The 2026 Playbook: 6 Strategies to Scale Your Virtual Challenge Fundraising
The 2025 data showed clearly which platforms perform best, which months drive the highest volume, and which activity types deliver the strongest return. Here’s how to put those findings to work in 2026.
1. Start with your own data
Before you plan a single campaign for 2026, pull up your 2025 performance history in GivePanel. Look at which campaigns yielded the highest average raised, which months gave you the lowest cost-per-acquisition, and where fundraisers dropped off. The most useful input for your 2026 calendar isn’t a new trend, it’s the data you’ve already generated.
2. Treat repeat fundraisers differently
Acquisition costs are rising, which makes your existing supporters increasingly valuable. Someone who has already completed a challenge for your charity understands what’s involved, trusts your organisation, and statistically raises more.
Use GivePanel’s reporting to identify repeat participants from 2025 and build a separate stewardship approach for them. Early access to new campaigns, more personalised communications, and a tone that acknowledges their history with you will go a long way. A dedicated stewardship track, separate from your standard new-joiner flow, will better reflect the relationship you’ve already built with them.
3. Match your registration forms to your acquisition channels
A supporter clicking through from an Instagram Reel is in a very different mindset to a loyal donor following a link in your monthly newsletter. Sending everyone to the same generic registration form creates friction that doesn’t need to be there.
In 2026, build distinct registration forms for different acquisition channels. A Facebook Ads audience needs a different experience to an existing supporter base. Set up variants for the same campaign, test them, and let the conversion data guide which to weight more heavily.
4. Test SMS and WhatsApp alongside email
Email stewardship is still the foundation of a well-run campaign, but SMS and WhatsApp offer reach that email can’t always match. Text messages tend to be read quickly, which makes them well-suited to time-sensitive communications — activation nudges, milestone celebrations, last-push reminders.
WhatsApp can go further, giving you a way to build real-time community among challenge participants rather than just broadcasting at them.
Start small: test SMS with a segmented group who have opted in, measure engagement against your email benchmarks, and scale once you have evidence it’s working for your audience. Keep GDPR compliance front of mind throughout.
5. Keep an evergreen challenge running in the background
Most virtual challenge fundraising is built around short, high-pressure windows. An evergreen campaign — continuously available, low maintenance — captures revenue outside those peaks without requiring a full campaign push.
A walking challenge that supporters can join at any point works well for this. Promote it as a flexible option on your website and in your regular communications. It won’t drive the same volume as a peak-month campaign, but the incremental income adds up over the course of a year.
6. Lead with JustGiving
The 2025 data is clear: JustGiving delivered an average of £275.60 per Active Fundraiser, in comparison to Facebook, which delivered £147.23. That’s an 87% difference in fundraising value per person!
Make JustGiving the default option at the top of your registration forms and be clear about why — it’s where your supporters raise more. Keep Facebook available as a secondary option for those who prefer a native social experience, but direct your highest-intent traffic towards JustGiving.
How these fit together
These six strategies aren’t independent of each other — your own historical data informs your calendar, your calendar shapes which activity types and registration forms you build, and your stewardship approach determines how much value you get from the supporters you acquire.
Want to see how this comes together in practice? Book a demo at givepanel.com/demo to see how GivePanel’s registration forms, automated messaging, and reporting dashboards can support each of these in one place.
Already a GivePanel customer? Start with your 2025 data. Pull your campaign history, look at what performed, and use it to build a 2026 calendar based on your own supporters’ behaviour.