Good Marketing Brief

Your best year-end asset? Your data

Rachel Burris Rodriguez on Sep 17, 2026, 8:15:00 AM

Year-end campaigns are built on decisions made right now, like which audiences to build, which creative to test, which channels to prioritize. The behavioral data to make those decisions more confidently is already sitting in your email platform, your CRM, and your donation pages.

This week is about putting it to work, from turning first-party data into creative direction and understanding what the shift away from third-party cookies means for nonprofit marketing, to a sticky bar experiment that produced a 1,495% increase in donations by making one small change to how donors were asked.

The take-home template

Building year-end ad creative from scratch while also running campaigns is a reliable way to end up with something generic. Our free library of 300+ ad templates includes categories built specifically for GivingTuesday and year-end campaigns, each with design best practices and step-by-step Canva instructions baked in. Download a few now while there's still time to make them your own before the November push.

Snackable snippets

The nonprofit AI divide worth paying attention to 📖

A new NTEN and Bridgespan survey of more than 900 nonprofit workers found a significant gap between how executives and frontline staff see AI. More than 60% of executives view it as a way to reduce staff burdens and increase efficiency, compared with fewer than half of staff. Those closest to direct program delivery tend to be the most skeptical, while those furthest from it tend to be the most optimistic. Most organizations sit somewhere in the middle, using AI in some form, but fewer than 40% have written policies in place.

First-party data is for storytelling, too 📖

While this piece is written for commercial brands, the core concept translates directly to nonprofit marketing. Donors who clicked every email about a specific program but never gave to the general fund are signaling a story angle worth building around. Supporters who visited your GivingTuesday page twice without giving are telling you exactly who to retarget and with what. The behavioral signals sitting in your email platform, your CRM, and your donation pages are a creative brief. You may not have treated them that way yet.

What to know about our cookieless future 📖

First-party data comes directly from your own audience. Second-party data is essentially another organization's first-party data, shared with you through a partnership. Third-party data is aggregated and sold by an outside company with no direct connection to your audience. As privacy laws tighten and third-party cookies continue to phase out, the member data associations already own is becoming their most valuable marketing asset, and the organizations building systems to collect and use it well now will have a meaningful advantage heading into year-end.

For your inspiration folder

The International Mission Board ran a five-day test on their website: half of visitors saw a standard sticky bar with a single call-to-action button, and half saw one with three gift-amount buttons matching the suggested amounts on their donation page.

The version with gift buttons got 448% more clicks, generated 16 donations compared to 1 in the control group, and produced a 1,495% increase in total donations. Most donors who selected an amount in the sticky bar carried that amount through to completion, which speaks to how early commitment shapes giving behavior.
Topics: Nonprofits

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