Digital Q&A – 28th April 2026

Every fortnight, we run an open Digital Q&A session for charity and nonprofit teams – a chance to bring your questions and challenges: the things you’re stuck on, the decisions you’re not sure about. You can find out more and sign up for a future session here.

This fortnight’s session was a good one, writes Matt Saunders. We had charity staff from small volunteer-led organisations through to mid-size charities with 250 staff – and the range of questions reflected that variety beautifully. What struck me, as it so often does, is how much common ground there is across organisations of very different sizes. The same worries, the same uncertainties, the same pressure of trying to grow with limited resource and no guarantee of return.

Here’s a summary of the key questions and what came out of the conversation.

Q: I know what’s working for us, but I don’t know how to grow it – and I’m frightened to spend money without knowing I’ll get a return. Where do I even start?

This was probably the question that set the tone for the whole session, and it’s one we hear more than almost any other. The honest answer is that there’s no single safe bet – growth almost always involves some level of tested risk. What we’d encourage is shifting from “where should I spend money?” to “what are the one or two things that give us the highest leverage at the moment?”

That might be an existing touchpoint that already brings new people in – an event, a service, a campaign. It might be something you haven’t tried yet but have good reason to think could work. The key is to test methodically rather than trying to do everything at once, and to run small, time-limited trials before committing significant resource.

One thing that also came up: before making any spending decisions, it really helps to have a clear organisational strategy. Not a 40-page document – just clarity on what “growth” actually means for you right now. Is it supporting more people? Reducing pressure on leadership? Expanding your volunteer base? That clarity helps shape everything else.

Q: We’re thinking about trying Meta ads. We’re not sure how to navigate it, and we don’t want to waste money. What’s the best approach?

Meta advertising can absolutely work for charities – but we’d caution against going in without either specialist support or a very clear test structure. What we’d recommend is a paid trial: work with someone who runs Meta ads for charities specifically, set a defined budget for a defined period (say, one month), and treat it as a genuine test with agreed success criteria before you commit further.

The other thing worth doing first – and Nick made this point really well in the session – is to build out your audience personas before you touch the ad platform. Who are your current donors? Where did they find you? What was it that finally prompted them to give? That data, even if it’s imperfect, will tell you far more about where to invest than any general advice about which platform to use.

One encouraging note: if you already have a large organic following on Facebook, boosting posts to that existing community can be a lower-risk starting point than cold audience targeting. It’s worth exploring before jumping straight to paid acquisition.

Q: We want to grow donations, but we’re not sure where to focus first. Should we be prioritising fundraising or database growth?

Database growth – at least in the first instance. The size of your list is one of the strongest indicators of how successful a fundraising campaign will be, and it’s something we come back to on almost every one of these sessions.

The logic is straightforward: if you ask 200 people to donate, you’ll get a certain response. If you ask 2,000 people who’ve shown an interest in what you do, you’ll get a very different result. So rather than pushing hard for donations from a small pool of existing supporters, the more sustainable move is to grow your community first – through social media, events, partnerships, whatever works for your organisation – and then bring those people into your world via a mailing list or your website. That gives you an ever-growing list of people who’ve raised their hand in some way, and who can be nurtured over time into donors, volunteers, fundraisers, or advocates.

The key word there is “nurtured.” Growing a list is only valuable if you’re doing something with it.

Q: Do we need a CRM? We’ve had people suggest it, but I’m not sure if we’re at that stage yet.

It depends – and we’d be skeptical of anyone who gives you a definitive “yes” without understanding where you’re at.

A CRM is worth investing in when one of two things is true: either your data is growing rapidly and sitting in too many different places to manage well, or you’re spending significant time on manual processes that could be automated. If neither of those is really the case yet, a CRM can be more burden than benefit.

Nick made an important point here too – a CRM is only as good as the data that goes into it, and the time someone has to maintain it. We’ve both seen organisations where a CRM was implemented too early, fell into disarray because no one had capacity to keep it clean, and became a problem in its own right. If you’re not ready to give it proper upkeep, it’s worth waiting until you are.

Q: Our emotional posts get loads of engagement – rescue dramas, memorial posts for animals that have passed. But when we ask for donations or legacies, barely anyone reacts. What are we doing wrong?

You’re not doing anything wrong – you’re just missing one step.

The emotional content is doing its job: it’s getting people in, making them feel something, building that connection. The problem is that the ask is then arriving in a separate post, at a separate time, when that emotional momentum has gone. What you want to do is combine the two – use those high-engagement stories as the vehicle for the ask, in the same post. That’s exactly how charity TV ads work: the heartbreaking footage and the “please donate now” message arrive together, because that’s when the connection is live.

A post that shows a rescue story and ends with a clear, direct ask – a link to donate, a specific need, a tangible cost – will almost always outperform a standalone donation request. You’re meeting people where their heart already is.

Q: We’re running a vote-for-us campaign for an award nomination, but engagement on our social posts is really low. How do we get more people to actually vote?

The first thing we’d do is get really specific about who you’re actually trying to reach. “People who support us” is too broad – who, specifically, would feel most invested in you winning this? Local community members? Service users and their families? Partner organisations? Volunteers? Once you’ve identified that group, you can think about what they need to see and hear to motivate them to act.

From there, it’s about stories and images that connect people to your work – not information posts, which tend to underperform, but content that reminds people why they care about what you do. Then make the ask clear and the action simple.

One practical note: if you’re including a voting link in your posts, be aware that social media platforms actively suppress posts that contain external links, because they don’t want people leaving the platform. One workaround is to put the link in the first comment rather than the post itself – this can meaningfully improve reach. And make sure your key links are also easy to find in your bio and via a Linktree or similar.

Q: We have a fundraising event coming up that we’ve sold zero places on so far. We’re using Facebook, Instagram, and our website. What else should we be doing?

A few things worth thinking about here. First: if your organic posts aren’t converting, it could be one of two things – either you’re not hitting your audience frequently enough (people often need to see something multiple times before they act), or you’ve reached the limits of your current audience and need to find new people.

If it’s the latter, that’s where paid social can help – but even before going there, it’s worth thinking about whether there are other communities you could reach through partnerships, local groups, or word of mouth. For a 5k run, who already loves that kind of event? Where do they gather online and offline?

The broader point – and this applies beyond this specific event – is that challenge event fundraising tends to work best when you have a warm, engaged community to draw from. Building a database of interested people has a direct impact on how events like this perform.

Q: What about podcast advertising? Is it worth exploring?

It can work, but it’s worth being realistic about the cost and the targeting limitations. Podcast advertising is essentially broadcast – you’re reaching everyone who listens to that show, and only a fraction of them will be your audience. Unlike social ads, you don’t have the same granular targeting options, and you’d also need to invest in producing the ad itself.

For most small and medium charities, we’d treat it as something to consider once you’ve tested and established your core growth channels. It’s not a first move – but it’s not off the table entirely either, particularly if you can find a podcast whose audience closely matches your supporter base.

These sessions are always a reminder that the challenges facing charities aren’t really about size – they’re about resource, confidence, and finding the right place to focus. If any of the questions above resonated with you, we’d love to see you at a future fortnightly session. You can find out more and register here.

And if you’d rather have a one-to-one conversation about what any of this means for your organisation specifically, feel free to get in touch with Matt Saunders at All Things Equal – this is exactly the kind of work we do.