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November 2025
Dear friend,
November’s here; the month where we all try to balance festive planning with funding deadlines, while nervously waiting to see what the UK Winter Budget has in store. Between that and all those seasonal fundraising campaigns (not to mention Giving Tuesday for you fine folks across the pond), it’s a busy stretch for charities and fundraisers alike.
This edition zeroes in on what you can do right now: tightening up your data to protect income, keeping donors engaged as inboxes get crowded, and making your fundraising activity work harder. Practical insights, no fluff – just the good stuff that helps you finish the year strong.
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It’s been a busy month of client work happening behind the scenes, but we did manage to release our latest case study about our recent work with Declassified UK. If you want to learn about our structured, hands-on approach for moving their recurring payments to a new platform, you can read our blog post for all the details.
But here’s the big news. After a few months of quiet teasing, we’re finally ready to lift the lid on CRAFT – our new community space for fundraisers and analysts who want to work smarter with their data. Think of it as your workshop for building confidence with analytics, sharing best practices, and getting direct access to templates, advice, and early tools from the ADA team.
Want to help shape it from the ground up? Join the early adopters here or learn more on our website.
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The latest CAF UK Giving Report 2025 highlights a clear trend: fewer UK adults are giving. Only 50% donated in the past year, down from 58% in 2019, with younger age groups seeing the steepest decline.
Yet there’s opportunity for charities that focus on retention:
- Repeat donors now represent a larger share of total income, making retention and re-engagement more cost-effective than chasing new supporters.
- Digital channels remain critical: mobile giving, contactless donations, and email engagement can help sustain donor relationships.
- Segmenting supporters by engagement, donation history, and age allows teams to prioritise those most likely to respond, protecting income as year-end campaigns ramp up.
For data and insight teams, the message is clear: fewer donors make every interaction more valuable. Focusing on retention and smart re-engagement is the fastest way to safeguard income and maximise impact over winter and beyond.
And while donor numbers may be falling, there’s still plenty you can do with the data you’ve got. That’s where this month’s Hints & Tips come in.
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Quick techniques you can implement in a day
With acquisition becoming tougher and inboxes crowded, the most valuable donors are often those you already have. Retention and timely re-engagement are cheaper, faster, and more reliable than chasing new supporters. This month, we highlight practical steps you can take in November to focus your energy where it will make the biggest impact — protecting income, keeping donors engaged, and avoiding last-minute compliance headaches.
- Run a one-day ‘who to ask’ exercise: Pull donors who gave in the last three years but not this year. Score them by recency, average gift size, and recent digital engagement. Pick your top segment (e.g., 300 supporters for medium-sized charities) and craft a short, personal re-engagement email — perfect to warm up donors ahead of your Christmas campaigns.
- Prep a Giving Tuesday message ladder: Build a simple three-step sequence: (1) warm-up 7–10 days before, (2) ask on the day, (3) thank + impact follow-up 48–72 hours after. Run small sample A/B tests on subject lines and CTAs in November to maximise opens and clicks.
- Add a compliance flag to your campaign dashboards: For every fundraising activity, include a small compliance column: third-party involvement (Y/N), consent audit done (Y/N), complaints logged (count). This quick check reduces last-minute governance surprises and ensures winter campaigns run smoothly.
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Analytics, without the angst |
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Tired of waiting for reports or struggling with spreadsheets? Our ADRFM Reporting Suite provides instant, self-service insights across campaigns, donor behaviour, and income streams – all in one place.
Why teams love it:
• Modular design – start with what you need, scale up later
• Clear dashboards designed for fundraisers, not data scientists
• Built-in data cleaning and transformation
• Quicker, more confident decision-making
See ADRFM in action →
Did you know? Many charities uncover new giving trends within weeks of using ADRFM – insights they’d missed for years.
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Conferences & Workshops
Legislative Updates
- ICO Consultation – Close date 27 November 2025
This consultation sets out how charities will be able to use a new soft-opt-in for some electronic marketing once the changes come into force (the Data (Use and Access) Act / PECR changes are scheduled for early 2026). If you send emails to existing supporters, you should review the draft guidance and consider responding to the consultation. If your org wants to submit views, do it this month.
- Fundraising Regulator webinars & Code resources
The Regulator published the Code and updated FAQs. We recommend you take 30–60 minutes to skim the FAQs and checklist pages for immediate governance actions.
- Giving Tuesday 2025 — 2 December 2025.
Much like Black Friday has become the norm here in the UK, Giving Tuesday is beginning to pick up steam, too. If your charity plans to take part, it’s time for final planning and small tests before the big day. Find out more and register your interest here.
- SORP Update Introduces New Income Thresholds
New accounting rules for charities were confirmed on 31 October 2025. The updated SORP introduces three income-based tiers:
• Tier 1: up to £500k
• Tier 2: £500k–£15 m
• Tier 3: above £15 m
It simplifies reporting for smaller organisations and takes effect from 1 January 2026. For data and insight teams, this means reviewing how you report: cash-flow statements, reserves disclosures, and income segmentation.
Action for this month: Map your organisation’s income band and check if you’ll fall into Tier 2 or 3 – update your reporting templates now to stay ahead of the change.
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You’ve got the questions, and we’ve got the answers. Each month, Ant and Mike share their thoughts on common data challenges charities face and offer practical, actionable advice you can use today.
This month’s question:
How can small charities start using data like the big ones – without getting overwhelmed?
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“If you think about what big charities do, that small charities are not likely to do, it's around things like personalised communications and segmentation. One of the things that small charities should always start thinking about is things like ‘How do I segment my supporters?’
So, should I send the same communication to a legacy pledger as I would to a regular giver? And if someone is both a regular giver and a legacy pledger, what does that look like? How am I meant to change the way I communicate with that person?
The fundamentals are to make sure you have it in a database and that all of your data is in one place. The big difference with small charities is that lots of people work off spreadsheets - in fact, there’s usually a plethora of spreadsheets.
Meanwhile, big organisations are likely to have a CRM that is a multifaceted solution. While the cost of that might be prohibitive, you just need to make sure that all of your external data is in one place – even if it’s in a spreadsheet!”
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“The other thing the big charities do is they have a database owner. So, in small charities, if you’ve got even just three people using a database, and they’re all using it differently, then you get three versions of things, and it’s a bit of a mess.
If one person is the owner and ties it all up, then you get that level of consistency, which means you can do the personalisation, and you can do the reporting. The data is then more valuable than if it’s just captured just so you can send a thank you letter.”
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Before we finish, we thought we would highlight some of our previous blog content from the ADA and AD websites, in case you missed it the first time around. |
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When Life Throws You Curveballs: Resilience, Gratitude, and the Non-Profit Sector
Read More →
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Unlocking Christmas Communication: Engage Supporters & Boost Funds
Read More →
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That’s all for this month. Good luck with the fundraising prep ahead of a busy season, and we’ll see you in December with fresh insights and a few surprises for year-end.
Until next time,
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Carl Phillips
Head of Marketing
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