Blog

At Revunami, we’ve been driving transformational revenue growth for nonprofits for 18 years, and nothing is more rewarding than seeing our partners smash bigger and bolder goals year after year.

We couldn’t accomplish that with one-size-fits-all solutions. We approach every partnership and project thoughtfully, taking the time to develop a deep understanding of our clients’ goals and challenges before creating tailored plans. After each campaign is complete, we analyze our results and highlight learnings to build upon our successes in future campaigns. As we close out 2025 and look ahead to 2026, we wanted to take the time to celebrate the hard work, creativity, resilience, and growth of the nonprofits we’re lucky enough to call partners.

Shout Out to Our Nonprofit Partners for Crushing 2025!

We helped our clients achieve some amazing things with digital advertising. In 2025, our clients:

• Raised over $30 million in additional funds in support of their missions!
• Recruited over 257k peer-to-peer fundraisers to promote their organizations’ missions to friends and family!
• Achieved an average year-end return on ad spend of 5.75x!
• Harnessed over $2.12 million in Google Grant funds to increase their reach to new audiences!

Our Top 3 Takeaways from 2025

In 2025, we found that our most successful clients focused on some common areas to maximize their overall results and crush their annual goals:

1. 1. Invested in paid search campaigns all year-round, not just at Giving Tuesday. Cultivating fundraising all year long is crucial for continuing growth. Allocating even a modest budget to year-round paid search is one of the best ways to boost annual revenue overall, and especially at year‑end. Revunami clients who ran year-round paid search campaigns on Google and/or Microsoft Ads achieved an average 5.6x ROAS at the end of 2025. Those who only ran year-end paid search had an average return of 4.6x. Here’s why “evergreen” paid search works:
      • It captures intent long before the giving season. People search for your cause, programs, and issues all year. Paid search campaigns ensure you’re visible whenever those searches occur, not just during Giving Tuesday or December appeals. This builds a larger and more receptive audience to communicate with during major giving moments.
      • It protects your brand name from competitor campaigns and continuously builds awareness of your brand. People who have seen your organization repeatedly throughout the year are more likely to donate during year‑end appeals. Paid search is especially effective because it reaches people already expressing interest through their own queries.
      • Optimizing paid search campaigns takes time, and past performance can have a major impact on future performance. Campaigns that have months or years of continuous data can more easily and efficiently reach the audiences most likely to convert as you scale up your budget during giving season.
   2. Re-engaged lapsed donors through community-focused social media campaigns. Everyone goes through life changes, and a donor that has lapsed hasn’t necessarily stopped caring. Sometimes people just need to be reminded that they are a vital part of a community and that their contribution really matters. One client increased Memorial Fund giving 40% year over year by doing a simple social media ad thanking past fundraisers for setting up a campaign and encouraging them to re-share their story during the organization’s awareness month. Simply re-sharing a link was a low-stakes ask for people who may not have engaged with the organization in several years. Together, those re-shares snowballed into a big overall impact for the organization.
   3. Optimized Google Grant accounts to accommodate changing search behaviors from increased AI usage and overviews. Google Grants need continuous attention and maintenance, especially given the rise of AI and Google’s increased frequency of core updates. In 2025, one of the greatest opportunities we discovered with our grant clients was identifying new and better conversions to track and using Maximize Conversions bidding strategies. Even more than clicks and CTR, conversion tracking is what makes grants truly effective because it reveals which ads and keywords drive meaningful actions such as donations, volunteer sign‑ups, or newsletter subscriptions. These engagements tell search‑ranking AI systems that your site is trustworthy and provides a good user experience. Google increasingly incorporates user behavior into its ranking systems because those behaviors correlate strongly with E-E-A-T (Experience-Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trust). As a result of our focus on conversions in 2025, our grant clients have seen a combined 41% increase year over year in free advertising dollars for January 2026, and the majority are spending at least 75% of the maximum available grant funds.

Our Top 3 Marketing Recommendations for 2026

Based on data and learnings from 2025, the following are a few key areas where we recommend organizations focus their efforts to maximize revenue in 2026:

1. Be brave, and try new things.
   What worked last year or the year before may not work this year. Reserve a portion of your marketing budget to test new-to-you platforms (for many of our clients that’s Display or Reddit) and launch small experimental campaigns for audiences that may no longer be performing well on other platforms. Note that advertising space is often less expensive at certain times of the year, which means you can experiment with less financial risk. Bringing in new leads early also sets you up for success by giving you the maximum amount of time to grow your relationship with them before a year-end fundraising ask.
2. Be authentic, and talk to people—not algorithms.
   Your content should consistently reflect your brand’s identity, but that doesn’t mean every post needs to be packed with formal messaging, disclaimers, or branded language. Today’s audiences respond most strongly to genuine human connection. Prioritize conversational, thoughtful, and even opinion‑driven posts that reveal the people, perspectives, and values behind your organization. This approach strengthens trust in the authenticity of your brand.
3. Be thoughtful, and show you care with personal, heartfelt outreach.
   We all want to feel known and appreciated. Prioritize a data clean-up project and then use that trustworthy data to call your top supporters and tell them how much you appreciate them. A simple, heartfelt thank you from a real human being will set your organization apart in 2026.

We’re excited to generate even more growth for our clients in 2026. If you’ve been dreaming about having a partner who will wholeheartedly invest in your organization’s success in 2026, let’s talk!