From friction to flow: How Christian Appalachian Project increased conversions 4x

About Christian Appalachian Project

Founded over 60 years ago, Christian Appalachian Project (CAP) focuses on addressing hunger and providing vital services to children, families, and seniors throughout Appalachia. With a predominantly direct mail donor file and supporters across the nation, CAP serves one of America's most underserved regions.

The challenge: a clunky donation experience limited giving options

Before implementing Fundraise Up, CAP faced significant barriers in their digital fundraising efforts that prevented supporters from giving easily.

"Before Fundraise Up, I would say our donation experience was a little bit clunky," explains Jacob Roberts, Digital Strategist at CAP. "It was all a one-page donation experience for the donor, and we did not offer all the payment methods that we were being asked for."

The limitations created friction for donors:

• Low conversion rates – only 6% of visitors who reached landing pages completed their donation
• Limited payment options – restricted primarily to PayPal and credit cards
• Stale, one-page donation forms with minimal customization
• No ability to tell compelling stories through the donation experience

The solution: a streamlined platform that donors and staff could easily use

CAP chose Fundraise Up for its intuitive platform, robust reporting capabilities, and ability to offer modern payment methods that their direct mail donors were requesting.

"We enjoy working with Fundraise Up in terms of the platform being easy to use, easy to teach people on that come on board. Their reporting is robust," says Jacob.

The implementation brought immediate improvements:

• Expanded payment options including Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Venmo
• Streamlined checkout experience with customizable donation pages
• Donor Portal allowing supporters to manage their gifts and payment methods
• Video integration for dynamic storytelling across the country

The results: 4x conversion increase and 1,000+ new recurring donors

Since implementing Fundraise Up, CAP has achieved transformative results in their digital fundraising:

• Landing page conversion rates jumped from 6% to 25% – a 319% increase
• More than 1,000 new recurring donors acquired digitally in the last fiscal year
• Significantly reduced customer service complaints related to the donation process
• Enhanced ability to tell compelling stories through personalized donation pages

"We had a conversion rate of about 6% on our landing pages. And now we're about 25% on average," Jacob notes.

Personalization that drives engagement and internal buy-in

For their email audience, CAP shifted from popup checkout pages to Campaign Pages that allow for highly personalized ask arrays and video content. This strategy recognizes that email subscribers are already familiar with the organization and benefit from a more tailored experience.

The Upsell feature has been instrumental in growing their recurring donor base, helping to convert one-time donors into sustaining supporters.

Perhaps most innovative is CAP's use of Fundraise Up for internal engagement:

"On Giving Tuesday, we have a page dedicated for internal CAP folks. Throughout the day, we send a link to all the CAP employees and they can look at how Giving Tuesday is going. There's a stat counter on there that Fundraise Up has. There's also donor maps, so our team can see where all of our donors are located," explains Jacob.

This "ghost page" approach has created organization-wide excitement and buy-in for digital fundraising initiatives, allowing team members from home repair to other programs to follow fundraising progress in real-time.

Looking ahead: integrating data and exploring new features

CAP is focused on several strategic initiatives to further leverage Fundraise Up:

• Integrating offline donation data through APIs to provide donors with complete giving history in the Donor Portal
• Additional testing of fee coverage options to optimize donor experience
• Launching a new mid-level donor program to convert supporters into major donors
• Responsibly implementing AI tools while protecting donor data

The team continues to prioritize sustainable revenue growth, with recurring donations becoming an increasingly important focus area.

"Fundraise Up has really helped us tell our story. Our donation pages were very stale. And so allowing us to have more personalization with those and having the ability to tell that story not just to people in Kentucky, but also throughout the country," says Jacob.