When Strategy, Creative and Digital Work Together, Fundraisers & Their Supporters Benefit Most

For charities and NFPs, 2026 brings both challenge and opportunity. Supporter expectations are shifting, digital landscapes are evolving rapidly, and competition for attention — and trust — is higher than ever. In this environment, organisations need more than a supplier. They need a safe pair of hands. A partner who understands the sector deeply, works collaboratively, and brings proven strategic, creative and digital capability.

For over 25 years, Marlin Communications has worked hard to become that partner; the trusted agency charities choose when they want experience they can rely on and ideas bold enough to drive growth.

 

Decades of Experience, Driven by Purpose

We are a company that inspires support for your cause, acting as a partner that connects your charity to creativity at every step of the supporter experience. For more than two decades, charities have been our entire focus, helping shape the fundraising landscape in Australia and New Zealand by building brands, crafting campaigns, and designing supporter experiences that have raised millions while strengthening long-term donor relationships.

We work at the intersection of insight, identity, and technology to drive growth with ideas that truly keep giving. And while we bring deep experience, nothing we create is ever off-the-shelf. Every charity is distinct, so we tailor our thinking, processes, and outputs to fit your mission, your audience, and your moment.

Being a safe pair of hands doesn’t mean being static or predictable; we are energised by helping charities achieve something both strategic and ingenious. Curiosity fuels our approach as we are lifelong learners and innovators, constantly evolving, testing new tools, and adopting smarter ways of working to help charities adapt, thrive, and grow.

 

Client Partnerships Built on Trust and Collaboration

Marlin’s strongest credential is the way we work with clients. We don’t just deliver projects, we build ideas that last. Many of our relationships and communications span five, ten, even fifteen years, because charities trust that we:

• Listen deeply and co-create rather than impose solutions
• Adapt our work to fit each organisation’s structure, capacity, and goals
• Provide clarity, guidance, and strategic stability during complex projects
• Show up consistently — ethically, transparently, and with genuine respect

Our five-phase methodology — Immerse, Insight, Idea, Implement, Inform — reflects this partnership mindset, giving teams a shared process and a sense of confidence that every project is handled with care, expertise and foresight. We create strong insight, good ideas, and ensure buy-in; the work we create together isn’t merely released into the world and then forgotten. It’s an idea that our charity partners can return to again and again, or as we like to call it, an idea that keeps giving.

 

Brand Strategy That Connects Every Channel

In 2026, sustainable income relies on a clear, unified brand message supported by integrated communications across every channel. That’s why the core of our strategic work is the Fundraising Value Proposition (FVP), the message that aligns your fundraising, brand and supporter experience.

A strong FVP creates:

• Clarity, ensuring everyone speaks with one voice;
• Consistency, aligning acquisition, retention and program-based fundraising;
• Stronger supporter relationships, reducing attrition and increasing loyalty.

Marlin brings the brand, fundraising and digital disciplines together under one roof, ensuring the FVP flows seamlessly into campaigns, donor journeys, storytelling, design, paid media, and digital content.

We are also unique in Australia as a Certified CultureTalk practitioner. This system has been built in partnership with psychologists to help identify the archetypal character of a given organisation. Its survey tool provides Marlin’s client partners a robust way to diagnose and then convey their authentic characters and personality traits.

 

Digital: A Powerful Enabler for Fundraisers

A high-performing digital program isn’t just a set of tools and tactics, it’s a human-centred ecosystem designed to empower fundraisers to do their best work. Digital becomes most effective when it gives fundraisers clearer insight, better pathways, and more ways to move supporters from first touch, to first gift, to lifelong advocacy. 

It starts by understanding every moment a donor has with your organisation: the way they discover you, the stories they encounter, the pages they land on, the emails they receive, and the journeys that guide them toward meaningful action.

When these touchpoints are designed intentionally and optimised collectively, digital becomes far more than a series of campaigns. It becomes a scalable growth system. Importantly, it gives fundraisers the space to do what we know works:

• Testing ideas at pace to learn what resonates;
• Creating two-way conversations to help supporters feel seen and valued;
• Delivering personalised experiences that deepen loyalty and increase lifetime value.

Acquisition, conversion, retention, and upgrade activity all reinforce each other, forming a continuous loop of engagement. Insight from one channel fuels improvements in another; data deepens personalisation; content strengthens trust; and every interaction becomes a chance to deepen connection and deliver value back to the supporter.

This is the work we bring our 25+ years of fundraising experience to – building digital ecosystems where strategy, creativity, technology, and behavioural understanding all flow together. A safe pair of hands, yes – but hands that are also curious, always learning, always pushing for what’s next so your digital program doesn’t just perform, it compounds. 

From websites and UX, to content, journeys, search, social, email, and optimisation, we deliver a fully integrated digital service suite that powers sustainable fundraising growth.

 

A Proven, Data-Driven Path to Trust: TrustLogic

Marlin also holds an exclusive partnership with TrustLogic, a breakthrough system developed by psychologists and brand strategists. TrustLogic identifies the drivers of supporter trust, measures how well an organisation meets them, and provides the insights with which to shape messaging that increases donor confidence and giving behaviour.

When supporters feel confident in an organisation’s integrity, competence, and care, they’re far more willing to give – and to give at higher values. Increasing trust reduces friction across every touchpoint, lifting acquisition, conversion, and overall campaign performance. It creates a smoother, more confident path to the first gift.

But trust also compounds over time. Consistent, transparent, respectful experiences build loyalty, turning one-off donors into long-term supporters. As loyalty strengthens, retention increases – and with it, lifetime value. Donors who trust you stay, upgrade, and remain engaged even through competing causes or external pressures. In short: when trust grows, so does sustainable revenue.

 

A Full-Service Offer for Fundraising Growth

Our full-service fundraising offer brings together insight, strategy, creativity, digital, and delivery under one roof so every part of your program works in harmony rather than in silos. From the earliest stages of opportunity discovery and audience insight, through to proposition development, campaign planning, and multi-channel execution, we build fundraising programs that are aligned, intentional, and built for long-term impact.

This end-to-end approach means we can support you wherever you are in your growth journey: developing value propositions that differentiate your cause, shaping powerful creative and storytelling, optimising digital experiences, designing supporter journeys, and delivering campaigns across direct mail, digital, social, email, and paid media. With deep fundraising expertise and a commitment to continuous improvement, we create a cohesive engine for year-round growth, grounded in insight and tested in practice.

 

Interested in learning more?

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can support your fundraising growth, we’d love to continue the conversation. Let’s explore what’s possible for your organisation and how our experience can help you get there with confidence. 

 

Reach out today: marlincommunications.com/contact-us