Danish fundraising association and EFA member ISOBRO has published its annual Fundraising Indsigt report, containing essays from nine experts.

The report also stresses that organisations need internal cultures that empower fundraising professionals, better understanding of what motivates different donors, and digital strategies focused on community building and data collection, rather than broadcast advertising.

Lucas Regnér, head of fundraising at sex education charity RFSU, says in his essay that he aims for less than 5% unattributed conversions. He says that without a highly accurate and well-used CRM as part of an integrated data infrastructure, organisations cannot make proper, data-driven decisions.

This data-driven approach must extend to retention, argues Sandra Olsen, private fundraising leader at animal welfare charity Dyrenes Beskyttelse. She calls for sharper segmentation based on donor recency and warmth, with dedicated journeys for first-time donors and tailored reactivation for lapsed supporters.

Jeta Salihu, fundraising manager at Danish Muslim Aid and ISOBRO’s 2025 Fundraiser of the Year, advocates prioritising relationships over acquisition, with loyal donors receiving meaningful community, member events and transparent impact reporting.

Culture and motivation

Delivering on these ambitions requires organisational structures that empower fundraising professionals, argues Lisbet Christoffersen, head of communication, engagement and press at children’s charity Børns Vilkår.

She draws on her organisation’s decade-long journey to embed fundraising as a core discipline. Ten years ago, when Børns Vilkår intensified its fundraising focus, the initiative met internal resistance around costs and tactics.

The breakthrough came through deliberate cultural work. Børns Vilkår appointed “fundraising ambassadors” from other departments to spread positive narratives, and used office design to reinforce the mission with quotes from children helped by its BørneTelefonen service.

In another essay, independent consultant Christian Sophus Ehlers identifies six distinct donor motivations: altruistic, self-interested, identity-based, personally affected, community-oriented, and activist. He says that most organisations only communicate to one or two types.

Sanne Dollerup, partner at marketing agency Institut for Kundetyper, frames donor types through emotional problems they’re solving. She says that many charities focus on donors seeking community or safety, but overlook those motivated by powerlessness.

The report also includes a forward from ISOBRO’s general secretary Kenneth Kamp Butzbach, who writes:

“What they [the nine essays] have in common is a clear recognition: success in 2026 requires more than visibility and volume. It requires understanding, prioritisation and the will to develop our methods.”

Indeed, the current climate is likely to require further innovation from Danish fundraisers in 2026 – in December, Butzbach expressed frustration at recent Government actions which he said “make it harder for organisations to raise money”.

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The annual planning season. An exciting time with kick-offs, brainstorming sessions, and break-out sessions. The big question that needs to be answered is: what are we going to do? That question can be answered in various ways. My advice: outline your program, both in text and numbers. Do you want to fundraise in a data-driven way? This is your chance!

First, take a step back

If all goes well, every fundraising program has a vision that answers the question of where we want to go and why. This aligns everyone’s efforts in the same direction. Understanding where we want to go and why we want to go there makes the journey much more efficient. Next, we create our strategy, which answers the question of how we will reach our destination. How do we go from the current situation to the desired situation as quickly and efficiently as possible? The final step is translating this into what we will actually do. These are the things that will go into the annual plan.

So, it’s an accumulation. From vision to strategy. And from strategy to plans.

Working on annual plans without a vision and/or strategy creates a lot of noise. The limited resources at our disposal will not be optimally utilized. As a result, the desired outcome may not materialize or will take much longer.

Everything we want to do is written down and hung on the strategy hook. This ensures that we don’t waste our energy on things outside our strategy.

Translating to data

Once we have qualitatively outlined our activities, the goal is to quantitatively develop them. We want to verify whether the steps we take lead to the intended goal. As fundraisers, we’re fortunate: almost everything can be calculated! Both beforehand and afterward.

These days, we see more and more organizations calculating everything afterward. Great! But data-driven fundraising actually starts at the beginning. The plans we make need to be translated into numbers so that we can predict the profitability of our investments. Based on such a prediction, we decide whether to step on the gas pedal.

You hear it often: we need to optimize this and that. However, optimization remains an empty term if you don’t translate it into numbers.

Your entire program must face it: translate it into numbers. This is not rocket-science. These are the basics of fundraising. It’s about the investment dynamics behind fundraising. What do you put in, and what do you get out? That is fundraising.

There are quite a few benefits to working in this way:

• Every business case hidden in your program becomes transparent. Investment choices are no longer made based on feelings but on data.
• You teach your team and organization data-driven fundraising in practice. Everyone contributing to this is confronted with the facts of what fundraising is about. Input and output.
• You create more engagement and knowledge within your management and board. They decide on the available budgets. A convincing story about what the investment will yield in the long term is crucial for what you ultimately get to invest.

The annual plan is a wonderful opportunity to give data-driven fundraising the attention it deserves. Outlining your long-term plans is one of the most important steps you can take to be successful in fundraising.

Data-driven fundraising starts with your planning.

Reinier Spruit

About Reinier Spruit

An experienced fundraising professional in the nonprofit sector, Reinier Spruit has a passion for individual giving and a better world, specializing in interim management, advice and the planning & monitoring tool for fundraisers ­­– Forward. He is the founder of Reinier Fundraising, and of several initiatives including fondsenwerving.blog.

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