Educating girls, evolving donations: How CAMFED optimized their online giving

About CAMFED

CAMFED (Campaign for Female Education) supports girls to go to school, succeed, and lead change. Their focus is on girls and young women in rural communities across Africa, where girls face acute challenges and where their leadership will benefit the most disadvantaged communities, with 90 cents of every dollar spent on program delivery

The challenge: existing systems limiting donor experience and growth

Sarah Etherington, Head of Digital Marketing at CAMFED, and Kate Noetzel, Digital Fundraising and Marketing Manager, knew their existing donation platform was holding them back. But it wasn't until they started exploring alternatives that they realized just how much opportunity they were missing.

"We had a custom-built donation form that sat on a subdomain," explains Sarah. "If you clicked our donation button, you would go to this subdomain. Then it would take you through five pages, and each page would reload."

The technical limitations were directly impacting their online donation experience:

• Only able to process credit card payments, with no options for digital wallets or direct debits outside of the UK
• No functionality for donors to cover processing fees
• Limited insight into online transaction behaviour
• Limited tools to optimize campaigns and test different approaches

As a global organization dedicated to educating girls in rural communities across Africa, CAMFED needed a solution that could match their ambition.

"We are very considered in our approach at CAMFED," Sarah laughs. "Everything has to have a valid use case and be data-backed."

The solution: a methodical, data-driven approach

This cautious approach led the CAMFED team to test Fundraise Up incrementally, starting with a separate microsite for their "Global Sisterhood Pledge" lead generation campaign before attempting a full implementation.

Sarah explains: "We set up Fundraise Up on a microsite, separate from the main website with its built-in form. We started to see improved conversion rates. It meant that campaign was hitting its targets."

Encouraged by these results, the team moved to the next phase: an A/B test on their main website donation form, letting data guide their decision-making process.

"When we made it our main donate call to action and split all donation traffic for a couple of months, we saw substantially higher conversion rates," Kate shares.

Immediate impact: unlocking new revenue streams

The implementation of Fundraise Up delivered immediate benefits, with processing fee coverage being one of the most significant early wins.

"That was a huge incentive," Kate explains. "We didn't have the option to have donors cover processing fees in the past."

Sarah adds: "We see the majority of donors paying the fees, which is amazing. It means we get to keep the entirety of what they intended for us."

The platform's flexibility with payment methods also opened new avenues for donor engagement.

"We weren't able to do Venmo, PayPal, or ACH payments before," notes Kate. "Having these options has made giving more accessible to different donor segments."

Transforming digital tribute giving and improving donor retention

Perhaps the most dramatic impact came in the form of tribute gifts – an area where CAMFED saw impressive growth after implementing Fundraise Up.

"In November and December, we had a 206% increase in sends and a 423% increase in tributes compared to the year prior," Kate reveals. "The functionality of Fundraise Up makes that process more seamless than the experience we had prior."

Even more impressively, Fundraise Up's self-service donor portal has improved retention rates by giving supporters more control.

"People can manage their gifts themselves," Sarah explains. "We see people pausing a gift rather than cancelling it because maybe they're having a challenging month, and then they come straight back. That's massive."

Unlocking creative potential with Elements

Partnering with Fundraise Up enabled newfound flexibility, sophisticated testing, and optimization that would have been impossible before.

"Last year we built out a page with a donation form, a donation button, a slider, and a simple form," Sarah shares. "The simple form at the bottom got the second most amount of donations on the whole page – and I would never have known that in our old setup."

The ability to test different elements has created a virtuous cycle of learning and improvement.

"Each time we build a campaign page, we can take this knowledge forward and keep playing with it," Sarah explains.

Operational efficiencies beyond digital fundraising

Beyond the direct fundraising benefits, CAMFED experienced significant operational improvements that streamlined processes and saved valuable time and resources:

• Multi-currency capabilities: "From a technical back-end point of view, the multi-currency aspect was a massive selling feature," Sarah notes. "We could customize it so dollars go into the dollars account, Canadian dollars into the Canadian dollars account. It's saved us a lot of money in the long run, versus doing intercompany transfers, and also the time spent doing that.”
• Self-service donor capabilities: "Donors can download their own receipts, freeing up internal staff time," Sarah adds.
• Enhanced analytics: "The way that Fundraise Up is structured and how innovative the platform is has pushed us to think more about what we could be doing internally in our CRM or in terms of tracking specific things," Kate reflects.
• Salesforce integration: “We have Salesforce NPSP integration set up with Fundraise Up with help from High Tide,” says Sarah. “We use it as our single source of truth and all data flows into and out of there. The integration allows us to then map all the fields we need into our marketing platform, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, so we can steward donors based on their most recent interactions with us.

A collaborative partnership for future innovation

The CAMFED team values the ongoing relationship with Fundraise Up as a true partnership that continues to drive innovation and results.

"Having that one-on-one relationship manager is becoming rarer," Sarah observes. "The amount of support that Fundraise Up offers in terms of making the most out of the product, at no real cost to us, is very special."

Kate adds: "Being able to say these are data-led, informed decisions – Fundraise Up has a very advanced algorithm and data collection. Being able to help advise charities and support them in the ways they need is incredibly valuable, especially for nonprofits who are trying to do the most with the least amount possible."

Looking ahead, CAMFED has ambitious plans to leverage Fundraise Up's capabilities even further, particularly in the area of donor retention.