Introduction: What Can Charities Learn from the Latest Research on Marketing Effectiveness?
In August 2026, WARC published a new study titled The Pace Principle 2.0: From Social Sprint to Sustained Growth, examining one of the most important challenges in modern marketing: organisations have become faster than ever at producing content, responding to trends, working with creators, and reaching audiences through social platforms, yet greater speed does not necessarily translate into sustainable growth.
WARC is an organisation specialising in research and knowledge on marketing and advertising effectiveness. It provides marketers with research, evidence, case studies, and benchmarks to support evidence-based marketing decisions. WARC is now part of LIONS, a global platform focused on creativity and marketing effectiveness whose wider ecosystem includes organisations and platforms such as Cannes Lions, Effie, Contagious, and the Content Marketing Institute.
Although The Pace Principle 2.0 is not specifically a study of charities or fundraising, and its research originated in the Asian marketing context, its findings raise important questions for non-profit organisations and crowdfunding platforms:
Is it enough for a fundraising campaign to succeed today?
Does an increase in views and engagement mean that a charity is building a stronger donor base?
And what happens when paid advertising stops?
These questions move the discussion beyond thinking about the next campaign towards building a sustainable system for resource development and donor relationships.
1. What Is The Pace Principle 2.0?
The research begins with a simple but important observation.
Investment in social-first marketing and creator marketing is accelerating, yet many brands have become trapped in what WARC describes as a kind of Sprint Loop: a repeated race to capture attention, generate reach, and achieve immediate engagement.
An organisation publishes content.
It tries to catch a trend.
It works with a creator or influencer.
It increases media spend.
It generates views, likes, and shares.
Then the cycle begins again.
The problem is that these metrics do not necessarily translate into long-term marketing effectiveness. The research specifically warns against chasing virality and relying on engagement metrics that may have little connection to meaningful brand outcomes.
The study proposes that sustainable growth requires organisations to operate at two speeds simultaneously:
The fast pace:
A social-first sprint that captures attention and generates immediate response.
The long pace:
Building the brand, relationships, and memory structures that support future growth.
WARC argues that social strategy and long-term emotional brand building operate differently: they reach audiences differently, work through different mechanisms, and move at different speeds. Yet combining them is important for more sustainable growth.
This is precisely where the findings become highly relevant to the non-profit sector.
2. The Same Problem Exists in Fundraising
A charity can easily become trapped in its own version of the Sprint Loop:
Campaign → Advertisement → Donation Ask → New Campaign → New Advertisement → New Donation Ask
During Ramadan, the pace may become even more intense:
Zakat → Food Parcels → Sponsorship → Water Project → Sadaqah Jariyah → Last Ten Nights → Laylat al-Qadr
Then a humanitarian emergency occurs, triggering another cycle of urgent appeals.
None of these activities is inherently problematic. Charities need to raise funds, respond to humanitarian needs, and make use of important giving seasons.
The problem begins when the organisation’s entire marketing strategy becomes a sequence of donation requests.
The organisation may succeed in raising money, yet still be unable to answer:
- Do people actually know the organisation?
- Do they trust it?
- Do they understand its mission?
- Do they remember it outside fundraising seasons?
- Do donors return?
- Do they recommend the organisation to others?
- Can the organisation reach them again without paying for another advertisement?
This allows us to reinterpret The Pace Principle for the non-profit sector:
Do not turn all of your charity’s marketing into a race towards the next donation. Run one track that mobilises giving now, while another builds the trust and relationship that encourage people to give in the future and return to give again.
3. The First Pace: The Fundraising Sprint
There are moments when a charity genuinely needs speed.
A humanitarian disaster has happened today.
A medical case needs urgent funding.
A crowdfunding campaign has a defined target.
Only a few days remain before a campaign closes.
The last ten nights of Ramadan have begun.
In these situations, the objective is clear:
Turn attention into action now.
The organisation may use tools such as digital advertising, Reels, creators and influencers, WhatsApp, email, campaign landing pages, retargeting, direct messaging, and fast-moving social media content.
This track can be measured through indicators such as:
Donation Conversion Rate, Cost per Donation, Average Gift, Campaign Revenue, Campaign Completion Rate, and donation checkout completion.
This is the first pace.
It is necessary.
But it is not enough.
4. The Second Pace: Building Trust and Relationships
Another category of content may not generate a donation today, but it performs an entirely different function.
When a charity publishes an impact report.
When it explains how it manages Zakat funds.
When it shows what happened to a project six months after implementation.
When it acknowledges a challenge encountered during delivery and explains how it responded.
When it publishes educational content about the issue it addresses.
When audiences see genuine success stories that preserve beneficiaries’ dignity.
When donors receive an update after giving without immediately being asked for more money.
All of these activities build something that cannot be measured through immediate donations alone:
Trust, memory, and relationships.
Someone may read an impact report today without donating.
Three months later, when they are ready to give Sadaqah or Zakat, they may remember the organisation that consistently demonstrated transparency and professionalism.
This leads to one of the most important lessons the non-profit sector can take from The Pace Principle:
Content that does not generate a donation today may be the reason someone trusts you when they are ready to donate tomorrow.
A charity should therefore work simultaneously on:
Fundraising Now + Building Trust for Later
rather than sacrificing one for the other.
5. Three Ceilings That Can Limit a Charity’s Growth
One of the most important findings in The Pace Principle 2.0 is WARC’s identification of three structural ceilings affecting growth through social and creator marketing:
Platform Ceiling, Cultural Ceiling, and Self-Sustaining Ceiling.
WARC argues that many brands do not even move beyond the first ceiling because their growth remains dependent on algorithmic reach and continued media spending.
These ceilings can be translated into the non-profit sector in highly practical ways.
1. Platform Ceiling
A charity may have hundreds of thousands of followers on a social platform.
But are those followers really a donor base with which the charity has a direct relationship?
Not necessarily.
The platform determines who sees each post. Algorithms change, organic reach may decline, and the organisation may have to pay repeatedly to reach the same audience.
The audience journey should therefore not remain:
Instagram → Instagram → Instagram
Instead, organisations should progressively build a journey such as:
Social Media → Website → Consent → Email / WhatsApp → CRM → Donor Relationship
The objective is no longer simply to increase follower numbers, but to turn part of the social audience into a direct, permission-based, sustainable relationship with the organisation.
6. Cultural Ceiling: When the Trend Becomes More Important Than the Mission
A charity may generate millions of views from content connected to a popular trend.
But one week later:
What does the audience actually remember about the organisation?
That is the problem.
There is an important distinction between:
Trend Relevance
and:
Mission Relevance
The only question should not be:
Can we participate in this trend?
It should also be:
Does this content help people understand who we are, what cause we exist to address, and why they should trust us?
This distinction becomes particularly important in Arab and Muslim contexts.
Ramadan, Zakat, Waqf, Sadaqah Jariyah, and social solidarity are not merely seasonal marketing trends.
They are connected to deeper systems of values, motivations, and social behaviour.
A charity that treats Ramadan only as a month for increasing advertising expenditure may achieve seasonal revenue.
But an organisation that builds relationships throughout the year, demonstrates its impact, communicates transparently, and consistently reinforces its mission enters Ramadan with something more valuable than advertising alone:
Trust.
7. The Self-Sustaining Ceiling: The Hardest Test
This may be the most important of the three ceilings for charities.
Ask a simple question:
If the charity stopped paid advertising today, what would happen to donations?
If reach stops and donations largely disappear with it, the organisation has a sustainability problem in its marketing model.
A more mature system should gradually produce a cycle such as:
Paid Reach → First Donation → Good Experience → Trust → Repeat Giving → Advocacy → Organic Sharing → New Donors
At this point, every new donor does not require the organisation to start again from zero.
Previous donors return.
Some become recurring donors.
Some share campaigns.
Some recommend the organisation to family and friends.
Marketing then begins to create an institutional asset, rather than merely producing isolated campaign results.
8. Why Do These Findings Matter Particularly for Crowdfunding?
Crowdfunding is inherently built around speed.
There is a campaign.
There is a target.
A progress indicator moves.
People share the campaign.
Contributions accumulate.
There may also be a deadline for reaching the target.
It therefore appears to be an ideal environment for a Social Sprint.
The risk, however, is that the relationship ends at:
Campaign Completed.
Then the next campaign starts from zero.
The Pace Principle offers an important lesson for crowdfunding platforms and charities using them:
Crowdfunding success should not be measured only by whether the campaign reaches its target, but also by what remains after the target has been reached.
Does the contributor now know the organisation?
Have they consented to ongoing communication?
Did they receive updates?
Do they know what happened to the project?
Did they donate again?
Did they share another campaign?
Did they become a supporter of the wider cause?
The crowdfunding journey can evolve from:
View → Share → Donate → End
into:
View → Trust → Donate → Update → Impact → Relationship → Repeat Giving → Advocacy
A crowdfunding campaign then becomes more than a short-term financial event. It becomes a gateway to building a community of supporters.
9. Do Not Measure Both Paces with the Same Metrics
One of the problems highlighted by the research is excessive reliance on engagement and reach metrics as evidence of effectiveness.
This is an important lesson for charities.
If a campaign exists to raise donations, then:
1 million views + 50 donations
should not automatically be considered more successful than:
100,000 views + 2,000 donations.
At the same time, not every piece of content should be judged by the number of immediate donations it generates.
Organisations therefore need two levels of measurement.
For the fast track, they may monitor:
Conversion Rate, Cost per Donation, Revenue, Average Gift, and Campaign Completion.
For the long track, they may monitor:
Donor Retention, Repeat Donation Rate, Recurring Giving, Direct Traffic, Branded Search, Organic Sharing, Engagement Quality, Donor Lifetime Value, and indicators of trust and connection with the organisation.
This changes the management question from:
“How many donations did this post generate?”
to:
“What role does this content perform within the donor journey?”
10. Not Every Message Is Right for Every Audience
WARC's summary of the research indicates that stronger alignment between Target Market and Creative Strategy can substantially improve campaign effectiveness.
However, this finding must be interpreted carefully.
The research was not conducted on Arab charities, so it would be inappropriate to claim that a charity can achieve the same quantified improvement in donations simply by applying the principle.
The value lies in the underlying principle:
Different audiences require strategies and messages that reflect their motivations and context.
A first-time donor is not the same as a repeat donor.
A Zakat donor may not be motivated in exactly the same way as someone seeking a Waqf opportunity.
An institutional donor is not the same as an individual donor.
And a crowdfunding donor who arrives through a friend's shared link may require trust to be established more quickly than someone who has known the organisation for years.
A mature strategy therefore does not begin with:
What do we want to publish?
It begins with:
Who are we speaking to? What is their current relationship with the organisation? And what do they need in order to move to the next stage?
11. A Practical Model for Charities: Twin-Pace Fundraising
The research can be translated into a simple model for non-profit organisations:
| Fast Track | Long Track |
|---|---|
| Fundraising Sprint | Trust & Relationship Building |
| What do we want the audience to do now? | What do we want them to remember about us later? |
| Donation | Trust |
| Campaign | Relationship |
| Paid Media | Owned Audience |
| Social Reach | CRM |
| Influencers / Creators | Community |
| Conversion | Retention |
| Campaign Revenue | Donor Lifetime Value |
| Reaching the Target | Building a Supporter Base |
This does not mean dividing the organisation's work into two competing halves.
The strongest results come when both tracks reinforce each other.
The fast campaign attracts new donors.
A positive experience develops the relationship.
The relationship increases the likelihood of future giving.
Trust makes the next campaign stronger.
The cycle becomes:
Attention → Donation → Experience → Trust → Retention → Advocacy → Growth
12. Five Questions Every Charity Should Ask About Its Marketing
Any charity can use the ideas behind The Pace Principle 2.0 to conduct a simple review of its marketing strategy:
- How much of our content asks for donations, and how much builds trust without asking for money?
- If we stopped paid advertising for a month, could we still reach our donor base?
- Do we measure success only through views and likes, or do we connect marketing performance to donations and donor retention?
- What happens to a donor after they complete their donation?
- Does every campaign leave us with a stronger donor base for the next one, or do we start again from zero each time?
The fifth question may be the most important.
An organisation that raises one million in every campaign but has to purchase a new audience every time may be less mature than an organisation that raises less today but continuously builds a donor base that returns and grows year after year.
Conclusion: Do Not Sprint All the Time
The most important lesson charities can take from The Pace Principle 2.0 is not that they should stop running fast campaigns, advertising, using social media, or working with creators.
Quite the opposite.
These tools are extremely valuable when they are used for the right purpose.
The problem arises when the entire organisation becomes trapped in a continuous Sprint.
One campaign ends and another begins.
One trend disappears and the organisation searches for the next.
Advertising stops and reach disappears with it.
A donor gives once and the relationship ends.
Sustainability requires another pace operating alongside the sprint:
A pace that builds trust, memory, relationships, community, and the willingness to give again.
The Pace Principle can therefore be reframed for the non-profit sector in one simple rule:
Raise funds quickly when the need demands speed, but build trust slowly and consistently throughout the year.
And for crowdfunding:
Do not make reaching the target the end of the campaign; make it the beginning of the relationship.
When a charity learns to operate at both speeds, the purpose of marketing changes from simply securing the next donation to building a system capable of generating giving, trust, and sustainability over the long term.
That is the difference between an organisation that runs fundraising campaigns and one that builds a community of donors and supporters.
