St Helena Hospice provides specialist palliative and end-of-life care to local people facing incurable illness in North East Essex, supporting them, their families, friends and carers. Dataro partnered with the dedicated fundraising team at St Helena with the aim of increasing net revenue in the Hospice’s vital direct mail appeals, a task that is becoming increasingly important as inflation continues to raise the cost of delivering critical services.

In the first campaign with Dataro, St Helena achieved an 8.6% increase in net revenue and actually received more gifts overall whilst sending 600 fewer letters.

Key results

• 8.6% increase in net revenue

• 15.6% increase in response rate (from 8.53% to 9.86%)

• 21% lift in campaign ROI, pushing campaign ROI above 200%

How we did it

The team at St Helena is motivated to use technology to raise more funds for end-of-life care, so integrated Dataro with the Hospice’s CRM, Raiser’s Edge NXT.

Using machine learning, Dataro generated predictive ranks and scores assessing each individual’s propensity to give in the Christmas Appeal. Using these ranks and scores, the fundraisers at St Helena were able to find the donors most likely to give whilst also identifying donors who should be rested from the campaign, reducing mailing costs and donor fatigue.

The experiment demonstrated how St Helena could effectively streamline their list selections by engaging with the right supporters at the right time, raising more money with less outreach. Predictive ranks and scores are automatically updated each week, so future campaigns can be generated quickly and easily.

Analysing the Results

Dataro’s machine learning approach generated a better response rate than the traditional method for building campaign lists.

What’s next

Dataro is proud to be supporting St Helena’s data-driven fundraising approach, which sets the example for how small fundraising teams can embrace new tools and achieve amazing results for their cause.

St Helena and Dataro are now partnering across new programme areas such as raffles and regular giving with the aim of growing the fundraising programme sustainably and building deeper connections with St Helena’s donors.