Fundraising & Donations

April 8, 2026 · Last updated on October 9, 2026

Recipe: Personalize Your Online Donation Ask

# Recipes for success

# Donations

# Fundraising

Set up tailored donation funds in your checkout to target previous donors with more powerful asks. Move away from a one-size-fits-all approach and start communicating with your donors in a more personalised way.

What you need

Access to the admin and insights & mailings Interfaces in Spektrix.

A copy of this baseline tracking document , so you can measure progress and success

Time required

30 minutes

What will this help me achieve?

Deeper understanding of your donors: Use standard reports to analyse donor behaviour and uncover actionable insights.

Increased donation income: Achieve a higher web conversion rate and a higher average basket donation from previous donors.

Stronger donor relationships: Build loyalty and increase your number of regular, repeat donors.

Concepts we'll be using

Donation Conversion Analysis Report: A standard report in Spektrix that provides an analysis of the percentage of orders containing donations and tickets.

Customer Lists and Local Segments : Used to create a list of contacts from your database.

Auto tags : Tags applied automatically to customer records based on their purchasing behaviour.

Funds : The specific donation asks displayed to customers in your online checkout flow.

Prep

Auto-Tag

Go to the admin interface > tags and create an auto tag looking for Recent Donors

Ex: Donors who have given in the last 365 days

Check the box to "run the auto tag after the customer record is created and after the transaction is confirmed" and click save.

Customer Lists

Create a customer list looking for the number of customer records with your auto-tag. Record this number in your tracking document.

Create a second purchasing segment using accounting date to look for ticket buyers in the last 365 days. Add this to your customer list and negate your recent donor tag group. This will help you identify your recent ticket buyers who are NOT donors.. The goal is to get this number lower, and your recent donor number higher. Record this number in your tracking document.

Reports

Record your benchmark data so that you can measure the impact of your action. Make a copy of our tracking document to record your benchmarking data.

In Spektrix, go to insights & mailings > reports and run the donation conversion analysis report using a criteria looking at both Tickets in the last 365 days and the Recent Donor Tag OR Donations in the last 365 days and the Recent Donor Tag.

2. Once the report has run, note down your starting metrics in your tracking document: web conversion rate and average donation amount.

TIP: Create a shortcut for this report with this date range to speed up finding it next time you need to run it.

Activate

Funds

For your Recent Donors

Go to the admin interface > other > funds and create a new fund for your Recent Donors. In the description, add a tailored message to thank the customer for their support and encourage them to donate again. For example, "Your continued support is invaluable! Please consider making another donation towards our community and education events."

In the fund's settings, make sure the display on web and active boxes are checked.

Set the event criteria to always and the customer criteria to specific customers using the Recent Donor auto-tag you have created.

Configure the default ask amounts for different basket totals. Make sure that £0 baskets have a default ask amount. Click save.

2. For your Non-Recent Donors

Repeat the previous steps to create a fund for your non-recent donors, ensuring the fund name and description if needed to share more about the impact gifts have at your organization

Set the event criteria to always and the customer criteria to EXCLUDE the Recent Donor tag.

Configure the default ask amounts for different basket totals. Make sure that £0 baskets have a default ask amount. Click save.

3. Update your original fund that was featured in the purchase path to never force in the checkout for event or customer criteria. Your two new funds have covered all audience members, and this fund can just be used on your general donation page.

TIP: Double check to make sure your new funds are not automatically pulling into your general donation page. If they are, they can be filtered out . Contact your web developer or Spektrix Support for assistance.

Reporting

Schedule the Donation Conversion Analysis report to automatically send to your inbox on a regular basis to track your ongoing progress against your benchmark.

Try this twist

Once your funds are live, take it a step further by using event criteria to tailor asks based on genre (e.g., comedy bookers, family shows) or by venue.

More to explore

Once you've set up tailored donation funds, you'll be able to maximise donated revenue with your marketing strategies for ticket sales. Why not take your fundraising automations a step further with the Fundraising Appeal Program Template ?

Join the Conversation

Fundraising & Donations Community Forum: You are not alone! Chat with fellow arts fundraisers, share ideas and see what’s working well for others in the sector.

The Philanthropy Series: We host regular webinars curated specifically to support fundraisers. You can rewatch past sessions or register for upcoming events.

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