Christmas campaign success with YMCA

Challenging changes

YMCA is the world’s oldest and largest youth charity, supporting communities through youth work, childcare, fitness programmes, homelessness support, wellbeing services and national campaigning on issues affecting young people. Supporter donations play a vital role in enabling this work.

For Christmas 2024, YMCA was operating within a revised budget and a refreshed creative approach. As with many charities across the sector, this required careful planning to ensure fundraising activity remained effective while continuing to meet organisational objectives.

Despite these conditions, the YMCA marketing team set clear and ambitious goals for the campaign:

• Deliver strong donor target via inserts and cold direct mail
• Attract new supporters
• Retain high-quality donors with strong long-term value
• Achieve a strict CPA to maintain efficiency

With a changed creative approach and a challenging market environment, accurate forecasting and disciplined planning were essential to success. YMCA partnered with us to ensure their Christmas activity was grounded in insight, robust planning and realistic expectations.

Intelligence through insight

Along with YMCA we developed a strategy rooted in data, experience and performance insight. The focus was on building a stable, efficient plan that maximised the impact of available investment.

We recommended prioritising YMCA’s strongest historic insert titles – publications with a proven track record of delivering both volume and value for the charity. Using historical performance data, we selected media that consistently over-indexed for YMCA’s audience, ensuring confidence in placement and delivery.

For direct mail, the plan centred on a proven transactional data approach that had historically delivered high-quality donors at a healthy CPA. Alongside this, two carefully selected test lists – mail order and church mailings – were introduced to support ongoing learning and audience diversification.

The strategy was underpinned by:

• Historical performance insight, ensuring media selection was evidence-based
• Strong media owner relationships, supporting competitive rates and efficient delivery
• Sector expertise, drawn from experience working with similar charities
• A realistic forecast model, reflecting both market conditions and creative changes

This approach prioritised intelligence over complexity, delivering a clear, focused plan designed to perform under evolving conditions.

Collaborative delivery

Once the media mix was agreed, Join the Dots worked closely with the YMCA team to coordinate activity across inserts, direct mail and data planning. Targeting, timing and list usage were aligned to seasonal giving patterns and YMCA’s wider fundraising strategy.

Throughout the process, expectations were managed transparently, with open communication and shared understanding of campaign objectives. This collaborative approach built on an established partnership and ensured both teams were aligned from planning through to delivery.

Surpassing targets

The Christmas campaign exceeded expectations across key metrics.

The campaign became one of YMCA’s strongest Christmas performances in recent years, demonstrating that insight-led planning and disciplined execution can deliver excellent results even within a challenging environment.

Building confidence

The success of the campaign provided valuable learning and confidence for future planning. Post-campaign analysis highlighted further opportunities within YMCA’s cash donor file, informing decisions around future investment and testing.

As a result, YMCA increased planned investment for the following year and began exploring additional channels. The foundations established through the 2024 campaign have positioned YMCA well for sustainable fundraising growth, enabling continued support for the communities and young people at the heart of its mission.

It’s a breath of fresh air working with the Join the Dots team. Their approach to cash planning has revolutionised our unrestricted programme at YMCA and we hope to take this even further in the future.

Within our dedicated team, Lottie is incredibly knowledgeable and diligent, always helping us to think of solutions and making recommendations. She always takes the time to explain things, it’s clear she genuinely really cares.

Roxie Merrett, Senior Acquisition Manager, YMCA England & Wales