Why Your Charity Brand Needs To Take A Back Seat In Fundraising Ads and Landing Pages

Key Takeaways: Charity Fundraising Ads

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When running ads soliciting donations for your charity, remember:

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• It’s all about them not you
• Make your donors the hero
• Focus on the impact they’ll have

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Donors Care About The Cause, Not You. Make Sure Your Charity Fundraising Ads and Content Reflect This

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When someone sees one of your charity’s ads on social media inviting them to donate money, it’s not you they particularly care about at first, it’s the problem that needs solving with their financial support.

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It may sound counterintuitive, and you may be feeling a little disgruntled as you read this, thinking “our supporters do care about us as a charity”, but it’s true.

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Ask yourself these questions for an acid test:

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Q: If all the people who work in your charity were replaced tomorrow, would your supporters stop giving or would they continue because it’s the work your charity is doing that matters to them? 

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Q: If your charity folded next week, would your supporters all just stop giving to the cause or would a proportion of them seek out or be attracted by charities doing similar work that they can give to instead?

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If you answer honestly, it’ll be clear that we’re right; potential donors are activated by the cause you exist to serve, not you as an institution.

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That’s not to say that your charity brand has no meaning, it really does - it’s what establishes trust and, if you get your nurturing efforts right, it’s also what makes you ‘sticky’ so that once people have donated, they are more likely to consider donating to the cause again through you instead of another charity in the same space.

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Research into how donors choose where to allocate their money shows that giving is deeply personal and cause-centric. Donor choice is dictated mostly by a person's individual tastes, personal history, and desire for specific societal impact - a concept described as matching their own "philanthropic autobiographies" (Body & Breeze, 2016).

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Think of it like this: your charity is the vehicle, the cause is the destination.

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Your ads, landing pages, and any other assets used in your fundraising campaigns should reflect this truth.

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Your Logo Needs To Take A Back Seat: Too Much Prominence Hurts Your Charity Fundraising Ads Performance

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Given that an individual’s internal values and subjective dispositions shape which specific cause they choose to support (Neumayr & Handy, 2017), and because the choice is an expression of the donor's identity reacting to a societal problem, a dominant charity logo acts as an unwanted corporate intervention. 

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In fact, splashing a massive logo at the top of an ad or landing page is the visual equivalent of clearing your throat loudly to talk about yourself. You’re essentially forcing your institutional brand onto a psychological process that should really only be about value alignment with a cause and empathy.

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​To successfully trigger a donation, an ad must bridge the gap between the donor and the crisis. 

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Numerous studies prove that charity appeals generate the strongest response when they are strictly focused on the consequences for the victims in plight rather than highlighting the organisation itself (Erlandsson et al., 2018).

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Use your logo selectively as a trust anchor, not to inspire giving.

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Your Language In Charity Fundraising Ads Is Key. Literally.

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If your Facebook ad reads: “Donate today and we’ll deliver a lifesaving mosquito net to family in Sudan” or your landing page opens with “We’ve been supporting victims of domestic violence for 35 years, a donation today will help us keep going for another 35 years” you’re almost certainly missing out on a lot of gifts.

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“We”, “us”, and “our” language presents your charity as the hero of the hour, implicitly signalling that donors are simply cash cows.

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In reality, the emphasis needs to be on the donor and the impact they will be responsible for.

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Problem > Donor > Positive Impact

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Successful ads and landing pages use “you” and “your” language to help donors ‘see’ themselves as part of the solution.

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How To Create Fundraising Ads And Landing Pages That Work For Your Charity

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So what should your ads, landing pages, and other fundraising collateral look like? 

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In short, people decide to donate on three levels:

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Emotional. They have to care about the cause and want to be part of fixing it.

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Rational. They have to believe that their donation will count, and that you can be trusted.

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Biological. The reward circuits of their brains will anticipate the warm glow and feel-good dopamine boost of giving.

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Your ads and landing page content need to prioritise appealing to potential donors across all three.

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The cause as the hook

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Your ads should focus on portraying the problem, the beneficiaries of your work, and how funding your charity helps directly. This should be repeated at the top of your landing page.

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Your logo should be absent from both your ads and the ‘hero’ section at the top of your landing page; remember, it’s an unwanted intrusion that acts to sever the emotional connection you’re trying to forge in order to make people care about your cause enough to support it with a donation.

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Not only does a prominent logo scream “this is all about us”, and act as a barrier to creating that crucial connection to your cause, it can also risk another reaction in people: while it might seem counterintuitive to a traditional marketer, a heavily branded corporate appearance can backfire in fundraising. In behavioural design, excessive corporate branding elements function as "capacity cues" - signals that an organisation is robust and wealthy. Or, to put it another way, it can make your charity look like it has enough money already and doesn’t need support.

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The donor as the hero

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Donors want to feel as though they are making a difference when they give.

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So, use language that puts them at the heart of the action:

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“Your donation today will fund a lifesaving mosquito net that protects another family in Sudan from the threat of malaria.”

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“With your donation, you’ll be making sure support is always there for victims of domestic abuse, helping them to rebuild their lives.”

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See how this reframing of our previous examples connects the donor’s generosity to the cause, highlighting the difference their money will make?

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It’s also what creates the necessary ‘feel good factor’ in charitable giving.

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No matter how altruistic someone tries to be, the fact is that they get a dopamine hit from the act of giving: in studies, functional MRI (fMRI) scans of people’s brains have shown their reward centres lighting up when asked to think about donating to charity. 

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The brand as a safety net 

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Regardless of how strong the pull of the cause is, and how much they expect to feel good about themselves for giving, potential donors will still naturally seek to rationalise the decision:

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“I really care about this, and know I’ll feel good by helping, but can I trust this charity?”

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This is where your branding has its biggest role, and it’s about more than just your logo.

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If a Facebook fundraising ad is the first time a potential donor has encountered you, and assuming they’re drawn to the cause, the first thing they’ll do is click your profile image to open your Facebook page. This is where you want your brand ID to take centre stage. 

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Make sure your page is populated with lots of organic content that shows off your people and the outcomes of your work. This will boost your credibility and, in turn, help establish trust. It’s also not a bad idea to have a pinned post at the top of your page that tells the story of your cause, the role of donors, and what you’ve achieved together in the last year (so they can see that you can be relied on, without having to visit your website or download your annual report). 

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This advice applies regardless of your chosen digital ad platform (except Google search and display). 

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Alongside this, add some additional ‘trust scaffolding’. Feature the Fundraising Regulator’s logo in some ads and on your landing page right beneath your main Call To Action (CTA) button(s). And be sure to provide your charity registration number and a link out to your entry in the Charity Commission register (or equivalents in Northern Ireland and Scotland).

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Together, these will all help to make your charity brand feel ‘safe’. 

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Final Thoughts On Why You Need To Minimise Your Charity Branding In Fundraising Ads and Landing Pages

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Wrapping up, it’s important to remember that your fundraising campaigns will work better when you take the focus off you, and put it squarely on the cause with potential donors seeing themselves as the heroes:

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1. People give to causes, not to charities, a fact backed up by research;

2. Brand-led fundraising campaigns don’t satisfy people’s desire to express their self-identities when it comes to addressing societal problems. “I’m a person who believes in lifting low income families out of poverty and doing something about it” allows someone to frame their generosity around the kind of person they see themselves as; nobody thinks “I’m a person who believes in charities existing to lift low income families out of poverty and I’m glad someone is doing something about it”;

3. If your logo features too prominently in ads and on the landing pages you send people to as part of your fundraising campaigns, you immediately create a barrier to giving. Instead of thinking “Look at this urgent problem” people think “Look at this institution asking for money.” It increases psychological distance by reminding the donor that they are dealing with a bureaucratic intermediary, dampening the raw emotional pull of the cause;

4. When your logo takes centre stage, donors will feel as though they're entering your story; instead, you want them to see themselves becoming the hero of the beneficiary's story, using your charity merely as the tool to make it happen; 

5. Overly branded fundraising campaigns can inadvertently create the impression your charity is already sufficiently resourced and doesn’t need financial support;

6. People make donation decisions based on emotional reaction and rational analysis, but there’s also a strong biological component, with their brains secretly savouring the idea of doing something that will make them feel good. Brand centric fundraising campaigns will only tick the rational thinking box, weakening the emotional response and removing the feel good glow and transferring it to you;

7. Instead of trying to inspire giving with your brand, use it to build trust instead. Although people donate to causes, not charities, they still know that you’re the ones taking their money and need to know you’re legit. Make the inclusion of branded elements about showing off your bona fides, and establishing credibility that earns trust, not a reason to donate;

8. There’s nothing wrong with taking pride in your brand and being it's guardian, but it’s easy to fall into the ‘brand ego’ trap. When that happens, conversion rates drop. Always ask yourself: “Are we fundraising to build our brand equity, or are we fundraising to solve the problem?” If it's the latter, the brand must willingly take a backseat to the cause in your campaign ads and landing pages;

9. Don’t include your logo in ad creative on social media platforms and wherever else you run ads: it’s redundant given that your logo will typically appear nearby in the form of your profile icon, will clutter the image you use, and also immediately signal that it’s an ad - making people more likely to just scroll past. On landing pages, make sure your logo is nowhere to be seen in the ‘hero’ section (the first thing people see when they arrive) so messages about the cause are what they are exposed to right away - we recommend not featuring your logo in the first two-thirds of the page, and when we build landing pages for charity clients, it’s usually in the final section; by the time people have scrolled that far, they’ve already decided emotionally and their brains are primed for the dopamine reward of giving; your logo, brand info, and trust marks (like the Fundraising Regulator’s logo) are there to help them rationalise their decision.

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Have you found this blog informative and insightful? We hope so! If you have, please share it with colleagues who should read it, and post it on your social media too. If you’d like practical, hands-in help creating and managing modern fundraising campaigns that work, get in touch, we’d love to explore how we can help you get more from your budgets so that you can deliver on your charitable mission - get in touch here.

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