If you're wondering how external trends and internal optimizations can make or break a fundraising challenge, April gave us all the proof we needed.

Despite the usual ups and downs, we’re expecting to land somewhere between 295% and 300% return on ad spend across challenges. Here's what worked, what didn't, and what we learned so you can put these insights to work in your next campaign.

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🏆The Top Performing Challenges

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1. Politically and Socially Relevant Causes:  Challenges supporting missions in this space continued to perform exceptionally well. Why? The current political climate continues to fuel urgency and engagement.

2. Parkinson’s Focused Nonprofits: April’s designation as Parkinson’s Awareness Month, along with heightened concern over medical funding, helped our nonprofits in the Parkinson's space see stellar performance.

3. Hunger and Social Support Causes: We've long seen humanitarian causes, including hunger and food security, struggle with Challenges. Many of our challenge partners in this space focus on lead acquisition and fueling other programs through their challenges instead of topline revenue. Compared to past performance, however, this month was a major win! Strong CPL and better-than-average fundraising suggest that a tighter lead targeting strategy combined with politically relevant messaging made a real difference.

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⚠️ The Challenges That Struggled

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1. Tired Activities: We've long seen dog walk challenges resonate well with audiences, but they seem to be falling by the wayside. While our dog walk challenge this month wasn’t a failure, but it was softer than the performance this nonprofit usually expects. Dog walk activities may be feeling stale, we'll be shifting away from them for a time to understand if they fall back in favor in the fall.

2. Tension between Brand and Mission: Some nonprofits' brands resonate better than others, and in a unique test this month we found that non-branded ad creatives (no logo, just mission-based visuals) actually performed better than the branded creative. The takeaway? When brand identity isn’t enough, let the mission lead.

3. Sensitive Topics: A nonprofit offering crisis support and advocacy started strong but fell off quickly. With less brand recognition than others in the space and a sensitive mission, sharing a personal fundraiser can be tough. Active rates and average raise were low.

Big Opportunity: Page likes skyrocketed during the campaign—up 395%! That shows brand-building value even when fundraising metrics soften.

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💡 What We Learned (And What We Optimized)

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1. Political Climate Still Drives Action Many top-performing orgs this month had missions directly impacted by current events. If your org's cause aligns with trending political conversations, lean into it and let us know how we can help!

2. Fresh Concepts > Repeats New challenge themes and activities outperformed recycled ones. We're always monitoring what's hitting and what's not, and it seems a few activities are falling out of favor compared to fresh concepts like "Summer Miles" and a DIY "Spring Forward" challenge.

3. Opt-In Rates Are Consistent We've really started to hone in on driving subscribers through challenge acquisition, and we're seeing over 20% opt in rate (meaning 20% of leads are becoming subscribers!) This finding showcases just how promising challenges can be for not only revenue generation, but also long-term support.

4. Creative Testing Works The "Mile a Day" refresh remains our go-to tactic for resetting underperforming CPLs. And in some cases, a full creative refresh, even stripping away logos and focusing on the mission, can improve CTR dramatically.

5. Platform Testing Has Limits Instagram either hits big or flops hard. It’s a high-risk, high-reward platform that works well only when it’s the right fit for the challenge. We’re identifying the challenges that work and those that don’t and are excited for the opportunities to include instagram fundraising as a challenge add-on in the near future! Keep your eyes peeled for more updates there!

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📅 Is Everything On Track?

April challenges are wrapping up in the next couple weeks, and while a few challenges started slow, most are still trending upward. And, 300% return on ad spend is definitely something to celebrate! The better news? We have more tools and insights than ever to push performance even higher.

Want more data-backed insights like these? Check out The Questions That Could Increase Your Return by 42% to learn how asking better questions can transform your next challenge.