After running six End of Financial Year (EOFY) campaigns, we sat down over coffee and pastries for a debrief on what actually drove donor conversion. From email strategy and peer-to-peer fundraising to ethical matchfunds, here are eight practical EOFY insights to help your charity maximise its next appeal.

Each year, Cadence gets the opportunity to work on our client’s biggest fundraising campaign of the year: End of Financial Year (EOFY). After these campaigns wrap up, we have a practice of always sitting down and doing a “post-mortem” together with the client. With the aid of coffee and pastries, we think about what worked and what didn’t. Those juicy little learnings get compiled, so they can be used as our starting point for the next campaign. 

It’s a rare position to have eyeballs on six different EOFY campaigns at once! And so it occurred to us that it might be nice to share some of the things we learnt from the 2026 appeal season (while keeping client-specific insights under wraps, of course).

Here follows eight gobbets of wisdom and hot (warm?) takes from our strategy team on all things EOFY fundraising. 

1. Email* is still the most powerful channel for donor conversion.
   There’s a few things to say about this. Firstly, keep using email. It works really well for donor conversion and you’d be silly to exclude it in your conversion campaigns. Secondly, be careful not to put all your eggs in one basket. Multichannel campaigns are the wisest approach to reaching your audience. Thirdly, ask yourself why email performs best with your audience. What is it about that channel that works so well for EOFY campaigns AND will it also work for other campaigns? Maybe yes, maybe no. The point is, be thoughtful about this insight in terms of your own audience and your plans for them.
   
   *And just a final note about emails. We know you all know this, but shorter emails get better engagement. Not many donors want to read your long emails. Hit your points and keep them short and please please please, don’t use AI to write them. Even if people can’t tell you did it this campaign, audiences are getting better and better at noticing AI written copy. We don’t want to AI-shame anyone – we know you guys are all working so hard – but we sense that human written content will become a point of authenticity for charities in the near future.
   
   
   
2. Don’t be afraid to make your messaging simple for EOFY campaigns. We get it, messaging is really hard. Simplifying your pitch to donors can often feel like watering down your organisation’s work and its impact. But here’s the truth: most charities have complex solutions to complex problems and most donors have only so much bandwidth to understand your model, especially at EOFY when they’re having multiple charities pitch them for donations.
   
   To cut through, you must make your pitch simple and easy to grasp.
   
   But how do you do this without dumbing down your work? Each appeal focuses on one part of your complex solution. It draws the donor’s attention to one aspect of your amazing work and educates them about it, while also inviting them to be a part of it. If you only talk about one aspect in this campaign, remember you can talk about other aspects in future campaigns.
   
   A complex problem and a complex ask will rarely cut through the EOFY noise and convert. So be brave and keep it simple.
   
   
   
3. Controversial thought, but is P2P better than digital ads for acquisition? We have found – and please understand this is something we have noticed and it doesn’t mean we’re against digital ads – that peer to peer campaigns are a more cost effective avenue for donor acquisition than digital ads at EOFY. Why do we think this? EOFY is an expensive time to run digital ads. There’s lots of competition and lots of noise out there. Most charities are running very similar ad strategies because they work! But the ad space is expensive and you usually need to spend a lot to get any cut through.
   
   So, what’s an alternative?
   
   One alternative is to focus your acquisition spend on a P2P campaign. We worked on a campaign last year where one donor brought in dozens of new donors at EOFY through an afternoon at her kid’s school fete. That kickstarted a new way they thought about donor acquisition. Another client of ours had a donor convert her Bible study to new donors through a special product offered at EOFY. She spoke to them about the work of this client over the course of an evening and a few cups of tea and the next day they were making donations. These are highly personal moments where trust is built in an organisation through trusted relationships. P2P isn’t a new concept in fundraising by any stretch, but it’s not to be discounted. Food for thought.
   
   A second alternative is to build out your digital ad strategy to include awareness and consideration campaigns throughout the year. For more on why this works, see point 8.
   
   
   
4. Thank your donors, personally if you can. I was at lunch the other day with a friend who volunteers as a caller for the Cancer Council during their fundraising drives. Her job was to call donors personally to thank them for their donation. When she would introduce herself and explain the reason for her call, the reply would often be the same – shock. Donors said things like, “Wow, I can’t believe you’re calling to thank me.” or, “Gosh that’s really nice, thank you so much. I love the work of the Cancer Council.” My friend was surprised by how surprised people were. I wasn’t. 
   
   Personal thank you’s are actually pretty rare in our industry. Most people know an email or text can be automated but a phone call or voicemail by a human doing nothing but thanking you is a powerful reminder for a donor about how much their contribution matters to an organisation. Donors want to be a part of your mission. They want to feel on the same page and on the same journey as you. Connecting with them personally is a really powerful way to do this. Now, I hear you saying, “But Clare, it’s really expensive to spend my day calling donors who might not pick up the phone.” I hear ya. I really do. So why not get a couple of eager beaver volunteers (like my friend) into the office to make some calls? Buy them lunch and connect with them. People love to be involved in the community of a charity. So involve them and thank a bunch of donors at the same time.
   
   
   
5. Don’t take your trust for granted.
   Trust is so important for a charity’s brand. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report has revealed an overall decline of public trust in the Australian mindset. This isn’t toward charities per se, but toward all sectors – business, government, media, religious institutions, and NFPs. Since the 2024 report, Aussies have moved from a “neutral” posture toward institutions to a “distrustful” position. That means that instead of assuming good intentions, Aussies will approach your organisation with doubt. You now need to prove you’re trustworthy to your donor, not assume they believe you at face value. How do you do this? We could write a lot about building brand trust but, in short, the main thing that builds trust is transparency and accountability around your operations, how you use and acquire your funding. What’s this got to do with EOFY? Well, we have two call outs.
   
   
   • Matchfunds work, but we have feelings about them…
     
     This EOFY we spent hours chatting to clients about the best way to run their match funds. Not so much about how to build the best tactical approach – but how to run a match fund in an ethical and transparent way.
     
     Full transparency from us then: Cadence has a love/hate relationship with matchfund tactics. We want our clients to achieve their fundraising goals and matchfunds are really effective at converting donors.
     But we find them difficult.  Matchfunds are essentially built on the idea that a major donor won’t donate a large sum without a smaller donor matching a portion of it. Odds are, the smaller donor will eventually ask the question: is that major donor really not going to give this organisation $20K if I don’t give $50 right now? When they realise that, what do you think that will mean for their opinion of your organisation?
     
     We aren’t advocating the end of matchfunds, but we are advising caution with their use. At Cadence, we always aim to have the most authentic and transparent matchfunds in our strategies. Ways to do this:
     • The matchfund donor openly sets the challenge to the smaller donors.  
     • There’s no crazy multipliers (EG. 14 x match – this is silly)
     • There’s transparency around what happens to that money if the matchfund isn’t exhausted. 
       
       If you use a matchfund, make it genuine. Who knows, you may stand out in the market and build brand trust by doing things a little differently. 
       
       
   • Careful with your language
     
     Just a watch out from us: be careful with your language around urgency. We had to remind ourselves of this a few times when we were crafting language for the tail end of campaigns. Language like “Don’t miss out on your tax deductible gift!”  makes it sound like the donor’s gift won’t be tax deductible if they donate after 30 June. Obviously, this is not true. Another we saw was “Save this child before 30 June!” which is particularly problematic as it sounds like, without the donor’s contribution, support for the beneficiary stops at 30 June.
     
     It’s easy to make little mistakes like this when you’re trying to create a sense of urgency for donors. But make sure that urgency is real, not performative. Commercial tactics for EOFY campaigns are useful but always balance them with good ethics.
     
     
     
6. Timing of campaigns – to start early or not to start early? There’s no right or wrong to this question*. Most campaigns start early May and finish June 30. However, this year we did see some traction from our clients who started their campaigns earlier. One particular example was a client who began their campaign with a signature “moment” – like an event, matchfund, or digital splash. That “moment” built traction early and they reached their target goal well before June 30 and could introduce a stretch budget making their overall raise much higher. So, if you’re thinking of kicking off earlier, make sure you kick off with something important that will help you stand out. Have a plan for if you reach your goal earlier – like a stretch fund or extra match fund. 
   
   *Actually, we lie. There is. Don’t start your EOFY campaign on June 25!
   
   
   
7. Proven ideas that every charity should use. We used each of these tactics across multiple EOFY strategies and they all worked a charm.
   • Seed funding: segment a section of your loyal donors and ask them to fund one thing. Donors feel like they’re invited into a special team who are making a real impact. One thing to remember with this tactic is that it requires ongoing nurturing of this donor group as well as reporting on how their giving made an impact.
   • The local ask: If you can, try to have video footage of people on the ground explaining the need and ask for your EOFY message. Have them explain the practical outcome of the donation directly to your audience. This is a powerful tool. The donor bypasses the organisation and hears straight from the beneficiary. 
   • User generated content (UGC): We’re a big fan of UGC for social media. It’s particularly powerful in the charitable space as it helps under-resourced teams get great content from their audience to post. Set up a UGC challenge to your audience around EOFY. This will create interest and awareness of your organisation at EOFY for free.
     
     
     
8. Always be raising awareness. EOFY campaigns piggyback off the messaging you’ve been pitching to your donors throughout the year through emails, organic content, and digital ads. It’s the season to convert on all of the awareness and consideration effort you’ve been putting in.
   
   Let’s take digital ads as an example. The best EOFY ad campaigns are seeking to retarget audiences they’ve built and nurtured throughout the year. That means that right now, you should be running awareness ad campaigns, you’re educating and retaining the attention of an audience who you can retarget at EOFY. We often have clients come to us with good ad budgets at EOFY but they don’t have the audience already there and primed for conversion because they haven’t run any awareness campaigns. So don’t skip the awareness and consideration ads. They surely pay off at EOFY. 
   
   Obviously, digital ads aren’t the only method of raising awareness. There’s events, media splashes, brand ambassadors, stories, P2P campaigns, UGC – the sky’s the limit. Get creative, get on spreading the word. 
   
   

That’s all for now. Feel free to share this around with your peers. 

If you’d like our help with your next campaign or with EOFY support, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to hear from you.