Client anonymised for confidentiality
Context
The charity raises funds through a portfolio including regular giving, emergency donations, virtual gifts, and partnerships generating a combination of unrestricted and restricted income. Supporter recruitment is capital-intensive, with long breakeven period and variable returns to scale.
Problem
Sudden reduction in government funding triggered a rapid organisational review, including significant pressure to reduce cost and sustain net unrestricted income. Leadership needed clarity on the trajectory of net unrestricted income and reserves under different investment plans for supporter recruitment.
Work
I built an integrated scenario model linking supporter recruitment, attrition, fixed and variable cost structures, income timing and reserves. The model explicitly addressed the short- to medium-term drag on unrestricted net income caused by new recruitment investment and tested whether increased recruitment could be sustained without exhausting reserves before payback.
Outcome
The model gave senior leaders and trustees a clear view of the trade-off between short-term financial pressure and long-term sustainability, and confidence in approving the budget and 5 year investment plan.
Client anonymised for confidentiality
Context
The charity recruits a large volume of regular givers mainly through face-to-face fundraising, using multiple agencies with different ask structures, commission structures, and cancellation guarantees. This drives nearly 100% of gross income. Agencies specialise in different recruitment environments (e.g. door-to-door versus private site), resulting in materially different supporter profiles and long-term behaviours. The charity is already analytically sophisticated and understands the attrition, upgrade and reactivation profiles of different supporter cohorts in detail.
Problem
Despite the wealth of granular detail available internally, the leadership team lacked an integrated model for 'what if' analysis of changing CPA (cost per acquisition), supplier risk, shifting attrition curves, and changes to tax status. To make service commitments today, leadership needs of view of the organisation's income to 5 years and beyond, and a rational quantification of the risks.
Work
I built a model of month-by-month income dynamics based on detailed investment plans, attrition curves, and phased plans for supporter marketing activity. I refined the functionality through rapid iterations with senior managers, adding necessary detail to the model, and - equally importantly - stripping out unnecessary complexity. I built charts using best practice visualisation for users to compare best, worst and mid case scenarios under different investment plans.
Outcome
The model is simple to interpret for the leadership team, and easy to update with new information over time. The result is a shared understanding of the likely path of income over 5 - 10 years, and the upper and lower risk bounds, allowing the senior team to commit resources with confidence.
Client anonymised for confidentiality
Context
The charity’s dominant fundraising product, accounting for 90% of gross income, is a long-established weekly lottery, paid by monthly direct debit. The entry price had remained unchanged for many years, leading to declining real-terms income during a period of sustained inflation.
Problem
Fundraisers and trustees were concerned that increasing the entry price could trigger higher attrition, potentially offsetting any income gains. Gambling regulation further complicated the decision as all players in a lottery must pay the same price, which rules out simple A/B price testing.
Work
Working with the fundraising director, finance director and head of lottery operations, I mapped the feasible options (including price changes, new games, and different migration approaches) and the associated behavioural risks. I built a scenario model capturing costs, income effects and attrition dynamics under each option.
Outcome
The management team explored multiple options and presented a small subset of these to trustees with a ten-year view of net income and downside risks. The trustees are engaged in the process and welcome the simple presentation of a complex situation. The next phase of work - detailed operational planning for developing the programme - is underway with their full support.