How Southern Hospice Group more than 2x'ed its winter appeal target with Dataro

Southern Hospice Group planned its winter appeal soon after a group restructure. The team needed to build a targeted mailing file without turning campaign prep into weeks of manual query work.

The first winter appeal as Southern Hospice Group

Southern Hospice Group approached this winter appeal as a merged group with a new operating structure. The fundraising team still had to do the same core fundraising work, but now at a larger scale. The question became: how to build a better file without spending weeks on manual list work?

Manual lists: long lead time, short shelf life

Before Dataro, the team built winter appeal audiences by hand in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT. The process took nearly 100 queries just to create a selection pool. It meant selecting segments, removing them from one another and merging them repeatedly until the mailing file was ready.

"It took nearly a hundred queries that would take weeks," explained Amy Cook, Database & Insights Manager. While the resulting lists achieved their fundraising goals, the static selection pool expired quickly. The first use yielded the highest return, decreasing in effectiveness by the next appeal when the process would begin anew. Campaigns therefore always started from scratch and demanded a huge amount of work up front.

Leveraging Dataro for strategic targeting

The team previously had little time left to strategically check assumptions and ask whether the appeal was reaching the right people. Dataro gave the team a way to run AI and human review side by side.

"When you're pulling 100 queries, you're having to repeat the same as you've done previously because you haven't got the space to think. Dataro frees up that element to go, well, okay, we have our list, but what are we missing?" explained Claire Docteur, Database & Reporting Executive.

Dataro turned a broad file into ranked audiences for a faster build

For the winter appeal, the Dataro team ranked the full file to 90,000 records. The team then built the audience in layers—starting with the ranked audience, then adding the high-value donors segment and the 24-month lapse segment.

From there, the team used a much smaller set of queries to sweep up the remaining audience and apply exclusions. Instead of spending days on query chains, the team could evaluate and customize the ranked outputs before making final decisions. "What used to take us weeks has gone down to probably about a week," Amy said.

Doubling the original £100,000 target

Southern Hospice Group's winter appeal had an original individual giving target of £100,000. When the team hit the goal midway through the campaign, they increased it to £150,000…which they later beat again. The 2025 winter appeal raised approximately £240,000 in total, up from £131,000 the previous year. The team also moved away from expensive door drops, which incurred £65,000 of costs alone in 2024. "Half the work and you get double the result; who wouldn't want that?" said Amy.

The appeal also brought in supporters who had not been part of the winter file before and matched the ask to donor potential instead of defaulting to a smaller amount out of caution. The approach yielded a 59% upgrade rate and a 55.3% repeat donor rate, indicating the file reached both loyal supporters and those with giving potential. "The people that are donating are the people we want to keep," said Amy.

The team will reuse the approach next winter

Southern Hospice Group plans to use the same model again for the next winter appeal. As priorities settle across the group, Dataro will continue to help the team navigate where the approach fits next.