Hubbub Insights
Hubbub Insights #25: Authenticity Over Polish: What Smart Fundraisers Are Getting Right (and Wrong) This Summer
The sector is having an interesting conversation right now. Not about a shiny new tool or a single headline trend, but about something more fundamental: whether the things we assume make fundraising work are actually working at all. From email economics to emotional imagery, from staff retention to mid-level donors, the articles landing in our feeds this summer are quietly challenging a lot of received wisdom. Let’s dig in.
The case against making everything look too good
There’s a provocative thread running through several pieces this fortnight, and it starts with aesthetics.
Future Fundraising Now argues that overly polished fundraising creative may actually underperform compared to rougher, more authentic appeals. This might feel counterintuitive - especially for organisations that have invested heavily in brand consistency and production values. But it aligns with something we see repeatedly: donors respond to realness. When everything looks like it was designed by a committee, it can feel distant from the cause it’s meant to represent.
Alongside that, The Agitator questions whether emotional imagery featuring identifiable individuals actually drives more donations, or whether that advice has been oversimplified and repeated as gospel without enough scrutiny. And Clairification explores the role of emotionally triggering imagery in nonprofit appeals, asking whether charities are being deliberate and strategic about it, or just following instinct.
Taken together, these pieces suggest the field needs to move beyond blanket rules - “use a photo of one person,” “make it emotional,” “keep it polished” - and think more carefully about context, audience, and what’s actually been tested versus what’s been assumed.
And if we’re questioning polish and logic in creative, it’s worth noting that Future Fundraising Now makes the same argument about rationality in campaign messaging: insisting that fundraising must make logical sense is often counterproductive. Donors don’t give because the maths stacks up. They give because something moves them.
The costs hiding in plain sight
One of the most practically useful reads this fortnight comes from The Agitator’s detailed analysis of email fundraising costs and donor attrition. The headline finding is striking: many charities report zero cost for email campaigns, which almost certainly isn’t accurate once you factor in staff time, platform costs, and the long-term impact of attrition on donor lifetime value.
This matters because decisions about channel investment are made on the basis of these figures. If email looks free, it will always win the internal budget argument, even when the real economics tell a different story. Getting honest about what things actually cost - including the opportunity cost of a disengaged donor who quietly stops giving - is foundational to making smarter strategy.
It connects naturally to the broader conversation about how we communicate value. Nonprofit Hub’s practical guide to creating nonprofit impact reports and Nonprofit Tech for Good’s run-through of the most common annual report mistakes are both useful here - not just as reporting tools, but as exercises in understanding what your donors actually value hearing about. If you’re going to invest in these documents, they need to do real work.
And while we’re on the subject of credibility signals: Nonprofit Tech for Good reports that 72% of donors are more likely to give when a charity displays a recognised rating badge, from platforms like Charity Navigator and Candid. In a world where donor trust is increasingly hard-won, these third-party endorsements carry real weight.
The donor segments most organisations are ignoring
Two articles this week shine a light on the middle of the donor pyramid - and why it deserves far more attention than it typically gets.
Nonprofit Hub makes the case for mid-level donors - those giving above average amounts but below major gift thresholds - as an untapped revenue opportunity. These donors often feel invisible to organisations: too small for major gift stewardship, but too important to be treated like a standard direct mail subscriber. The result is that they drift, and eventually lapse, without anyone quite noticing until it’s too late.
At the other end of the scale, Clairification makes a compelling argument about major donor fundraising: success comes when you present donors with specific, compelling funding opportunities - projects they can genuinely get excited about - rather than generic asks. The “offer” matters enormously. A donor who can picture exactly what their gift will make possible is far more likely to say yes than one who’s handed a vague call to support the mission.
Both insights point in the same direction: segmentation and personalisation aren’t just nice-to-haves, they’re the difference between donors who stay and donors who disappear.
The people challenge underneath all of it
All of the above - the creative strategy, the reporting, the donor stewardship - depends on having capable, motivated people to deliver it. Which makes the findings from Real Deal Fundraising’s summary of the Social Impact Staff Retention Project’s latest report pretty sobering. Seventy per cent of nonprofit workers are considering leaving their roles, with low fulfilment and excessive responsibility cited as key drivers.
That’s not a recruitment problem. That’s a structural one. And it has direct implications for fundraising performance - not just in terms of capacity, but in terms of institutional knowledge, donor relationships, and the quality of work being produced.
If you’re seeing high turnover in your fundraising team, it’s worth asking what’s underneath it. Are people being asked to do too much with too little support? Is the work meaningful enough? Are there genuine paths for development? These aren’t soft questions - they have hard financial consequences.
Getting smarter about context and forecasting
Finally, a slightly different angle from Colleen Dilen’s Know Your Own Bone, which looks at how cultural institutions should factor major external events - the World Cup, wildfires, and other disruptions - into midyear attendance forecasting. The core point is about separating temporary impacts from lasting behavioural shifts - and not misreading a short-term dip or spike as evidence of a long-term trend.
This applies well beyond cultural institutions. Any organisation trying to understand donor behaviour in 2026 needs to hold the same question: is what we’re seeing a blip, or a signal? Getting that wrong in either direction leads to bad decisions.
What’s clear across all of these themes is that the sector is in a moment of productive questioning. The assumptions that have shaped fundraising practice - about email, about imagery, about what donors want, about how to structure teams - are all up for review. That’s a healthy thing.
If you found this useful, subscribe to our newsletter or get in touch with the team at Hubbub - we’d love to hear what’s on your mind and what challenges you’re navigating heading into the autumn fundraising season.
