Intelligent Ask Amounts increases giving season donation revenue
Fundraising tool: Intelligent Ask Amounts
Test period: 11-20-2024 to 01-06-2025
Hypothesis:
- Using Intelligent Ask Amounts (IAA) will increase net donation revenue for nonprofits during giving season compared to standard ask arrays.
- Within IAA, using familiar, rounded values (e.g., $100 instead of $95) will further enhance net donation revenue compared to non-rounded values.
Test design:
Donors were randomly presented with one of three ask arrays:
1. The control featuring standard ask amounts
2. Variant 1 featuring IAA in its current optimized form
3. Variant 2 featuring IAA with familiar, rounded values
The test spanned 5.4 million sessions and ran throughout the giving season, strategically covering major giving days like Giving Tuesday and New Year’s Eve.
Control

Test variant 1

Test variant 2

Test results:
Compared to a standard, generic ask array, both variations of IAA generated higher donation revenue, with the winning variation (featuring familiar, rounded values) achieving the following results.
Winning variant | Avg. gift size | Conversion rate | Net revenue |
IAA with familiar, rounded values | +6.81% | -1.94% | +4.45% |
Key learnings:
Our hypotheses were confirmed: IAA significantly boosts donation revenue during giving season, with familiar, rounded values further enhancing net donation revenue compared to non-rounded amounts.
Donors presented with IAA gave 4-7% more in donation revenue than those who saw a standard ask array, driven primarily by larger average gift sizes. While this slightly reduced conversion rates, the increase in gift size outweighed the decline, ensuring consistent net revenue growth.
Familiar, rounded ask values also boosted both conversion and gift size.
So what: We’re more confident than ever that nonprofits should use IAA to boost year-round revenue. In response, the Classy product team implemented a version of IAA with familiar, rounded donation values and plans to conduct additional testing in the coming year.