November 21, 2024
AI Can Be Your Most Powerful Tool for Growing Midlevel Giving
Tips and best practices for building a reliable and efficient task management process.
The Leprosy Mission New Zealand relies on the generosity of a loyal and committed donor base to support its mission of creating a world free from leprosy.
To meet its annual fundraising goals, a small but dedicated fundraising team managed a busy calendar of appeals. With limited resources, the Leprosy Mission team depended on an external supplier and static RFM segmentation to target their campaigns.
By 2024, this approach was under strain. Mailing costs had doubled and declining response rates signaled growing donor fatigue. With limited visibility into how mailing selections were being made, the team also suspected they were over-mailing some donors while overlooking others who were ready to give.
Looking for a smarter, more effective solution, The Leprosy Mission NZ partnered with Dataro to take control of their targeting and adopt an AI-powered audience-first approach, backed by predictive donor insights.
The goal was simple: reach the right donors, reduce wasted outreach, and deliver a better experience for supporters - all while protecting fundraising revenue.
In their first year-end appeal using Dataro’s AI platform, The Leprosy Mission NZ significantly improved campaign performance from the previous year. Smarter audience targeting using AI insights enabled a 45% reduction in mailing volume alongside a 69% increase in response rates, which resulted in a 10% lift in net revenue and a record-breaking ROI of 819%.
By using AI-informed ask amounts, the team also increased the average gift from $176 to $190, encouraging greater generosity from donors most likely to give.
In their first campaign using Dataro’s AI platform for the Year-End Appeal targeting, The Leprosy Mission NZ achieved:
This momentum continued into their World Leprosy Day campaign in January, where the charity again surpassed the previous year’s performance, most notably increasing the average gift by $56.
AI-powered audience targeting with Dataro is now the standard approach for all of The Leprosy Mission NZ’s fundraising campaigns.
Ahead of their Year-End Appeal, the charity integrated Dataro’s platform with their Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack. Using machine learning, Dataro generated donor propensity scores, ranking each donor’s likelihood to give to a specific appeal at that time. These scores were updated weekly in the Dataro platform (and Salesforce instance), ensuring targeting decisions were based on the most current data, rather than static segmentation criteria.
The in-house fundraising team used Dataro’s dynamic Audience Builder to create a precision-targeted audience for the appeal. In this instance, they pulled a list of top-ranked donors most likely to give, excluding donors with a low likelihood to respond. They also applied Dataro’s Campaign Size Recommendations to identify the optimal audience size for maximum ROI, significantly reducing mailing volume without compromising results. Using Dataro’s built-in exclusion tools, the team managed all suppression rules such as donor preferences, segments, and communication status. This process gave them complete control and visibility over who was included in the appeal audience.
The team also implemented Dataro’s AI-powered Ask Amount Recommendations, which tailored donation requests based on each donor’s giving history and predicted capacity. By analyzing average and maximum past gifts, Dataro suggested optimal ask amounts designed to reflect each donor’s capacity and likelihood to give more.
With Dataro, the team adopted an audience-first strategy, targeting only those with a high likelihood to give, using ask amounts tailored to each donor, and managing all campaign logic in one place. It gave them greater efficiency, deeper insights, and more confidence in their targeting decisions.
Before switching to Dataro, the charity’s campaign targeting relied on broad, static segmentation managed primarily through an external mailhouse and the Salesforce wizard. To meet gross revenue targets and mailing volumes, the mailhouse would often top up the mailing file with lapsed donors who had little likelihood of responding.
While this approach maintained list volumes and reached a wide audience, it overlooked donors’ actual engagement and giving potential, leading to over-mailing, missed opportunities, and declining campaign performance.
Lacking deeper insights into donor behavior and with limited visibility into who was being selected and why, the fundraising team also risked missing high-potential donors entirely. A static ask ladder strategy was also likely leading to asking donors for gifts that didn’t reflect their true capacity and willingness to give.
To improve targeting and performance, The Leprosy Mission NZ shifted to a more advanced, AI-powered approach — one that prioritised each donor’s likelihood to give and enabled a truly audience-first strategy.
By targeting only the donors most likely to give, the team reduced their mailing list from 18,000 to 10,000, a 45% drop in volume. Despite reaching fewer people, they saw a 69% increase in response rate, from 16% in 2023 to 27% in 2024. Gross revenue rose to $511,000 (up from $497,000 on the previous year), and net revenue increased to $455,395, a 10% lift compared to the previous year.
Perhaps most notably, campaign ROI reached 819%, a record for the organization.
Gift value also improved. By using Dataro’s AI-powered ask amounts, tailored to each donor’s giving history, the average gift increased from $176 to $190. This uplift in giving continued in the charity’s World Leprosy Day campaign the following January, where the average gift increased by a further $56 compared to the previous year.
Dataro’s AI-powered targeting is now standard across all of The Leprosy Mission NZ’s campaigns. The fundraising team is now more empowered and better equipped to build high-performing audiences in-house in a faster, more efficient way.
The result: stronger fundraising outcomes, better donor experiences, and a meaningful step toward truly audience-first fundraising.
We’re a 100-year-old charity with supporters who’ve stood by us for decades, but that doesn’t mean we need to keep doing things the old way. I was tired of the status quo: outsourcing our targeting, relying on outdated methods, and padding the mail file with lapsed donors just to hit revenue targets. It was inefficient, costly, and frankly, not good enough for our donors. With Dataro, we’ve stopped guessing. We’re targeting the right donors, at the right time, with the right ask - and the results speak for themselves. We mailed 8,000 fewer people and still raised more, with a 27% response rate. Now, we’re fully in control. I can see exactly who we’re mailing and why. It’s smarter, it’s more efficient, and it works. AI isn’t scary, it’s empowering. It’s putting fundraisers like us in the driver’s seat, giving us insights we’ve never had before. And the better we know our data, the better decisions we make — for our donors and for the people we’re here to help. Simple as that.
Leanne Ryburn
Marketing & Fundraising Manager
Leprosy Mission New Zealand
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