Insights
The mid-year point is a useful moment to step back and take stock. What are the themes emerging across the sector? What conversations keep resurfacing? Looking across the articles landing in our feeds this fortnight, a few clear threads are pulling together - and they're worth reflecting on honestly.
Let's start with the one everyone's talking about. AI continues to dominate sector conversation, but The Agitator's sharp piece on why AI won't fix the mess you feed it is a timely corrective to the hype. The argument is straightforward: if your data is in poor shape and your fundraising fundamentals are shaky, layering AI on top won't save you. It'll just automate the chaos.
This resonates. There's enormous pressure on fundraising teams to adopt AI tools quickly, and understandably so - the potential is real. But the organisations most likely to benefit are the ones who've already done the unglamorous work: cleaning their data, understanding their donor base, and being clear about what they're actually trying to achieve. AI accelerates good practice. It doesn't create it.
Before reaching for the next shiny tool, it's worth asking whether your data hygiene is genuinely in order - and whether the fundamentals of your donor relationships are solid enough to build on.
One of the most grounding pieces doing the rounds right now comes from Clairification. Research highlighted by Claire Axelrad shows that organisations with a strong internal culture of philanthropy outperform those without one - measurably, in both fundraising performance and donor retention.
This matters because it reframes where improvement actually comes from. Teams often look to tactics first - a new campaign mechanic, a different ask structure, a better email sequence. And yes, tactics matter. But the organisations that consistently perform well tend to have something deeper in place: a shared belief across the whole organisation that fundraising is meaningful, that donors are partners, and that stewardship is everyone's responsibility.
That's harder to implement than a new email template. But the data suggests it's where the real leverage is.
Related to culture is how organisations think about trying new things. The Agitator's piece on evaluating innovation against outdated benchmarks is a bit of a gut-punch for anyone who's sat in a meeting where a genuinely new idea gets shot down because it didn't match last year's mail plan metrics.
The tension here is real. Organisations say they want innovation - but then measure new approaches against benchmarks built for the old ones. It's a structural problem, not just a mindset one. If you're going to create genuine space for creative fundraising, the evaluation framework has to evolve alongside the idea.
This is particularly relevant when thinking about digital-first campaigns, where the conversion journey, touchpoints, and donor behaviour look fundamentally different from direct mail. Applying the wrong yardstick doesn't just produce misleading results - it actively discourages the experimentation that most organisations know they need.
On the more practical end of the spectrum, several articles this fortnight dig into the nuts and bolts of fundraising execution - and there's genuinely useful stuff here.
The question of match offers comes up regularly, and Future Fundraising Now's look at whether you can have too many of them gives a reassuring answer: probably not. The evidence suggests match offers consistently lift response rates by 10-50%, and crucially, they don't appear to lose their effectiveness through overuse. For organisations nervous about deploying matching too frequently, this is worth reading.
The Future Fundraising Now podcast on holiday-based fundraising is a useful companion piece - exploring how to use calendar moments well without falling into the trap of lazy, interchangeable seasonal appeals. The pitfalls are familiar: vague emotional hooks, poor timing, no clear reason to give today rather than tomorrow. But when holiday campaigns are done with specificity and real donor relevance, they work.
Clairification's breakdown of a real memorial donation appeal email is the kind of practical, unglamorous analysis that's genuinely valuable. Memorial giving is emotionally complex territory, and getting the tone, structure, and ask wrong can do real damage. Walking through a live example - what lands and what doesn't - is a useful exercise for any team reviewing their own templates.
And on email stewardship more broadly, Nonprofit Hub's case for year-round email engagement as a donor retention tool reinforces something we'd strongly agree with: the organisations that build consistent, warm communication throughout the year tend to perform better at year-end, because they're not asking strangers for money. They're continuing a relationship.
Nonprofit Tech for Good's ten online fundraising best practices rounds this out with a solid primer - useful for teams onboarding new fundraisers or stress-testing whether the basics are genuinely in place.
Two articles this fortnight speak directly to the structural health of fundraising operations.
Real Deal Fundraising's piece on building six revenue streams makes the case for reducing dependency on single funding sources - a conversation that's become increasingly urgent as grant landscapes shift and individual giving fluctuates. The logic is straightforward: organisations with diverse income are more resilient. The harder question is how to build that diversity without spreading a team too thin.
On the audience development side, Nonprofit Tech for Good's look at joint action campaigns offers an interesting low-cost model for growing email lists through shared petition campaigns. It's not a universal solution, but for organisations with an advocacy dimension, the combination of mission alignment and practical list-building is an attractive one.
Nonprofit Hub's explainer on prospect research is a good reminder that major donor fundraising doesn't begin with a call - it begins with understanding who's already in your supporter base and what the wealth data suggests about their potential. For organisations that haven't yet formalised their prospect research process, this is a practical starting point.
Meanwhile, Colleen Dilenschneider's mid-year data roundup is essential reading for anyone in the cultural sector. Covering engagement trends across local audiences, social media behaviour, membership renewal, ticketing, and admission discounting, it's the kind of grounded, evidence-based analysis that cuts through a lot of the noise. The membership renewal challenges she highlights in particular feel widely applicable - and worth sitting with before the autumn campaign season begins.
Finally, a piece that perhaps sits slightly apart from the rest but deserves a mention: The Fundraising Coach's five tips for planning accessible school fundraisers. Making participation genuinely possible for all students, regardless of ability, is both the right thing to do and practically important for community fundraising that actually reflects its community. The principles here translate well beyond schools - any mass participation campaign benefits from designing for inclusion from the start rather than retrofitting it.
There's a lot to chew on across these themes - from AI readiness to internal culture, from email mechanics to data strategy. If you'd like to receive this kind of sector round-up directly, subscribe to our newsletter and we'll keep it coming. Or if any of these themes are prompting questions about your own fundraising - get in touch. We're always happy to think it through together.
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