Quick donation feature improves conversion journey for MAF

The brief

MAF came to us with a familiar challenge. Their existing donation funnel was four steps long, and the data showed a significant drop-off at each stage. The biggest leak sat between the Gift Aid step and personal details, where roughly one in five users abandoned.

The deeper question was strategic. MAF wanted to grow their support base among younger donors, but the existing journey was built around the expectations of an older, more patient audience. We needed to understand whether streamlining the experience could open the door to a demographic the charity had historically struggled to convert.

The approach

We started with the audience. User research told us something important: younger donors (18 to 35) make their giving decision quickly and expect to act on it just as quickly. They live inside mobile wallets. They don’t want to type out their address. They certainly don’t want to navigate four screens to give £15.

That insight shaped everything that followed. Rather than trying to nudge a slow funnel into being slightly faster, we designed an alternative path that matched the behaviour we’d seen in research.

The work involved:

• A clear hypothesis and test design. We ran a structured A/B experiment with conversion rate as the primary metric, alongside donation volume, revenue, and demographic breakdown.
• A quick-pay donation route. We introduced an Apple Pay and Google Pay option that let users bypass the four-step funnel entirely, using payment and contact details already saved on their device. The standard journey remained available for donors who preferred it.
• Close work with MAF’s IT team. Quick-pay integrations live or die on the back end. We worked alongside the in-house IT team to make sure payment gateways behaved correctly, CRM syncing was reliable, and the right user information was being captured (not just the ID token that quick-pay defaults to returning).
• Collaboration with Donor Development. A new audience group needs more than a new checkout. We worked with MAF’s Donor Development team to share insights on this younger cohort, helping shape how they’d be welcomed, stewarded, and developed beyond the first gift.

The results

The experiment performed strongly across every metric that mattered.

Conversion rate rose significantly. The number of completed donations more than doubled. Total revenue grew by a similar margin. Even with a slightly lower average donation value (a known characteristic of younger givers), the sheer increase in volume more than compensated.

The most important finding was who was converting. The clear majority of donors going through the quick-pay route fell into the 18 to 35 bracket, the exact group MAF had wanted to reach. We’d not only improved the numbers, we’d opened a route to an audience the charity could now build a long-term relationship with.

For MAF, the implications go beyond this single test. They now have:

• A working acquisition channel for younger donors, with proven performance data behind it
• A clearer picture of how this audience behaves, which feeds into ad creative, landing page design, and stewardship planning
• A foundation for further optimisation work, including testing how to convert one-off quick-pay givers into regular supporters
• Internal confidence (across IT, fundraising, and donor development) that experimentation of this kind is worth investing in.

The wider lesson is one we keep coming back to with charity clients. Younger audiences aren’t disengaged from giving, they’re disengaged from friction. When we design the journey around how they actually behave, the numbers tend to follow.