Dove House Hospice quadrupled its Christmas appeal from £7,000 to £28,000 in two years

Dove House Hospice provides specialist care for adults with progressive life-limiting illnesses across Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire.

For years, the fundraising team approached its Christmas appeal in a familiar way: a standard direct mail pack to a defined group of warm donors, using consistent messaging focused on the hospice’s work. It worked, but results remained modest. A few years ago, the appeal generated around £7,000.

In 2025, the team partnered with Dataro for the third consecutive year to determine where a small team could focus for outsized impact.

A strategic approach for a small team

Over recent years, Dove House Hospice has been reworking donor selection for appeals.

Rather than defaulting to the same segments each year, the team started using Dataro’s rankings to guide who should be included in each campaign.

This approach to list building:

• Prioritised donors most likely to respond

• Identified higher-value supporters who might give more if engaged

• Reintroduced lapsed donors with strong reactivation potential

Instead of asking “who did we mail last year?” the starting question became: who is most likely to respond to this appeal right now?

This shift became the foundation for how the team plans campaigns today.

Taking the 2025 Christmas appeal to the next level

For the 2025 campaign, Dove House Hospice combined several compounding changes:

1. Expanding beyond traditional segments

The team moved beyond a core group of warm donors and included:

• Lapsed supporters identified as strong reactivation candidates

• Mid-value and higher-value donors who might not have been prioritised previously

This ensured the campaign reached donors with both propensity to give and capacity to give more.

2. Aligning messaging with match funding

For the first time, Dove House Hospice participated in the Big Give, a UK-based match-funding campaign where donations are doubled during a set period.

The team used the opportunity to shift the appeal messaging to emphasise urgency and the impact of matched donations.

3. Personalising outreach to high-value donors

For higher-value supporters, the team implemented Dataro’s recommendation to send highly targeted handwritten notes alongside the appeal.

Rather than scaling broadly, they focused effort where it would matter most.

Thanks to the additional touch, some of the recipients went on to 2x their previous gift amounts.

Adding handwritten notes was a small change, but it made a noticeable difference with our higher-value donors. It was a recommendation made by Dataro that proved to be really valuable to our appeal.

Evie Carlton

Individual Giving Fundraiser @ Dove House Hospice

Progressively stronger results across 3 years

The Big Give campaign alone generated £20,700 during the campaign week.

With additional donations from direct mail and other channels, the total reached just under £28,000—a significant increase from previous years:

Response rates and average gift sizes also improved, indicating not just more donors giving, but also donors giving more.

This approach reduces the need to “play it safe” with large mailing volumes and instead supports more confident, targeted decisions.

Looking ahead: year 4

Going into the fourth year partnering with Dataro, Dove House Hospice continues to test new ways to best engage donors. The team plans to:

• Apply rankings across new campaign types, such as a summer cash appeal

• Invite high-value donors to an in-person hospice visit

• Use Dataro’s legacy rankings to target potential legacy donors without fatiguing the segment

Each campaign has built on the last for a more consistent and repeatable approach to fundraising.

We’re still finding new ways to improve year on year and refine what we’re doing. It’s not something that stops after the first year.

Evie Carlton

Individual Giving Fundraiser @ Dove House Hospice