We reported that the paid campaign cost $139.93 a donation and built the routes that do not depend on advertising.
A Texas charity for Sudan ran its first scaled donation campaign on Meta. It did not work well enough. The August report says exactly that, and shows the fundraising system built in the same month so the organisation is not hostage to a cost per click.
Period: August 2026, one month inside an ongoing retainer. Every figure is taken from the client report and labelled with its source. No figure has been rounded upward.
The client
Amel Foundation is a 501(c)(3) in the Dallas-Fort Worth area supporting children with cancer, orphans, clean water, food and health programmes in Sudan. Cush is its marketing and fundraising department: paid, materials, donor systems, institutional outreach, content and the site.
Where they started
A board with strong programmes and scattered assets: ten separate donation exports, no recent-donor list, no external deck, materials rebuilt for every conversation, and a single paid campaign carrying the month's fundraising hopes.
What was wrong
Paid donation campaigns can work, but a charity that depends on them is one algorithm change from a funding crisis. The month needed both an honest read of the paid test and a second and third route to money.
What we did
The children-with-cancer campaign run at scale, plus a $4.37 orphans test. The report separates the two and refuses to call the test a result.
Institutional routes: four mosque and community applications prepared with a reusable pack (501(c)(3) evidence, Form 990, leadership sheet, project detail); a Texas corporate donor research system defined to produce a qualified shortlist of 20 to 30 companies; an event pipeline across five cities.
The donor system: ten exports consolidated to one recent-donor list, an approved thank-you email, and a three-tier stewardship model covering general, programme-specific and major donors, with the CRM decision documented.
Board enablement: a clickable one-pager, an eighteen-slide external deck, three asset indexes, a ten-post Arabic educational thread, and eight blog posts.
What changed
The paid campaign reached 9,653 people, drew 330 clicks at 1.75 per cent and produced 11 donations for $200 against $1,539.18 of spend. The report names two hypotheses for the cost, the funding card running out on 23 August and a mismatch between creative and ask, and refuses to confirm either without a continuous run. What the board walked away with: one donor list, one deck, one pager, four applications, a corporate outreach system and a stewardship model. September's first commitment is the thank-you email the site fault held back.
The evidence
Every number on this page carries one of three labels, and the period it covers is stated above the figures.
When the ads do not work, say so, and build what does not need them.
The sector was humanitarian. The move was reporting a poor result without spin and using the same month to build institutional and donor routes. Trust with a board is built in months like this one.
Read the next case, or find out which pattern your marketing fits.
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