Digital Fundraising; More questions than answers?

Watch our recorded Q&A digital fundraising webinar where your questions are answered by an expert panel.

Digital Fundraising

Digital fundraising has rapidly grown in importance, raising key questions for charities around where to start, what works, and how to succeed online. While tools and platforms continue to evolve, the fundamentals of good fundraising still apply—strategy, messaging and supporter engagement remain critical.

Where to Start with Digital Fundraising

The biggest challenge isn’t technology—it’s direction. Start with a clear fundraising plan and integrate digital as part of your wider strategy, not as a standalone activity.

Focus on:

Your audience and how they engage online
Your goals (income, awareness, engagement)
The channels that best reach your supporters

Digital Fundraising Channels

Digital opens up multiple routes to engage supporters:

Online Giving Platforms

Tools like donation pages and peer-to-peer fundraising make it easy for supporters to give and fundraise on your behalf.

Email and Direct Messaging

A cost-effective way to build relationships, share impact and encourage regular giving.

Social Media

Drives visibility, storytelling and community engagement—particularly powerful for campaigns and peer-led fundraising.

Events and Virtual Campaigns

From livestreams to virtual challenges, digital events replicate traditional fundraising in new formats.

Key Trends and Insights

Drawing on webinar insights:

Digital is an enabler, not a replacement—it supports existing fundraising rather than replacing it
Successful organisations blend online and offline approaches
Growth comes from testing, learning and improving, not one-off campaigns
Supporters expect simple, seamless donation journeys

What Makes Digital Fundraising Successful?

Across the panel insights, three factors stand out:

1. Strong Messaging

Clear, compelling messaging is essential. Supporters need to understand:

Why your cause matters
What their donation will achieve

2. Supporter Experience

The easier it is to give, the more likely people are to complete a donation. Remove barriers and optimise for mobile.

3. Consistency

Digital success comes from ongoing activity, not one campaign. Build regular touchpoints and relationships over time.

Common Challenges

Charities often struggle with:

Limited digital skills or capacity
Uncertainty around which platforms to use
Balancing new digital activity with existing workload

The solution is to start small, test approaches, and build confidence gradually.

Practical Tips

Start with one or two channels and do them well
Use data and insights to refine your approach
Ensure all digital activity links back to a clear ask
Combine digital fundraising with traditional methods
Focus on long-term supporter relationships, not just quick wins

Final Thought

Digital fundraising isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about embedding digital into your strategy, experimenting with confidence, and staying focused on what drives supporter engagement.

Our panellists included:

Nick Day; DSC Associate and Managing Director at MailMax Ltd

Besides his role at MailMax Nick also delivers training for the Chartered Institute of Marketing, he lectures for the Oxford College of Marketing and works with small and large charities to get their digital fundraising off the ground.

Gill Jolly; DSC Associate and Director at Achieve Consultants Ltd

Gill has a wealth of experience in most aspects of fundraising and is able to apply key fundraising principles in the digital context. Here she gives her three considerations for organisations considering their step into digital fundraising.

Veronica McBain, Head of Fundraising and Lottery at St Barnabas Hospice

Veronica shares stories of success in digital fundraising and what she thinks were the critical success factors. As well as being a full time fundraiser, Veronica is a Trustee of the Hospice Income Generation Network so is well placed to answer your questions from the fundraiser’s perspective.

Alex Coleridge, Co-founder at GiveStar

A co-founder of a digital fundraising platform, Alex has a wealth of experience in the field. In this webinar, he shares insights into the key trends in digital fundraising.

Charity fundraising webinars

Q&A: Major Donors’ Voices – Busting the Myths

This Major Donors’ Voices webinar, drew more than 1,800 registrations, and far more questions than we could answer live. So, we brought fundraising consultants Louise Morris of Summit Fundraising and Davinia Batley of Champion Fundraising back, hosted by Ian Tate, to tackle the ones that came up most. From defining a major gift to making the ask, stewardship on a stretched budget and the rise of donor advised funds — here are their practical, myth-busting answers.

Major Donors’ Voices – Busting the Myths

Most fundraisers carry a mental picture of the major donor: wealthy, probably male, probably drawn to prestigious events. That picture shapes strategy and according to fundraising specialists Davinia Batley and Louise Morris, it's usually wrong. Drawing on more than 150 interviews with philanthropists and major donors, Davinia and Louise recently delivered a webinar that challenged seven of the most persistent assumptions in the sector. Over 1,700 fundraisers registered to hear it. Here’s the webinar recording and the insights that matter most.

What Companies Want from Charity Partnerships

In this webinar, fundraising expert Andy King and Chris Pitt explained what makes charity partnerships work. The webinar highlights that the strongest partnerships are built when charities understand what a company is trying to achieve and shape the relationship around that. In return for their support, companies are usually looking for clear impact, opportunities to engage their people, and ways to communicate the partnership externally.

webinar cover for trust and foundations insights article

The List Two Years On – Insights for Trusts & Foundations Fundraising

Jo Jeffrey, the fundraising consultant behind The List, has catalogued every pause, restructure, early closure and spend-out across UK trusts and foundations since 2024. In this webinar, she shares what the data is telling us, what it means for your portfolio, and seven practical principles for fundraising with more confidence in a harder landscape.

Charity Risk + Insurance Outlook 2026

Access Insurance presents the key risks for charities and insurance market changes to look out for in 2026.

Charity founders: stronger together

In a recent Benefact Group webinar, two founders - one from the charity sector, one from business - sat down to talk about the things that rarely make it into conference slides or annual reports. What emerged was honest, practical, and quietly powerful.

Storytelling: How to attract and nurture donors

We all love a good story! And our ability to tell compelling, powerful and engaging stories is arguably one of the most valuable tools in our fundraising armoury.

How to secure corporate funding and partnerships

Companies in the UK give roughly £2 billion to the charity sector a year - but they also give much more than money. They lend skills, social media channels and can even help solve the problems you exist to tackle.

Trusts and Foundations: How to write a winning application

Discover top tips on Trusts and Foundations fundraising in this insightful webinar with Layla Moosavi Rivers, a fundraising trainer, consultant and mentor with over 25 years of experience across the charitable sector and the arts. Layla is joined by Chris Pitt, Group Impact Director, Benefact Group and Helen Gray, Trust Director, Benefact Trust providing their insights from a funder’s perspective.

Maximising success: What’s hot in fundraising right now

Fundraising is a dynamic landscape. Keeping abreast of new trends and strategies is crucial for maximising impact. Our speakers share useful data, provide a picture of the current and emerging landscape and provide pointers on what to keep an eye on in the short to medium term.

FundrAIsing: How to improve fundraising opportunities with AI

AI continues to be a hot topic. In this session we will explore the potential opportunities and challenges that rapidly developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology will bring for charities. We will look at how AI is already being used to help deliver charitable social missions in innovative new ways, and how the technology might radically alter the operating environment for charities in the future, by creating both new ways of working as well as new practical and ethical challenges.

How to ensure you are set up for fundraising success

DSC Associate Richard Sved, co-author of Fundraising Strategy and author of Charity Fundraising Templates brings his usual mix of inspiration, passion, and practical examples to this important topic. He brings with him the experience of leading fundraising teams at over ten national charities, and advising dozens of others, so get ready for a fast-paced session packed with detail.

Positive Teams: Recruitment, Retention and Wellbeing

Getting the right people and looking after them the right way means that staff stay with us, and stay happy with us. However, these things go beyond process, policies and procedures. They are about more than having written up documents on ‘things managers should do in the event of’. It is about our values and organisational culture, who we are being as managers and leaders, as well as what we are doing.

Digital Fundraising: Tools and Tactics

The developments in digital communications mean that digital fundraising is pretty much a must for all of us now.

Writing Winning Fundraising Applications Questions and Answers

In this recording Layla Moosavi, Associate Trainer, Directory of Social Change and Chris Pitt, Impact Direct, Benefact group delve into the questions posed following our ‘Writing Winning Funding Applications’ webinar, providing further insight into what makes a winning funding application, how to make your application stand out and how to secure those all-important funds.

Webinar, Writing Winning Funding Applications

Writing Winning Fundraising Applications

In this workshop Layla Moosavi, Associate Trainer, Directory of Social Change, looks at how our approach to funding applications has changed within the shifting funding landscape and shares some top tips for writing winning applications. This session is a useful reminder for those who have some experience – successful or otherwise, as well as those at the starting line.

Funding core costs: In principle and in practice

Asking funders for Core Costs is an eternal conundrum for fundraisers – funders often say they don’t fund these, but we know they’re essential for project development and management as well as the provision of day-to-day services. In this workshop style webinar, we talk about the need for securing essential costs and some practical ways to breakdown the costs, and frame that for funders and for funding applications.

Developing and nurturing high value relationships

Many organisations dismiss “Major Giving” because they assume it is too expensive, believe they need connections to millionaires or worry about how to justify a ‘big ask’ of donors. In this webinar, Mark Carrigan, MD Carrigan Consulting Ltd draws on his 20+ years of experience in facilitating high value relationships to show that achieving transformational results is attainable for organisations of any size. He outlines the process, provides straightforward frameworks for success, shares hard-truth realities, and offers strategies for avoiding the pitfalls.

A practical introduction to social impact measurement

Being able to demonstrate the impact of your work can improve your chances of funding. Join us for this introductory session on social impact measurement and discover simple and practical steps to begin or improve your impact reporting journey.

How to deliver successful fundraising challenge events

Events can provide a valuable source of funding. Join us for guidance on how to maximise income from your attendees and help your participants hit the ground running.. … or cycling, walking, skydiving, etc!

Pitch-perfect funding applications

With increasing demand on funders, applications have become very competitive. To maximise your chances of success it’s vital that any application is as close to perfection as possible.

Valuing volunteers

Volunteers are the life blood of the charitable sector. So how can we ensure we engage with and attract potential new volunteers, retain existing volunteers, and build volunteer advocacy?

Fundraising is friend-raising: Donor care and stewardship

Effective donor care and stewardship underpin successful fundraising efforts and is all about building long term relationships.

Cost of Living: Help and Hope

From increased demands on services to reduced donations, the current cost of living crisis is placing the charitable sector under significant pressure.

Social Media Fundraising

Over 4.7 billion people around the world use social media. It can be a fantastic way for charities to build their network, reach new audiences, share success stories and importantly, boost donations.

Legacy Fundraising 101

Legacies (or gifts in Wills) are the fastest growing source of income for charities. In this recorded webinar, we attempt to simplify legacy fundraising and cover why legacy giving is growing, why people leave legacies and when and why people make a Will.

Managing fundraising events

Expert insights on what the cost-of-living crisis means for fundraising events.

Corporate Partnerships

Working with the Directory of Social Change we brought together an expert panel who shared their tips on all things corporate fundraising.

Going digital

Many charities are keen to tap into digital opportunities both to raise money but also to maintain relationships with donors.

Your fundraising message in current times

Fundraising is ineffective when it’s a one-way process.

Funding Applications: A Practical Guide

Expert insights on increasing your chances of grant application success.

The fundraising sources

Support from individuals, corporates and grant-making bodies are just three key areas to source income for your charity.

The fundraising plan

A fundraising plan is a must to enable your organisation to have the confidence that it can generate income and run the services it provides.