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.
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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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.
Does Inclusion Boost Marketing?
The 3 entries I dropped below to the Effie Awards - celebratingcreative 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 12th 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.
OK, that’s all for today.
I hope you’ve found one nugget today that you can put into play next week.
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