The Leprosy Mission Great Britain doubled appeal ROI and lifted net revenue 42% in a single campaign

By 2024, every appeal felt like a trade-off at The Leprosy Mission New Zealand. Mailing costs had doubled. Response rates were sliding. And appeals were still going to 18,000 donors, with no clear way to tell which sends were worth the postage.

A small but committed fundraising team kept a busy appeals calendar moving with help from an external mailhouse and static RFM segments in Salesforce. To hit list volumes, the mailhouse would top up files with lapsed donors who had almost no chance of giving.

That meant the team was paying to reach people who were not going to respond, and quietly missing donors who were ready to give. Visibility into who was being mailed, and why, was thin. Ask amounts came from a fixed ladder that did not reflect what each donor could actually give.

For a small team, the cost of guesswork was real. Every wasted letter ate the budget. Every uniform ask treated a donor like a row in a segment.

A precision-first approach to appeals

The team partnered with Dataro to replace static segmentation with ranked decisions. The goal was simple: reach the right donors, cut waste and protect both revenue and the donor relationship.

The plan:

1. Score every donor. Dataro integrated with the team's Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack and ranked each donor's likelihood to give to each appeal. Scores refreshed weekly in Dataro and in Salesforce, so targeting reflected current behavior rather than last year's segments.

2. Build the audience from the top down. Using Dataro's Audience Builder, the team started with the highest-ranked donors and excluded donors unlikely to respond. Suppression rules — preferences, segments and communication status — lived in one place, with full visibility.

3. Size the audience for return, not volume. Dataro's Campaign Size Recommendations identified the audience size that maximized ROI, replacing the habit of mailing to a target list count.

4. Match the ask to the donor. AI-driven ask amounts used each donor's giving history and capacity to suggest a relevant ask, replacing the static ladder.

5. Keep fundraisers in control. Every decision stayed with the team. Inclusions, exclusions and ask amounts were inspectable, so the team could explain and defend every choice.

A record-breaking Year-End Appeal

In its first Year-End Appeal using this approach, The Leprosy Mission NZ:

• Sent 8,000 fewer letters, a 45% reduction in volume

• Increased the response rate from 16% to 27%, up 69% year-on-year

• Grew net revenue by $42,674, up 10.3%

• Raised the average gift from $176 to $190

• Grew gross revenue to $511,000, up from $497,000

• Hit a campaign ROI of 819%, a record for the organization

The momentum carried into the World Leprosy Day campaign in January, where the average gift rose another $56 over the previous year.

Why precision won

The old playbook assumed that mailing more donors raised more money. The data said otherwise. Mailing fewer of the right donors raised more, cost less and protected the relationship with supporters who were not ready to give yet.

For a small team, the leverage was tangible:

• Less manual list work

• Fewer handoffs to the mailhouse

• Clearer accountability for each campaign decision

• More time spent on strategy and stewardship, less on segmentation

Dataro is now the standard targeting approach across every Leprosy Mission NZ appeal. The fundraising team builds high-performing audiences in-house, runs them faster, and can explain every decision behind a campaign.