How Sarcoma UK used Dataro to strengthen appeal targeting and identify a $10k donor

The philanthropy team at Sarcoma UK used Dataro to select the audience for a regular giving appeal and reach the 2500 people most likely to respond. The campaign outperformed the previous year, converting 24 new regular giving supporters from a comparable list size.

Establishing an annual campaign rhythm

Sarcoma UK charity funds research and campaigns for earlier diagnosis and better treatment for sarcoma, a rare cancer of the bone and soft tissue.

Sarah Thorn, philanthropy and partnerships manager, and Emma Delin, senior individual giving officer, are part of Sarcoma UK’s three-person individual giving team. The team covers major donors, trusts and foundations, appeals, regular giving, in-memory giving and legacies.

The team’s first priority involved turning the previously reactive campaign calendar into a clear annual plan: one regular giving campaign, one cash appeal, one thankathon and two legacy appeals.

That structure gave Sarcoma UK a repeatable annual rhythm and a clearer way to allocate time across the whole donor journey instead of treating each appeal as a one-off.

Before Dataro, every appeal list was manually segmented and hand-built

Historically, appeal audiences were built manually with support from the database team. Each campaign required working out the criteria, checking which records fit, then going back and forth until the list was ready.

“It took a long time, and it was hard to know what to look for and which data to pull from the list,” Emma explained.

The team had to choose the right signals, translate them into criteria and then ask a technical collaborator with limited context on the campaign to assemble the list. The process created a bottleneck, demanding more of the small team’s time than was sustainable across a year of regular appeals.

An intelligent way to decide who should receive each appeal

The team recognised early on the untapped potential of their existing data. At the time, predictive AI was still new in fundraising, but the team knew there was a better way to build audiences, beyond the limited capabilities of their CRM’s built-in predictive offering.

Dataro gave Sarcoma UK a better way to rank supporters and decide who should receive each appeal. The new recommendation workflow, integrated with their CRM, allowed the team to identify supporters most likely to respond positively to each appeal.

It felt like we were working smarter. We were actually reaching the people who really were interested in hearing from us. That's really good because, yes, you bring in more income, but you’re also not bothering people who might not be interested.

Emma Delin

Senior Individual Giving Officer @ Sarcoma UK

The appeal generated 24 regular giving conversions, outperforming the previous year's benchmark

The clearest proof came in Sarcoma UK’s 2025 regular giving campaign. The team used Dataro to select the mailing audience for a direct mail and email appeal to approximately 2,500 supporters. The campaign ran in July, Sarcoma Awareness Month.

The content focused on Sarcoma UK’s support line and featured a supporter case study showing the impact of the service. Despite mailing a similar list size, the campaign outperformed the previous year’s benchmark, generating 24 new donors from Dataro-ranked supporters.

The targeted approach also surfaced an unexpected major gift. One supporter, who would not have met the team’s previous audience criteria, gave £10,000 and later made a further donation.

Less list work, more time for stewardship

With the time saved on segmentation, the team managed to run two cash appeals last year rather than just one. They also implemented an annual thankathon, bringing together the wider charity staff to contact supporters via handwritten card, phone call, text or voice message simply to say thank you. The no-ask initiative gave the team another way to deepen relationships and show appreciation—using Dataro as a guide for which supporters to prioritise thank-yous to.

“It was really well received. We even had supporters thanking us for our thank yous,” noted Sarah.

The list-creation process still lightly involves the database team, but the fundraising team can now build the list in Dataro, run a data check, and move on. With their technical counterparts on the monthly Dataro calls, the cross-team collaboration has improved, too. There’s more upfront context for predictability and visibility, with less back-and-forth.

“Working with the Dataro team has made our work more visible inside Sarcoma UK. The database team now actually know what we’re working on without needing to be as involved in the old manual work, ironically enough,” said Emma.

Dataro just makes doing appeals less stressful.

Sarah Thorn

Philanthropy and Partnerships Manager @ Sarcoma UK

What comes next

Sarcoma UK is now applying the same approach to its legacy work. Upcoming changes to inheritance tax in the UK will affect how the team talks about wills. Dataro will help segment supporters for informational webinars, in-person events and direct mail so the right people receive clear, timely guidance as the rules become more complex.