Individual Giving Conference 2025

Sessions

Room 1: Discuss

Navigating rapid change: How Medical Aid for Palestinians transformed its IG programme
Speaker: Josie Isherwood, Head of Individual Giving and Legacies, Medical Aid for Palestinians

Navigating rapid growth, fame and change. Medical Aid for Palestinians rose from an organisation with an annual income of £10m to over £50m in less than a year. From a small, niche, and dedicated supporter base to attracting tens of thousands of new supporters from over 150 countries through digital channels. Find out more about how the charity has adapted its ways of working and fundraising programme to deliver on ambitious goals, whilst also planning for a future where the media and public interest fades, but the need continues to be great.

1. A case study of a small team shifting their approach in response to rapid organic growth / an emergency
2. How to drive reactive giving
3. Focusing in on sustainable giving

Panel: The IG Evolution: In-Channel Diversification
Speakers: Lizi Zipser, Bluestate, Claire Donner, More Onion, Rhiannan Sullivan, Care2

Live panel discussion covering questions about good tactics, insights, and ideas we’re seeing across the sector to explore new ways of acquiring donors within IG programmes. These could include digital tools, campaigns, or innovations

– Emerging and existing donor acquisition tactics that actually work.
– How to integrate innovation into existing fundraising strategies.
– Future-facing ideas to stay ahead of the curve

New Code Of Practice: How British Red Cross Have Developed A Compliance Culture
Speakers: Cam St-Omer Donaldson, Chandni Sahni, BRC

In today’s fundraising climate, acquisition and retention are both under pressure. Meta has long dominated as a channel, but saturation, rising costs, and shifts in donor behaviour are forcing charities to rethink their approaches. Rather than just diversifying across channels, fundraisers now need to diversify within channels, exploring new creative approaches, audiences, and integrated supporter journeys.

This session will explore:

* How organisations are testing and experimenting within IG channels.
* The importance of breaking down silos between teams (e.g., events and IG) to unlock new supporter pipelines.
* Emerging strategies for engaging diverse audiences and underrepresented donor groups.
* Case studies and real-world examples of what’s working now, including cross-team collaboration, event-to-IG conversion, and retention-focused supporter journeys.
* How fundraisers can respond to crises, news-driven moments, and other urgent opportunities with agility.

How to Engage with Young People: Q&A Panel Discussion
Speakers: Kat Hamilton, Heather Etheridge, Kipp Foster & Laura English

Young people aren’t just the next generation of donors — they’re activists, advocates, and changemakers shaping the world right now. But how can charities truly connect with them in meaningful, authentic ways?

In this honest and thought-provoking conversation, our panel — featuring a youth leader, a charity professional, and a young voice — explores what engagement really looks like for younger audiences today. Together they’ll unpack how charities can build trust, inspire action, and create opportunities for young people to participate — not just donate.

Expect fresh perspectives on shifting power to youth-led initiatives, tackling barriers to participation, and making your approach to giving and advocacy more inclusive, values-led, and relevant to the next generation.

Supporters Who Feel Good Give More: Insights From The SAFE Index Supporter Experience Benchmark’
Speakers: Paul Seabrook and Steven Dodds, Beautiful Insights

With the battle for attention and relevance intensifying, making your charity’s brand or fundraising messages truly memorable and motivating is more critical than ever.

This session explores real-world competitive testing using distinctiveness and demand metrics to reveal whether your ideas will stand out or get lost when placed alongside actual competitor messaging. Featuring case studies from UK charities and universities, we’ll show how this approach delivers surprising and actionable insights.

Most organizations test creative ideas in isolation, without considering how they perform against real-world alternatives. This creates an echo chamber where internally popular concepts fail because they weren’t tested against live competition.

We’ll introduce a quantitative method that evaluates ideas head-to-head on two key dimensions: distinctiveness (will it get noticed?) and demand (will it drive action?).

Using the Distinctiveness vs Demand Matrix, you’ll learn to identify powerful “lighthouse” ideas that cut through and convert—while avoiding “hygiene” ideas that feel safe but fade away.

Donors of Tomorrow – Main Findings from Blue State’s Giving Behaviours Tracker 2025
Speaker: Anjali Bewtra, Senior Director, Blue State

The Future of UK Giving: Trends to Watch for 2026

This session will explore evolving behaviours among UK donors, uncovering what motivates them to give, how their habits are changing, and how NGOs should consider engaging them. Attendees will walk away with:

• A breakdown of donor motivations and drivers
• Key shifts in giving
• Emerging trends pointing to 2026 giving patterns

Room 2: Inspire

The Popcorn Principle: A Tasty Approach to Digital Fundraising
Speaker: Craig Linton, Founder, Thread Fundraising

Are you struggling to turn digital leads into dedicated donors? The secret might be in how, and when, you turn up the heat. This session introduces “The Popcorn Principle,” using the simple analogy of making popcorn to improve your digital acquisition and conversion strategy.

Discover how to gently “warm up” potential supporters and discover which supporters are most likely to “pop” when you make an ask and who needs a bit more warming up with nurturing content and meaningful engagement.

Applying too much pressure too soon can “burn” your leads, losing them forever.

Drawing on real-world case studies from our clients, you will leave with practical insights on building effective supporter journeys, optimising conversions, and designing a content calendar that inspires action without causing fatigue.

Key learnings from this session:

1. The ‘popcorn principle’ – what it is and how you can use it.
2. Identifying your best prospect most likely to give.
3. How to develop nurturing and engaging comms.

Demystifying The Data Doom: Understand And Motivate Your Supporters To Give More, For Longer
Speaker: Muna Hussen, Freelance Fundraising and Marketing Consultant, Muna Does Marketing

Data doesn’t have to be scary, and you don’t always need expensive and difficult-to-master tools to understand more about your owned data. But how and where do you even start?

That’s where this session comes in! Allow me to break down ‘data doom’ and empower fundraisers (like you!) to use CRM data to:
1. Understand giving patterns
2. Understand which givers are likely to churn
3. Use data to nudge givers into giving more often (if cash givers), or give more (if regular givers).
4. And use data to tie direct mail drops to online giving (through data segmentation and personalised donation forms).

You’ll leave with quick actionable steps and ways to utilise your data to get fundraisers more excited and become stronger supporters.

Are you giving enough attention to retention?
Speaker: Andrew Taylor-Dawson, Freelance Digital Fundraising and Mobilisation Consultant

Bringing in new leads and reaching untapped audiences is super important – but are you making the most of your email list?

With recruiting new leads and donors becoming more challenging, optimising your list to convert existing leads to become donors has never been more pressing.

This session will focus on that all important ongoing conversion. It will cover:

• impactful supporter journeys that drive ongoing engagement and conversion,
• stopping your leads becoming inactive through timeless content and great experiences, and
• refining your email strategy.

Key learnings from this session:

• How to balance non-financial and financial asks to your email list to drive engagement, loyalty and donations.
• How to stop leads becoming inactive and no longer realistic prospects for conversion.
• An understanding of simple testing plans for supporter journeys and email lists at large.

Why won’t you let me donate?
Speaker: Eoghan Beecher, iRaiser

There are many reasons why someone would choose to donate to a charity of their choice, but there are also many reasons why they might not donate. In this session, we will explore areas that may prevent a supporer from completing an online donation. We will focus on a variety of areas, including creative journeys, user experience and technical implementation.

Our goal is to increase revenue from those who already want to give, but have his an entirely avoidable barrier.

Key learnings from this session:

• UX design
• Payment technology
• Cyber security
• Digital Marketing

How Postal Updates Inspire and Engage Supporters
Speaker: Rhia Docherty, Individual Giving Manager

Supporter experience is one of the most powerful yet underused levers in fundraising. In this session, Rhia shares how her organisation transformed a routine postal appeal into a supporter-led communication that not only deepened connections but also achieved a remarkable 67% uplift in income. Rhia will explore how listening to supporters, responding to their feedback, and investing in high-quality, meaningful updates can turn one-time donors into lifelong advocates. This is not about glossy design for its own sake, but about putting the supporter at the heart of communications and showing them the impact of their generosity in a way that feels authentic, relevant, and rewarding.

Key learnings from this session:

• Supporter experience can uplift your fundraising
• Your supporters tell you what they want if you’re willing to listen
• Multi-channel engagement strengthens long-term relationships

Room 3: Explore

Starting With Strength: The Power of Positive Storytelling in DRTV
Speaker: Ella Prior, Christian Aid

Traditional DRTV storytelling in the charity sector often starts with a stark need – focusing on urgent problems to drive immediate action. But what happens when we flip the narrative? In this session, we explore how beginning with hope, success, and the positive impact of generosity can forge deeper connections, inspire long-term engagement, and align with values like dignity, partnership, and decolonisation.

We’ll share behind-the-scenes insights from Christian Aid’s latest DRTV campaign, which consciously shifted away from familiar tropes of distress towards a message that celebrates donor impact and community resilience. You’ll discover how this fresh approach was developed, tested, and performed – and how you can apply similar principles in your own campaigns.

Key learnings from this session:

1. How to structure a positive-first narrative for DRTV, that still drives response
2. Explore practical ways to build tension and motivate action when your story starts from strength and success rather than crisis.
3. Lessons from testing and implementation: what worked, what surprised us, and what’s next

The return of PSMS: a green shoot for IG
Speaker: Henry Astley, Open

Times are challenging for fundraisers, with public engagement declining and revenues stagnating. But a significant legislative change now offers a new opportunity.

The Data (Use and Access) Act amends regulations that have previously prevented charities from using a ‘soft opt-in’ for contacting supporters. This means that charities will be allowed to re-contact donors who have given via email or text without needing to secure explicit consent.

This change frees Text Giving (PSMS) from the regulation that has hampered it for years, allowing it to make a timely comeback and drive new donors and revenue into the sector. This session will explore how charities can raise more from existing programs, drive additional value from cold activities, and open up new forms of dialogue with younger audiences

We’ll share Open’s expertise from pioneering Text Giving in the UK. We’ll also show how we’ve helped generate over £100 million in text donations from almost 3 million people, giving us unique insights into what works. We’ll discuss how integrating text with conversational experiences within messaging apps like WhatsApp can create richer, more personalised supporter journeys.

Join us to learn how your charity can prepare to make the most of this significant opportunity and reinvigorate your fundraising efforts.

Key learnings from this session:

1. You’ll find out what this change means and how you can make the most of it
2. You’ll understand the fundamentals of making the most of text giving
3. You’ll learn what future opportunities are from the agency that pioneered text giving in the UK

Conversations that Convert: Innovating Dialogue Fundraising
Speaker: Imi Launchbury, ActionAid UK

In our efforts to be increasingly insight led in our decision-making, it’s easy to fall into the trap of over optimisation. Finding the balance between doing what we know works, and innovating our products and techniques, is a tightrope that fundraisers are walking all the time – especially in dialogue communications. The good news is that there are plenty of techniques and tips to help us as we navigate the challenging fundraising environment.

This session explores how charities can improve their dialogue fundraising channels through the use of innovation, with inspiration from an unlikely source.

Key learnings from this session:

• How to use innovation to improve dialogue channels
• How to balance insights with innovation
• How others are embracing dialogue and innovative techniques

Reaching New Donors with Old Channels
Speaker: Jack Watts, Alzheimer’s Society

This session looks at recruiting donors through above the line channels, such as radio, out of home, and press, and how Alzheimer’s Society has achieved great results by leaning into these more traditional media channels. Typically difficult to track and measure, the session will also cover how the team understands the effectiveness of these channels through marketing mix modelling.

Key learnings from this session:

1. The role that above the line channels can play in a cash appeal media plan.
2. Why to embrace the complexity of the modern marketing mix.
3. An overview of how marketing mix modelling can help you quantify the impact of above the line channels.

Tap to transform cash givers to regular donors
Speaker: Lisa Evans, Head of Charity, PAYA Group

As contactless giving becomes increasingly common, it’s no longer just a convenient way to collect donations, it’s a strategic entry point to building deeper, lasting relationships with supporters. In this session, we’ll explore how to move beyond the transaction and use contactless technology as a tool for capturing vital supporter data. You’ll learn why it’s critical to design the donation experience with follow-up in mind, ensuring donors can be re-engaged and nurtured over time.

I’ll provide an overview of the contactless technology currently available to fundraisers, and how it can serve as a gateway to long-term giving, not simply the end point of a donation. While contactless tools are now fundamental for both attended and unattended collections, their full potential is often overlooked. Many charities may be missing out on valuable hidden benefits, which I’ll highlight throughout this session.

Key learnings from this session:

1. How to ensure contactless giving is just the start of the donor journey, not the end.
2. How a structured donation experience can lead to better data and more effective, meaningful engagement.
3. Uncover the hidden value in your current setup and learn how to optimise your reach.

Get back for giving: value exchange in 2025 session
Speaker: Sarah Crowhurst, Hynt

Lead generation isn’t just about collecting emails anymore — it’s about offering something meaningful in return. As the digital landscape evolves, charities are finding success with fresh formats like quizzes, digital value exchange guides, and interactive journeys that do more than capture data: they build trust, deliver value, and prime supporters for action. In this session, hear from fundraising and engagement experts using creative tactics to turn passive audiences into active participants. Discover what’s working, what’s next, and how to go beyond the basic hand-raiser to build deeper, more dynamic supporter relationships.

Key learnings from this session:

• Understand how to design digital value exchange campaigns that drive both lead generation and income
• Learn how to approach developing audience-first lead magnets that work

Programme

Click to download a screen-reader friendly version of the programme.