The Real Competition for Your Fundraising Isn’t Another Charity

Fundraisers spend a lot of time thinking about competition. We compare campaign results against sector benchmarks, monitor what similar organisations are doing, and wonder how many other appeals might land in a donor’s inbox during the same week as ours. It’s a logical way to think about fundraising. After all, if multiple organisations are seeking support from the same audience, surely they’re competing for the same pool of donor dollars.

Yet there is a flaw in that thinking.

Most donors don’t spend their day comparing charities. They aren’t sitting at home weighing one donation page against another or consciously ranking fundraising campaigns. Their experience of the world is much broader than that. They move seamlessly between ordering groceries, streaming television, booking holidays, managing their banking, shopping online, and connecting with friends. Every one of those interactions shapes their expectations about how organisations should communicate and how digital experiences should work.

This means that the real competition for your fundraising isn’t another charity. It’s every digital experience your donor has had recently.

When someone arrives on your website, they bring with them expectations formed by Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, Uber and countless other brands that have spent years refining how they reduce effort, increase relevance, and make decisions easier. Whether we like it or not, those organisations have become the benchmark against which all digital experiences are judged.

The Expectations Gap

One of the most fascinating things about technology is how quickly it changes our perception of what is normal. A decade ago, waiting several days for an online purchase felt entirely reasonable. Today, many consumers become impatient if delivery takes more than twenty-four hours. Not because human nature has fundamentally changed, but because our expectations have.

The same thing has happened across almost every digital interaction. We expect websites to load quickly. We expect content to be relevant. We expect organisations to remember us. We expect forms to be simple. We expect answers to be easy to find.

These expectations don’t disappear when someone decides to support a cause.

In fact, they become even more important.

Unlike a commercial purchase, fundraising requires an act of trust. A donor is choosing to part with their money without receiving a tangible product in return. They are investing in an outcome they may never personally experience. That decision is inherently emotional, but it is also influenced by every signal an organisation sends about its competence, credibility, and respect for the supporter.

The donation itself may be driven by the heart. The experience surrounding it shapes whether that intention turns into action.

The Rise of Personalisation

Perhaps the biggest lesson fundraisers can learn from commercial brands is not about technology but about relevance. For many years, personalisation was treated as a technical capability. If an email included someone’s first name, it was considered personalised. Today, audiences expect something far more sophisticated. They expect organisations to understand context.

Spotify doesn’t simply know your name; it understands your listening habits. Netflix doesn’t just recognise your account; it adapts recommendations based on your behaviour. Amazon remembers what you’ve purchased and predicts what you might need next. At their core, these aren’t examples of technological brilliance. They are examples of organisations demonstrating understanding.

Fundraising has an opportunity to do the same.

Supporters are not a homogeneous group. Some care deeply about research. Others are motivated by direct service delivery. Some are long-term donors. Others are encountering your organisation for the first time. Each person arrives with a different relationship to the cause and a different reason for supporting it. When communications acknowledge those differences, they feel more relevant. When they ignore them, they feel generic. Relevance is one of the most underappreciated drivers of trust.

User Experience Is Really About Respect

The term “user experience” often creates images of website design, wireframes, and conversion optimisation. While those elements matter, they only tell part of the story. At its core, user experience is about respect.

It reflects how much an organisation values someone’s time, attention, and effort. A clear website says, “We understand what you’re trying to achieve.” A streamlined donation process says, “We won’t make this harder than it needs to be.” A relevant communication says, “We recognise who you are.” These moments may seem small in isolation, but collectively they shape perception.

Supporters rarely separate their experience into categories. They don’t distinguish between fundraising, marketing, customer service, and digital experience. They simply form an impression of the organisation as a whole. That impression influences whether they give again.

What Does This Mean in Practice?

The challenge for most fundraising teams isn’t understanding the importance of supporter experience, but knowing where to start. Fortunately, improving digital experiences doesn’t require a major technology investment or a complete website overhaul. In many cases, meaningful improvements come from a series of small changes made over time.

A useful place to begin is with curiosity. Rather than asking, “What do we want supporters to do?”, ask, “What might be making this harder than it needs to be?” That question can be applied almost anywhere. Could a donation form be shorter? Could a landing page answer questions more clearly? Could supporters receive communications that better reflect their relationship with the organisation? Could the next step after a donation feel more relevant and intentional?

The answers don’t need to be perfect from the outset. The most successful digital organisations rarely launch a finished product. They test, learn, refine and improve. They treat optimisation as an ongoing discipline rather than a one-off project. Fundraising can adopt the same mindset. A simple A/B test of a donation page. Two versions of a welcome journey. Alternative calls to action. Different content for first-time donors and long-term supporters. Small experiments like these provide valuable insight into how supporters behave and what helps them move from intention to action.

Over time, those incremental improvements compound. The organisations that create the strongest supporter experiences are rarely those making dramatic changes. More often, they’re the ones consistently making thoughtful ones.