-month

“We were absolutely blown away. Our whole team was so amazed with all the functionality, and the look and feel is phenomenal. And it pops right up — you don’t have to wait for another page to load when you’re ready to donate. The little reminders that follow you around the website — they work. They convert.” Rainforest Trust.

Now it’s your turn to land some incremental revenue by virtue of just using better technology. Reach out to Fundraise Up to learn more.

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Distribution, Craft & Creativity

This seemed like a seminal week for GAFA.

Don Vito Corleone approves 👍🏼

Despite their craven pilgrimage to the Trump inauguration, the heads of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple have not got the air cover they anticipated.

Lots of people like to slag off Google but few Fundraising operators I know are that critical - they value the reach and reckon the ads work pretty well.

The stock market turmoil seems to have hit them all hard. The tariff wars threaten to push a hole in to next quarter numbers - especially at Meta who could see $7 billion evaporate. The DOGE attack on big Government has done little to derail the regulators. The Justice Department said the best way to address the company’s monopoly in internet search was to force it to sell Chrome, among other measures. And the EU is being no kinder to them.

Why is this interesting? Because the general economic uncertainty is seeing a lot of ad budgets across our sector capped.

→ Tough times. And how GAFA choose to respond will shape the next era of advertising. Check out the post below on how to squeeze more from your current budget.

With Google calling time on its protracted plan to phase out cookies, could this be a clue they will get out of programmatic?

The idea they have to sell Chrome has excited the market with OpenAI heading the queue. They announced during the hearings they would like to buy Chrome. Well of course they would.

I chat all day long about the importance of content distribution not just creation, and similarly the AI race will be won by those with the best distribution - and it doesn’t get much better than Chrome - used by 64% of people online - 3 times more than Apple Safari in second place.

Talking of which the key issue in AI is the quest to understand the role for us humans. Is AI going to adopt the dull roles, like the first generation of robots have done with dishwashers and washing machines?

I was reminded of this Nick Cave letter from a couple of years ago writing about the very human process of writing a song:

“This is what we humble humans can offer, that AI can only mimic, the transcendent journey of the artist that forever grapples with his or her own shortcomings. This is where human genius resides, deeply embedded within, yet reaching beyond, those limitations.”

No LLM is going to look at African art from the Congo and do what Picasso did - parse that original unknown talent and create cubism.

No LLM is going to write songs that redefine musical movements; Coltrane with A Love Supreme or James Brown with Papas got a Brand New Bag.

Nor could it see how Kool Herc saw that two turntables could magic up the alchemy of a new music from the bones of the old

Does the issue come down to a tension between Craft and Creativity?

Think of a classic ad like Guinness Surfers.

Crazy good. The wonderful graphics owe a lot to the talent of director Jonathan Glazer and the VFX team. But the true creativity comes from David Abbott, Tom Carty and Walter Campbell who came up with the concept and hired Glazer et al to make their vision a reality. Not obvious people when you dig a layer deeper.

25 years on the contribution of Glazer and the VFX talent could soon be handled by MidJourney or Veo. That’s Craft.

But we still need a super talented human to write the prompt in the way David Abbot could. That’s Creativity.

I was mesmerized this week by Demis Hassabis of Deep Mind who delved into this in a podcast on AI, game theory, multimodality, and the nature of creativity:

And then there’s the question of if you think about creative, the creative arts, whether there’ll be new ways of working. Much more fluid. Instead of doing Adobe Photoshop or something, you’re actually co-creating this thing with this fluid responsive tool. And that could kind of feel more like Minority Report or something I imagine. With the interface and there’s this thing swirling around, but it will require people to get used to a very new workflow, to take maximum advantage of that. But I think when they do it’ll be probably incredible for those people. They’ll be like 10 X more productive.

Maybe we can delegate the routine and the ordinary tasks of fundraising to AI and use the time freed up to use AI to help donors experience the art of great storytelling that can define your Org and its programs?

This is a good read: Marketing’s New Middleman: AI Agents.

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Jobs & Opps 🛠️

Feathr: Senior Manager of Partnerships

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB): Chief People Officer (£86,1000 - £109,300)

MSF USA: Philanthropic Communications Lead ($$88,822 - $133,233)=

WWF: Bridge Intern

Walmart: Director, Strategic Initiatives, ESG Climate and Nature ($110,000 - $220,000)

World Bank Group: Innovation Officer, Storytelling

World Economic Forum: Lead, Circular Economy Initiatives

ASCAP Foundation: Executive Director ($175,000 - $225,000)

National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum: Chief Development Officer ($180,000 - $230,800)

Mozilla: Major Gifts Officer ($102,000 - $143,615)

National MS Society: VP, Individual Giving ($165,000 - $200,000)

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: Executive Director, San Francisco ($175,000 - $195,500)

→Plenty more jobs on SPN’s sister site: www.pledgr.com

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Spend Efficiency

If you're facing capped budgets or higher acquisition costs, the below is for you.

→ Proven approaches I’ve put into market to lower CPAs, squeeze more from channels, and make your spend work harder for you.

Whitelisted Ads - reduce CPC/CPA overnight

There’s a good chance you’re running paid advertising right now, and it’s a meaningful contribution to net-new donor acquisition. On top of ensuring that you’re rotating in new ad creative (more on that below), running an efficiently set-up account structure, having good data feedback into Meta, etc., you should also make sure you’re whitelisting some accounts to run ads from.

It doesn’t have to be from well-known influencers... it could be your ED or an employee’s account, a publisher to pay to whitelist from, a meme account, your dog’s IG account - really anything except your Org’s name is worth trying out.

Whitelisted ads outperform branded content because they fit the context of the feed better. Test it. Lower CPMs, higher CTRs, and still it’s only ever ~20% of spend in most Meta accounts. Whitelist more!

Use Landing Pages to Educate

Landing pages are one of the easiest ways to boost donor education, improve AOV, and also drive a better conversion rate for paid traffic. For UNICEF Market, a bundle product page (PDP) vs the same bundle on a landing page had a difference of 2% CVR for the PDP and 11% on the landing page.

This page should answer five questions over and over again with multiple sections:

1. What is your product? You can do this with Programs too.
2. Why does it exist?
3. How will it benefit the beneficiary?
4. Why are you best-suited to deliver this good thing?
5. If I donate today, what’s the journey of my dollar - how soon is the impact of my donation going to be felt?

You can launch new themed bundles with landing pages, especially driving traffic from your CRM list. An Easter Bundle, Earth Day Bundle, Mother’s Day Bundle, Father’s Day Bundle… inspo just from April/May.

Use Collab Posts on Instagram

As efficient as your paid ads can be, you need to always be building your Org’s brand image, extending brand awareness, and reaching new eyeballs. One easy way to do that is to do more collaboration posts on Instagram.

Whether they’re publisher/media accounts you partner on content with, influencers you’re seeding product to or program site visits, or partnerships you do with other Org’s, this allows you to reach a very targeted audience with a very genuine approach.

Maximize Your Influencer and Creator Engagements

When you partner with a creator, influencer, “ambassador’s”, etc., don’t just create 1 video as your deliverable. Instead, write a brief that includes multiple hooks, multiple talking points you can mix and match, multiple calls to action, and a wide variety of b-roll footage. Now, instead of creating 1 video for the cost of working with a creator, you can make 15.

The catch is that you have to handle the editing on your side, but you can do that with an agency a freelance editor, or an editor tool yourself.

Recalibrate Media Channels

Focus your performance media on channels you know are driving impact, not just programmatic pre-roll, display ads, etc. If you feel confident that a channel like Criteo is driving meaningful revenue because its dashboards say so, run an incrementality test with a hold-out group.

It goes both ways... a channel like YouTube may not report significant numbers in-platform, but with an incrementality study, it will show that over 8 weeks, it drove many new donors.

Refresh your Email & SMS Flows

Your email campaigns shouldn’t be set-and-forget. It’s essential to audit and optimize your flows regularly. Look at where you can improve the copy, design layouts, Match offers, program highlights, CTA placements, etc.

As your performance marketing scales, you should set up a learnings transfer every month, or at the very least every quarter. The best ad copy, headlines, and hooks for videos can be meaningful inspiration for email flows.

Rapid-fire Static Ad Testing

On a shoestring budget, rapid static ad creation and iteration are the best ways to test and learn. Once you find winning ad copy, apply it to different layouts (get ChatGPT to help you with design inspiration). Once you find a winning layout, use that layout with a variety of different copy.

Today, the creative itself is the targeting engine.

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OK, 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 online giving.

Now onto the fun stuff!

---

Weekly Reads 📚

Demis Hassabis on AI, game theory, multimodality, and the nature of creativity (Possible)

How trans people use technology to fight back against aggression (Mashable)

In Influencer Marketing, Precision Wins (BCG)

When answers get cheap, good questions are the new scarcity (Sangeet Paul Choudary)

Emerging Sports: Redefining the Industry Playbook (Odgers Berndtson)

Government officials are kind of bad at the internet (Tech Crunch)

Roblox players are going to start getting paid to watch ads (Verge)

Navigating the Future of Board Leadership (Russel Reynolds)

How Liverpool Won the Premier League (The Athletic)

149. SPN: Driving to Incremental Revenue Outcomes

Plus, Demand Gen is under-utilized; Optimizing for recurring gifts; and, plenty of Jobs & Opps

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers.

You’ve joined a community of nearly 3k marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Org’s. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

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In this week’s SPN:

• 3 video ad examples → is inclusive marketing a driver for growth?

• Actionable next steps: Google’s Demand Gen is your unlock to incremental fundraising dollars

• How to nurture long-term, monthly giving in a short-term world

• and, plenty of Jobs & Opps that took my fancy this week

Let’s jump in!

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🚀 Join the rocket ship!

Do you thrive where speed, ownership, and experimentation rule the day?

Do you enjoy turning data into powerful narratives that engage and excite some of the world’s biggest nonprofit brands?

Yes? Then go build with Fundraise Up!

Fundraise Up is powering their next phase of growth and hiring for key roles in Content and Product Marketing. Check out these opportunities:

• Director, Content Marketing

• Director, Product Marketing

You might get to work alongside me too 🌟

👉 Explore all open roles at fundraiseup.com/careers

---

Demand Gen

Getting the measure of Google’s Demand Gen offering

Remember Google’s Discovery campaigns? Now Google is also sunsetting its Video Action Campaigns (VAC). Why is this interesting? It means Demand Gen (DG) is poised to become the primary mid- to low-funnel video and display solution across Google’s properties.

It’s a suite of sorts designed to reach “the right users” across YouTube, Google Discover, and Gmail but it’s still very underutilized in nonprofit fundraising.

Earlier this month I was sent a really decent whitepaper that contained a series of tests that highlighted Demand Gen’s strengths. The whole goal of the research was to test whether DG can drive not just reach and engagement, but real, incremental (fundraising) outcomes. The Key Findings are interesting and point to a significant opportunity - provided Org’s take the right approach.

Google’s Demand Gen Silllllution (whatever the context the word “solution” always feels so salesy):

• Delivers proven incrementality

• Complements PMax

• Makes matching bid strategy to campaign goals critically important

• Produces better results than Video Action Campaigns when compared head to head

• First-party data and lookalike audiences achieved the lowest cost-per-acquisition

Beyond these Key Findings here’s my sense of what the practical, actionable next steps should be for Org’s. Put ‘em in your back pocket, discuss them with your agency →

Invest in solid measurement frameworks. Not a new POV for SPN readers but a good reminder. Adopt geo-testing where you can to identify true incrementality and validate platform metrics, for example, using Search Lift studies if your spend is high enough.

Align your bidding strategies to specific funnel goals. For upper- and mid-funnel activity, use softer conversion actions. Throw in a CTA to “watch”, for instance, before going hard with an ask to donate. Across all placements - especially video - conversion-based bidding will help ensure quality traffic and campaign efficiency.

Creative excellence is non-negotiable. If you’re not prioritizing mobile-first formats now’s the time. The whitepaper shared a memorable stat: Campaigns with full asset coverage (images and videos in all aspect ratios) outperform by 14%.

First-party data remains a cornerstone of success. Pair your donor audiences with lookalikes for greater scale, and test audience expansion features to tap into Google’s AI capabilities - without losing control of your CPA.

Consider DG as a complement - not a replacement - for formats like PMax. Since it excels at bridging awareness and conversion, it’s ideal for Org’s. It allows for the storytelling part so necessary in longer “donation” cycles vs that quick decision to purchase a t-shirt on sale (short sales cycle).

TL;DR

Google’s Demand Gen offering is a powerful, scalable, and results-driven engine. It’s been very, very successful for me. Get your measurement right, get strategic with your bidding, tailor your creative, and you’ll unlock a boatload of incremental fundraising dollars. As always, ping me with any questions.

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Does Inclusion Boost Marketing?

The 3 entries I dropped below to the Effie Awards - celebrating creative work that drove results in the UK market - caught my attention this week.

All 3 are inclusive campaigns, highlighting underserved audiences and their lived realities, and demonstrate how acknowledging previously unspoken truths can win socially and commercially.

Regular readers of SPN will know I take a lot of inspo from outside of our sector in order to build better, more effective fund raising campaigns within it, and these examples are gems.

Boots / The Menopause Monologues

The Menopause Monologues initiative (the name a spin on Eve Ensler’s ground-breaking and incredible piece of theatre) features women candidly sharing their menopause journeys. It shares live, personalized advice, often funny but steering clear of stereotypes, and offers practical support.

Boots also co-created products with 4,000 women and the University of Manchester as a result of the learnings they took from the initiative.

Results: A significant uptick in sales and increased store footfall, but, what’s fascinating, is they reported a jump from 21% to 72% in viewers recognizing their own menopause symptoms.

McCain / We Are Family

I grew up eating these smiley faces, so I was immediately hooked by the visuals. McCain’s have been running this “We Are Family” campaign for a decade. The core idea behind it is they took a hard look at the homogeneous portrayal of families in the media. The stat they started with was something like 84% of consumers don’t recall seeing families like theirs represented in the Ads they consume, and so McCain (who are just a frozen food manufacturer for all intents and purposes) committed to authentically showcasing the rich tapestry of British family life.

Starting with physical diversity and later embracing differing opinions and values, the campaign celebrates the full breadth of modern family configurations: blended families, multigenerational families, single parent families and more.

Results: Meaningful conversations, shifts in public perceptions and forged strong emotional connections with underserved audiences. And a 56% surge in sales and a 32% boost in gross profit.

Ford / Make It Visible

The ad leads with an extraordinary stat that every day the construction industry loses two construction workers to suicide. Ford’s campaign exposes the silent crisis of mental health within the industry – a sector where a ‘macho’ culture often deters people from seeking help.

Partnering with the Lighthouse Construction Industry nonprofit, Ford introduced ‘Higher-viz’ safety vests to identify on-site mental health counsellors, making support as visible as physical safety measures.

Results: A nationwide site tour brought Mental Health First Aiders directly to workers, ensuring accessibility. They engaged over 800 trade organizations and reached thousands of workers with the #MakeItVisible program embedding mental health support into standard site safety protocols and saving lives.

These campaigns all point toward a pivotal insight

When brands address unspoken truths and champion inclusivity, they don’t just contribute positively to society → they unlock avenues for substantial growth.

Forward this to your Corporate Partnerships team! There are massive opportunities out there to get inspired, tell better stories and drive collective, positive impact.

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Jobs & Opps 🛠️

SickKids Foundation: Communications Advisor, Digital

Lego: Senior Manager, Social Responsibility, Operations and Strategy (12-month contract)

Fundraise Up: Director, Content Marketing ($140,000 - $200,000)

UHN Foundation: VP, Marketing & Comms

MPC: Chief Impact Officer ($150,000 - $160,000)

American Cancer Society: VP, Creative & Content

Orchestra: Business Development Director, Impact

Operation HOPE: SVP, Comms ($110,000 - $120,000)

Rainforest Alliance: Senior Revenue Operations Analyst (Salesforce)

Make-A-Wish-Foundation: Peer to Peer Fundraising Manager

Canadian Red Cross: Senior Director-Donor Experience

Ocean Conservancy: Director of Digital Marketing & Platforms ($142,000)

Habitat for Humanity International: Sr. Director - Global Program Communications ($116,030 - $136,500)

→Plenty more jobs on SPN’s sister site: www.pledgr.com

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7 Approaches to Optimize Monthly Giving

Your prospective donor’s everyday digital reality is built on low commitment. They subscribe and quickly unsubscribe to meal kits, news sites, and apps. Some of us trade cellular plans like there’s no tomorrow. Attention spans are shorter, digital environments are fragmented (SPN #137), choices are abundant, and patience is thin.

A monthly donation is an ongoing act of high commitment.

Unlike a Netflix subscription, there’s no immediate tangible benefit per se. People give because they trust your Org and believe in your mission. Trust and commitment aren’t built with one social impression or a single email. Instead, they’re nurtured at every turn, rewarded consistently, and respected in donor lifecycle touchpoints that feel as if they weren’t crafted only to extract an extra dollar from a donor file.

Here are 7 successful approaches that I’ve put into market to optimize various parts of the donor lifecycle to drive recurring gifts:

1. Drop the “Donate Now” CTA

Create a new display campaign - or add a new creative asset to the existing one – without asking for a donation. Instead, include a photo from a program site, or an actual beneficiary your Org helped - with a message like “Meet X. $15 every month can ensure she and her sisters will Y”.

Most donor lifecycles need to include 10+ touches before somebody becomes a loyal donor (SPN #130). Make sure some of those touches don’t have a prominent donation ask.

2. Train your tools to prioritize monthly giving

Google’s Performance Max or Meta’s new “Andromeda” campaigns prioritize audiences and ads that generate higher-value conversions.

Explicitly defining a higher conversion value for monthly donations nudges those AI tools to optimize aggressively toward monthly donors rather than occasional donors. Most Orgs don’t set them up separately – as a result, your AI campaigns optimize “against” the monthly donors.

• In your Google Ads conversion tracking setup, define separate conversion actions:

  • “One-time Donation”, valued at actual donation amount (e.g., $50).

  • “Monthly Donation Signup”, valued at a projected 12-month total (e.g., $20/month = $240 conversion value).

3. Make “Give Monthly” the default option

If your leadership is afraid of the “negative consequences” to this suggestion, run an A/B test.

A 1% increase in the monthly donation rate for a 100,000-person donor file with an average monthly donation of $25, a one-time donation of $50, and average donor longevity of 12 months is $250,000 in incremental revenue per year.

4. Reward commitment with Matches

Your donors already resent incentives given only to new subscribers. They’ve seen their ex-cellular provider, ex-streaming service, ex-car insurance company, and ex-gym all do it. Don’t become their ex-Org of choice ;)

Offer periodic match campaigns specifically for monthly donors.

Consider using the next match fund for an “every 12^th monthly donation matched” campaign, or send an exclusive email to monthly donors who have given for over 12 (24/36/48) months, asking for an off-cycle donation that will be matched – ideally at least 3x.

5. Convert one-time donors to monthly via Mail

Most Orgs reserve Direct Mail for communication with existing monthly donors or mid- and major-donor tiers due to high production costs.

Direct mail is expensive, but the “impact factor” is high, especially when few Orgs do it for an occasional small donor. Send direct mail to each of your new one-time donors, regardless of the donation size, within a month after they donate. Include a simple “Thank You” card with a QR code, leading to a personalized page explaining the benefits of becoming a monthly donor.

Run this test for 2-3 months – the cost won’t be outrageous. Experience tells me the results will surprise you.

6. Proactive milestone emails

Taking a page from any decent loyalty programs’ playbook, proactively recognize smaller donor achievements regularly, reinforcing ongoing commitment.

Set automated triggers in your email platform to celebrate milestones frequently. My best performing cadence talks not about months but days – an email titled “You’ve been our monthly donor for 100 Days. Thank you!” catches exponentially more attention than a same-old 3/6/12-month cadence.

7. Vary messaging to existing donors by frequency

Dynamically test retargeting ads based on frequency thresholds in your Meta campaigns to avoid fatiguing the one-time donors while feeding the algorithms with better-structured data.

• Set up an Advantage+ campaign targeting your "one-time donor" custom audience, excluding existing monthly donors.

• Within the campaign, create separate ad sets triggered by frequency thresholds:

  • At frequencies 1-2, show your standard thank you ads without explicit asks.

  • At frequencies 3-5, show ads with a specific “Join Monthly” CTA and an initial ask.

  • At frequencies above 5, press the ask a little more: “Last chance to make your commitment monthly and double your first 3 months.”

Wrapping Up

The donor lifecycle for monthly donations will continue to become longer over time.

If it takes 10 interactions today, it will require 15 in two years time. Experimenting now will ensure your Org has the revenue needed to keep growing.

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OK, 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 online giving.

Now onto the fun stuff!

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Weekly Reads 📚

Social Media Shorts Are the New TV Guide (The Hollywood Reporter)

The bright side of the 6G hype (LinkedIn)

When answers get cheap, good questions are the new scarcity (Sangeet Paul Choudary)

Risks to children playing Roblox ‘deeply disturbing’, say researchers (Guardian)

Rest is Politics podcast - assessing the Bots and Trolls reaction they get to posts on Trump and Putin

Emerging Sports: Redefining the Industry Playbook (Odgers Berndtson)

Roblox players are going to start getting paid to watch ads (Verge)

Profit from podcasts? A reviving industry is all ears (FT)

2025 Media & Entertainment Industry Predictions Report (Alix Partners)

How TikTok Shop Became The Fastest Growing Social Media Shopping Platform (CNBC)