How Pieta achieved 12% monthly giving conversion and record-breaking recurring donor growth

About Pieta

Pieta is one of Ireland's leading suicide prevention and mental health charities, providing free therapeutic services to people in suicidal distress and those who engage in self-harm. The organization operates crisis helplines and therapy centers across Ireland, with a mission centered on saving lives through compassionate, accessible support.

The challenge: untapped potential for monthly giving growth

When Daniel Alvey, Head of Supporter Engagement, joined Pieta in March 2025, the organization had adopted Fundraise Up at the end of 2023 but hadn't fully implemented it.

"At that point, Pieta had only been using Campaign Pages, and they hadn't managed to get the Checkout Modal live on the website, nor managed to convince the organization to use it as the main donate button," explains Daniel.

The barriers to full implementation included:

• A small monthly donor file Pieta had historically focused on community giving with very limited recurring donor acquisition.
• Complex internal coding requirements The organization needed specific campaign attribution across community, corporate, and individual giving streams.
• Technical integration concerns Internal teams needed assurance that Fundraise Up could work seamlessly with their existing Salesforce setup.
• Low monthly giving conversion Only 2.5% of online donations converted to recurring gifts.

Daniel had previously experienced success with Fundraise Up at another nonprofit and recognized the opportunity to transform Pieta's sustainable revenue strategy.

The solution: full implementation with strategic focus on recurring giving

Working closely with Fundraise Up's solutions engineering team and business development partner throughout the summer of 2025, Daniel’s implementation strategy included:

• Collaborative problem-solving Working through internal organizational concerns one by one with Fundraise Up's solutions engineers.
• Salesforce Flows integration Leveraging Salesforce automation to handle complex campaign coding requirements that extended beyond Fundraise Up's scope.
• Website optimization discovery During the implementation process, web developers discovered and removed outdated elements that improved overall site performance.
• Strategic timing Setting a deadline to launch for the September appeal, a critical fundraising campaign.
• Full feature deployment Activating the Checkout Modal, sticky button, reminder button, and all Elements to maximize conversion opportunities.

The results: 12% monthly conversion, plus more recurring donor income

The team successfully launched in August 2025. The impact was immediate and transformative: Pieta's key September 2025 appeal delivered breakthrough results that exceeded all expectations:

• Monthly giving conversion increased from 2.5% to 12% – a 380% increase in recurring donor conversion rate.
• 99 new monthly donors recruited – the highest number of monthly giving sign-ups in a single month in Pieta's history.
• 17% year-over-year growth – recurring donor income grew by double digits from the previous year.
• 80 additional monthly donors at Christmas – sustained momentum in recurring giving acquisition.
• Real-time campaign optimization – ability to track and adjust campaigns every other day instead of waiting for end-of-campaign reconciliation.

"We incredibly had 12% of all of our online donations convert to monthly, which was 99 new monthly givers, with the highest ever number of monthly giving recruitment in one month in Pieta's history," Daniel shares.

Leveraging low-ask opportunities for recurring giving growth

Daniel's decision to fully implement Fundraise Up wasn't about fixing problems with the previous donation system – it was about seizing an opportunity to build sustainable revenue through monthly giving.

"It wasn't so much that there was anything wrong with our website. For me, it was more just about the opportunity of what Fundraise Up offers, especially around monthly giving," Daniel explains.

Pieta's crisis helpline costs 12 Euros per call to operate. This specific, tangible figure became a powerful messaging tool for attracting new donors. More importantly, the modest ask amount created an ideal entry point for converting one-time donors into monthly supporters.

"It costs €12 to answer one call to our crisis helpline, and so we kind of pushed that quite a bit. But with a low ask, it's also a great opportunity to try to get people onto monthly as well, and combine the two together," says Daniel.

This strategy proved essential for Pieta's sustainability. As a charity providing ongoing crisis services, recurring monthly donations provide the predictable revenue needed to maintain their life-saving helplines and therapy services.

Campaign intelligence: UTM tracking that actually works

Beyond recurring giving, Fundraise Up solved a persistent challenge Daniel had faced at multiple organizations: reliable, end-to-end campaign attribution.

"That is something that I've struggled with in every other organization I've worked in, no matter how I've been promised this and that by our web development company, there are always breaks in the link that happen," Daniel notes.

With Fundraise Up, UTM tags flow seamlessly from campaign launch through donation completion into Salesforce, enabling:

• Real-time performance tracking Pulling reports every other day to see how each email, postal pack, Meta ad, and newspaper insert is performing.
• Live campaign optimization Making strategic adjustments mid-campaign based on actual performance data.
• Multi-channel attribution Separate campaign tracking for emails, direct mail, digital ads, and other channels at a glance.
• Faster decision-making No waiting until campaign end for reconciliation and analysis.

"Because the reporting and tagging is so good in Fundraise Up, right now, we're pulling data every other day, and seeing how different emails are performing, and we're using that to make changes live in the campaign and favor different types of emails," explains Daniel.

Solutions engineering: support that goes beyond the platform

Throughout implementation and beyond, Fundraise Up's solutions engineering team became a valued technical partner for Pieta.

The support extended to areas outside Fundraise Up's direct scope:

• Salesforce Flow configuration Providing guidance on how to set up automation flows to handle complex donation coding.
• Duplicate checking optimization Advising on Salesforce settings to improve data quality.
• Cross-platform troubleshooting Diagnosing issues that turned out to be Salesforce or website configuration problems, then offering solutions.
• Faster resolution times Providing responsive support that complemented slower response times from large platform vendors like Salesforce.

"99% of the time, when we've contacted the solutions engineers at Fundraise Up, we've discovered it's something on our Salesforce or our website. But your guys are so good, they've been able to give advice to our internal teams on how to fix those issues as well, which is really, really valued," says Daniel.

Integration ecosystem: Salesforce NPSP and beyond

Pieta uses Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) as their CRM foundation. The implementation process not only connected Fundraise Up seamlessly with Salesforce, but also helped the internal team discover new capabilities within their existing tech stack.

"We're using the flows in Salesforce, which helped us overcome the issues that we had in adopting Fundraise Up, and it actually also helped us discover some more tools. Our internal team has now started to play around with and learn a little more about these Salesforce flows," Daniel shares.

This unexpected benefit – upskilling the internal team on Salesforce automation –created lasting value beyond the immediate implementation goals.

Looking ahead: sustained growth and sector leadership

Pieta has positioned itself as a leader in digital fundraising innovation within Ireland's nonprofit sector. Daniel recently presented their success story at a sector-wide webinar, sharing insights with peer organizations across the Irish fundraising community.

The organization continues to focus on building the monthly donor file, sustaining the momentum from September and Christmas campaigns throughout the year. They are also pursuing multi-channel campaign optimization, leveraging real-time intelligence to refine email, direct mail, and digital advertising strategies. Additionally, Pieta remains committed to organizational sustainability by using recurring revenue growth to support the ongoing delivery of free crisis services.

With Fundraise Up fully implemented and delivering transformative results, Pieta has created a scalable model for sustainable revenue growth that supports their life-saving mission across Ireland.