Fundraising appeals that raise more from your existing supporters

In the last decade we’ve seen around six million fewer people donate each year; and total giving fell from £15.4 billion to £14 billion in a single year. Our own Charity Benchmarks data tells the same story: cash income has flatlined since 2021, and the number of new cash supporters has more than halved.

The instinct may be to spend more on acquisition to refill the bucket, but that bucket leaks. And on average, only around one in five cash supporters will still be active two years after their first gift.

The problem isn't that supporters care less.

It's how we've organised ourselves.

Most fundraising teams are still split into warm and cold, then split again by channel: mail, email, SMS, telephone, digital. Each has its own brief, its own KPIs and its own idea of success.

But our supporters don't live like that.

They read a letter, skim an email on the bus, tap a link in a text and give on a landing page in the gaps of their day. When appeals are planned channel by channel (usually a mailing pack with a couple of emails bolted on), we miss most of those moments.

Plan appeal ecosystems, not single appeals.

An appeal ecosystem puts one big creative idea at the centre and lets it travel across every channel and every audience segment. Each channel has a clear job, and they're connected: the SMS drives to the landing page, the phone call follows up the mailing. And so on.

It also runs over four to six weeks rather than landing on the mat once meaning you have room to build the story, show impact as it happens, and ask when the need is most urgent, in the channel most likely to get a response.

Run a few a year (spring, summer, winter) and you swap a calendar full of disconnected appeals for a small number of really strong moments.

As teams find time and budget harder to come by, it’s a simple solution that ticks all the boxes.

So, how do you do it?

Five practical tips to get started

1. Segment by where supporters are, not just what they gave: Sort your file into simple groups based on when people last gave: new, onboarding, active, lapsed, reactivated, deeply lapsed and inactive. It's common to find that 80% of a file hasn't given in two years or more.

Then set a different objective for each group. Secure a quick second gift from new supporters with a lower ask. Grow the average gift for actives. Test whether any affinity is left among the deeply lapsed with one very low-barrier ask.

Same idea, very different conversations.

2. Give every channel one job: Mail sets the core story and main ask for loyal, higher-value supporters. Email builds momentum and reacts to developments. SMS converts intent quickly. WhatsApp opens up a two-way conversation. The phone deepens relationships and converts to regular giving. The landing page is where it all comes together.

No duplication, and no channel working alone.

3. Match investment to supporter value: This isn't about doing everything everywhere. Email and WhatsApp are cheap and can go to everyone. Mail costs more and brings in more. The phone costs the most and delivers the biggest gifts. Match the channel to the supporter and the ask, and focus on growing your mid-value supporters, the people sitting between your cash donors and major donors. That's where the growth is.

4. Rethink ROI for lapsed supporters: If you treated lapsed donors as a cold audience, breakeven would look like a good result. That shift gives you room to win people back before you pour more into acquisition.

5. Test bigger than the envelope: A versus envelope B. An ecosystem lets you test the reason to give (urgency or agency?), ask levels for each segment, and the order and timing of channels (SMS before the mailing or after?), alongside the classic format tests. You're not hunting for one winner. You're learning what works for whom, and when, then feeding that into the next ecosystem.

Get everyone in the same room.

The hardest part is usually culture, not creative.

When teams have different KPIs and are judged on their own results, joined-up planning is almost impossible. It works when every team answers one brief, recognises that they share donors and channels, and plans the year together. A clear brief from the top, plenty of sticky notes and a good supply of crisps all help.

Then measure what matters: not the ROI of one mailing, but the value, frequency and loyalty of your supporters over time. Review after every ecosystem so each one is better than the last.

Let us build it with you.

The money you need is very likely already on your file.

More from the Core is Open's approach to building appeal ecosystems. We lay the foundations with you in around six weeks (strategy, audience insight, data and tech), agree your annual appeal plan together, then develop each ecosystem in 10 to 12 weeks plus production, from the big idea through to every channel asset.

If you'd like to raise more from the supporters you already have while reaching new ones, get in touch at hello@opencreates.com.