Using AI to Raise More Funds that Improve the Health and Happiness of Bristol & Weston Patients

Bristol & Weston Hospital Charity is the NHS charity committed to helping their group of hospitals go the extra mile for patients and their families. Despite being a relatively small nonprofit, they are at the forefront of embracing cutting-edge technologies like AI in their fundraising efforts to help more patients thrive.

In recent years, Bristol & Weston had been experiencing declining fundraising returns from their direct mail appeal investments. 

So, in 2023, the charity partnered with Dataro to explore whether machine learning (AI) could enhance their campaign targeting and deliver better appeal returns. They also sought to simplify the data selection process and save valuable time.

In their first fundraising campaign with Dataro (Christmas 2023), the charity used Dataro’s AI donor predictions to significantly reduce their outreach, soliciting the top 500 donors most likely to give at that time.

As a result, they achieved a 260% lift in response rates, increased net appeal revenue by 161% and more than tripled their campaign ROI on the previous years’ campaign.

Key results

Using AI to find donors most likely to give to their Christmas Appeal, Bristol & Weston Hospital Charity achieved:

• 161% increase in net revenue (YOY)
• Response rate of 18.1% (up from 4.9% in 2022)
• Reduced their mail file by 86% YOY
• Campaign ROI of 5.6 (up 331% YOY)

How we did it

Prior to using Dataro, Bristol & Weston Charity Hospital relied on segmentation methods such as RFV for their appeal targeting. This approach was time-consuming and often resulted in wasted outreach to donors who were not likely to give. 

In addition, the charity had been facing a shrinking database of mailable donors and had fallen into the trap of “send to all” in an attempt to secure critical funding. While this approach achieved gross revenue targets, it diminished net revenue and lowered campaign ROIs.

Dataro has an incredible track record for helping nonprofits improve their mail appeal targeting and performance, often securing more donations from less outreach.

In this case, Dataro’s AI software was integrated with the charity’s CRM – Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT to generate propensities for the charity’s active cash donors, predicting how likely each donor would be to donate to an appeal at that time. These predictions were updated weekly in the charity’s CRM against the donor record as a % of likelihood to give and as a rank. 

For the Christmas 2023 Appeal, the charity decided to manage its mailing in-house and set a threshold of 500 donors to solicit. This was an 86% reduction from the previous year’s mail file.

Using Dataro’s AI donor scores and ranks, the charity identified the Top 500 donors to solicit, sending only to those predicted most likely to give at that time. 

Analyzing the results

In their first appeal using Dataro’s AI donor predictions to guide their appeal selections, Bristol & Weston accurately identified which donors were ready to give again and raised 161% more in net revenue (YOY) from significantly less outreach than usual. 

By identifying ready-to-give donors and using Dataro’s recommended ask amounts to inform their ask ladders, the charity raised £3,721 from 548 solicited donors. 

While gross revenue was down on the previous year’s campaign, the highly targeted approach translated to an increase in response rates (from 4.9% to 18.1%), an increase in average gift (from £32.78 to £43.76), and substantially higher net revenue (161% increase). 

Additionally, the campaign achieved a 331% increase in fundraising ROI (lifting ROI from 1.3 to 5.6).

Using Dataro’s AI donor predictions also streamlined the data selection process and reduced their mail file preparation from 4 hours to 1 hour.

The charity now uses Dataro’s AI targeting approach to inform their targeting decisions and identify the best donors for inclusion in their appeals for best returns. They are currently testing Dataro’s recurring giving model to identify the best donors to convert to monthly giving.