Uncategorized
By Paul Hayward, Strategic Director of Business Development, Engaging Networks
Nonprofit fundraising doesn’t stop at national borders and neither should our learning.
At the recent International Fundraising Congress (IFC) 2025, I led a session reporting on insights gathered from years of working with charities across the UK, Europe, North America and beyond. Each market has its strengths, its quirks, and its blind spots, but together they paint a global picture of how fundraising is evolving and what we can learn from each other.
In an era where digital platforms, donor expectations, and economic conditions are shifting faster than ever, the best fundraisers aren’t just adapting, they’re borrowing ideas from around the world.
The UK’s greatest fundraising strength lies in its culture of regular giving, a model born out of the 1960s, with the creation of Bacs Direct Debit. For decades, this has given UK charities reliable income and helped to built one of the world’s strongest legacy markets.
But it’s not just about taking donations, it’s about retaining supporters long-term and cultivating donors to become truly connected to your cause.
Charities like Macmillan Cancer Support have shown how thoughtful stewardship can transform retention, and boost income. Using multi-channel journeys, from emails and phone calls to thank-you events, they are a case-study in keeping supporters engaged year after year.
The result? Deep loyalty, cross-sell opportunities, and a strong foundation for transformational legacy income. Marie Curie, is another great example, showing how lower value donors can be stewarded to leave large gifts to the charity in their will. They now raise around £40 million annually from gifts in wills, nearly one-third of their total income.
Across Europe, innovation thrives on transparency and optimisation.
Campaigns like Greenpeace’s #ProtectTheOceans campaign ran across dozens of countries and multiple languages, proof that scale doesn’t have to come at the cost of authenticity. In increasingly multicultural societies, even small steps, translating actions, adapting spelling and cultural references, or offering bilingual emails can make causes feel more personal and inclusive.
In the Netherlands, UNICEF has built a culture of rapid testing and iteration, developing and launching new fundraising propositions with 12-week cycles, leveraging analytics and segmentation to personalise supporter journeys. The result: record donation numbers, significantly higher engagement and improved donor loyalty.
Meanwhile, Greenpeace Netherlands’ open data dashboard turned transparency into an engagement tool, showing supporters exactly where donations go. Across the continent, trust is becoming a strategy, and the results are speaking for themselves.
If Europe perfected optimisation, the US mastered mobilisation.
American nonprofits are experts at blending nonprofit advocacy and fundraising. Planned Parenthood, for example, unifies advocacy, events and fundraising into a single supporter journey, turning every touchpoint into a fundraising opportunity and generating tens of millions of dollars each year from supporters first engaged through advocacy actions.
Storytelling is another American superpower. charity: water exemplifies this with transparent, personalised reporting. Every donor, from a $10 fundraiser to a major supporter, sees the exact project their gift funded, complete with GPS data and video. It’s empowering, personal, and deeply shareable.
And when it comes to Peer-to-Peer fundraising (P2P), no one does it better. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital raises tens of millions of dollars every year through digital and community P2P, turning fundraisers into community ambassadors along the way.
Canadian charities excel in stewardship, integration, and authenticity.
World Vision Canada is famous for building highly integrated cross-channel supporter journeys, integrating CRM, automation, and storytelling to deliver seamless, emotionally resonant experiences. Supporters aren’t just retained; they’re known and valued.
The Canadian approach combines the best of both worlds: the empathy of direct mail culture and the sophistication of data-driven digital. It’s fundraising with care and connection at its heart.
| Region | Superpower |
| 🇬🇧 UK | From Sustainers to Legacies |
| 🇪🇺 Europe | Testing, Optimisation and Trust |
| 🇺🇸 USA | Mobilisation and Storytelling |
| 🇨🇦 Canada | Integration with Empathy |
Though no single market has the full picture, collectively we’ve already mapped the future.
Across every market, the fundamentals are changing; who gives, how they’re inspired, and where they engage. Wherever I go, people ask me the same big questions. They’re strikingly similar, and around the world, we’re beginning to see some exciting answers emerge.
Stop chasing platforms.
US charities are already diversifying, investing in creators and partnering with influencers to reach younger, more authentic audiences on TikTok, YouTube, Twitch and Spotify.
The next Facebook isn’t a platform — it’s your advocates, your community and your voice.
💡 Use Engaging Networks’ advocacy tools to capture supporter details through petitions and actions, then automatically move them into personalised donor journeys, turning campaigners into committed givers.
Younger supporters don’t give and forget; they join communities and expect value.
The PDSA’s Pet First Aid Guide (a classic Value Exchange product) proves that under-35s are 2–3× more likely to respond to offers of value than to direct donation asks — and 40% more likely to become regular givers within 12 months.
If Regular Giving is the destination, Value Exchange is the on-ramp for a new generation.
💡 With Engaging Networks’ premium donation pages, you can showcase value-exchange products and tailored asks, supporting up-sell opportunities that appeal to younger, impact-driven audiences.
The traditional marketing funnel is outdated, it pushes people toward a transaction rather than pulling them into belonging.
Modern supporter journeys focus on Value, Belonging and Empowerment. When you help people see themselves in your mission, you become part of their identity.
💡 Build automated, multi-channel stewardship journeys using Engaging Networks’ email and SMS tools, delivering timely, personalised touch-points that keep supporters engaged long after their first gift and can intelligently branch based on the actions they take
The best fundraisers are the best borrowers. They watch, learn, and remix ideas from around the world.
Whether it’s the UK’s legacy mindset, Europe’s testing culture, America’s mobilisation energy, or Canada’s empathy-driven integration, there’s something in every market worth stealing shamelessly.
Director of Business Development @ Engaging Networks
