How NVISION Helped a Nonprofit Drive Donor Engagement
With expert help and data‑driven insights, Oakville Hospital Foundation grew their Giving Tuesday donations by 75%.
Oakville Hospital Foundation, based in Ontario, Canada, is on a mission to transform the community health care experience at Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. By raising and distributing funds for medical equipment and technology, the foundation helps build and sustain a healthy, resilient community.
“In our region, Halton, the population is projected to grow by over 60% the next 25 years,” says Julia Tompkins, Associate Director, Marketing, at Oakville. “With an aging population and increasing health care demands, it’s imperative that we continue to raise funds to ensure access to world-class community health care.”
While the foundation had been using Intuit Mailchimp for its email marketing and fundraising efforts, it wasn’t leveraging the platform’s full potential. That changed when they partnered with NVISION, a Mailchimp pro partner and full-service digital marketing agency based in Toronto. NVISION helped them optimize their email marketing strategy for Giving Tuesday, a global movement that encourages people to give back in whatever ways they can.
The challenge: Driving donor engagement
Oakville had a sizable email list but lacked a segmentation strategy. Recognizing the challenge of mounting an effective fundraising effort, the foundation turned to NVISION to help drive donor engagement and contributions.
“Oakville Hospital Foundation reached out to us in 2024 to manage their email marketing initiatives,” says George Arabian, CEO at NVISION. “They were using Mailchimp, but not really maximizing the platform or applying segmentation. That led us to assist them in developing a robust solution to help them generate awareness for Giving Tuesday donations using Mailchimp.”
The NVISION team determined that Oakville’s email campaigns were too broad and followed a one-size-fits-all approach. They suspected that the lack of segmentation caused the foundation to miss critical opportunities to tailor its communications to different donor groups.
The team identified 3 challenge areas:
Lack of targeted email segmentation
Limited insight into donor behavior
Shortage of personalized donor communication
“Mailchimp was not necessarily a new tool for them [Oakville Hospital Foundation], but it wasn’t exactly optimized for success,” says Marino Marks, Campaign Manager, Email & CRM, at NVISION. “By implementing targeted messaging, our goal was to see a boost in donor engagement and conversions.”
The tools: Segmentation + personalized donor journeys
Oakville Hospital Foundation provided NVISION with the initial direction on the core topic of the Giving Tuesday campaign. From there, the team created a strategic plan with 13 emails, divided into 4 batches. Each batch targeted key donor groups. Using Mailchimp’s advanced segment builder, the team customized these audience segments based on donor behavior and lifecycle stages.
These segments were:
Friends: Non-donors
Occasional donors: Donated more than 12 months ago
Active donors: Donated within the past 12 months
Major donors: High-value contributors
The NVISION team also leveraged Mailchimp’s tags to organize and subsequently update segmented audiences in real time. For example, the team ensured that people who had donated early in the campaign were excluded from receiving the next email in the series. Notably, the friends segment—people who hadn’t donated before—showed significant engagement, with 43 of them contributing.
The message and calls to action for the segment of occasional donors (lapsed donors who donated more than 12 months ago) were designed to encourage them to renew their support for the cause. Meanwhile, for the segment of active donors (recent donors or monthly donors), the message highlighted their role in elevating health care in their community.
“By crafting tailored messages for each segment, we ensured that each donor group received content relevant to their giving history and engagement level,” says Marino. A $50,000 matching gift campaign from major donors also played a role in helping the foundation surpass its campaign goal.
To further optimize the campaign, NVISION also used:
Mailchimp’s marketing dashboard to determine optimal campaign timing and frequency
Custom reports to analyze donor behavior and refine messaging throughout the campaign
A/B testing to refine email content and calls to action
Send Time Optimization to fine-tune email delivery, aligning AI-driven recommendations with their existing strategy, to reach donors at peak engagement times
“I was very aligned with the strategy from the start,” says Julia. “As marketers, we understand that the more personalized you can make your communication, the more effective it can be. This approach helped us speak to our donors in a way that felt personal and meaningful.”
“For nonprofits like Oakville Hospital Foundation, personalized donor engagement isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential for driving real fundraising impact.”
—George Arabian, CEO at NVISION
The results: An engaged donor community and a successful campaign
NVISION’s strategic approach and use of Mailchimp’s advanced marketing tools led to great results.
The foundation exceeded its campaign fundraising goal by 26% and grew their donations by 75% compared to last year’s results, marking its most successful Giving Tuesday to date.
69% of all Giving Tuesday donations came from email marketing—their strongest performing channel.
Email donations had a 35% higher average value than those from other marketing channels, demonstrating the power of segmentation and personalization.
The click-through rate for their major donor segment was 2x higher than the industry benchmark.
“It was really exciting to see the results,” says Julia. “We increased our revenue this year by 75% compared with the previous year’s Giving Tuesday campaign. The ability to personalize our messaging and use segmentation played a huge role in that success.”
“For nonprofits like Oakville Hospital Foundation, personalized donor engagement isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential for driving real fundraising impact,” says George.
Mailchimp and NVISION: A proactive partnership
NVISION’s relationship with Mailchimp has evolved since they joined Mailchimp & Co as members in November 2020. As a Mailchimp pro partner today, with a listing in Mailchimp’s Experts Directory, NVISION continues to use Mailchimp’s advanced marketing tools and platform to help drive results for its clients.
Given the success of Oakville Hospital Foundation’s Giving Tuesday campaign, Marino shared a few tips that marketers for nonprofits can consider adopting to help boost similar fundraising campaigns.
Map out the donor journey: Identify the factors that may prevent donors from giving or engaging with the organization early on. Understanding these barriers can help marketers create and launch targeted and effective messaging.
Invest in a solid segmentation strategy: Ensure that each subscriber receives relevant information based on their stage in the donor journey. This personalization can help increase engagement and drive conversions.
Use an easy-to-use email marketing platform: A platform like Mailchimp helps enable the speed and flexibility needed to manage multiple email campaigns across several segments over time.
“Email is becoming a major vehicle in our digital success,” says Julia. “It’s driving people to our website, helping them understand our mission, and ultimately leading to donations. I hope we continue working with NVISION for future campaigns because they’ve truly helped shape and grow our email marketing strategy.”
By combining NVISION’s strategic expertise as a Mailchimp pro partner alongside Mailchimp’s email marketing and segmentation capabilities, the foundation transformed its donor outreach, exceeded its fundraising goal, and set a new benchmark for future fundraising campaigns.