Measuring your campaign’s success

Over the past week, through the Campaign Creator series, you’ve planned your campaign, developed your messages, created content and prepared for launch. 

Now it’s time to think about how you’ll measure success. 

For many of us, evaluation can feel like an extra task at the end of a campaign that’s already taken a lot of hard work and dedication. But evaluation is one of the most valuable parts of the process.  

Taking time to understand what worked well, what didn’t and what you might do differently next time can help you make future campaigns even stronger. 

This guide will help you identify meaningful measures of success, track results, learn from your campaign and communicate your impact. 

Start with your campaign goal

The most useful metrics are the ones that relate directly to what your campaign was trying to achieve. 

Think back to the campaign objective you identified on day one. For example: 

• If your goal was to recruit volunteers, you might track volunteer enquiries or applications.
• If your goal was to increase donations, you might track the number or value of donations received.
• If your goal was to promote a service, you might track referrals, sign-ups or enquiries.
• If your goal was to raise awareness, you might look at reach, engagement or website traffic. 

Rather than measuring everything, focus on a small number of metrics that will help you understand whether your campaign achieved its goal. 

Choosing meaningful metrics

Campaigns often generate lots of data. The challenge therefore, is deciding which information is actually useful. 

Useful metrics are: 

• Relevant to your campaign goal
• Easy for your organisation to track
• Helpful for decision-making 

For many small charities, a handful of meaningful measures is often far more valuable than a complicated reporting framework. 

You might choose to track: 

• Reach
• Engagement
• Website traffic
• Volunteer sign-ups
• Donations
• Service uptake
• Event registrations
• Media coverage 

A useful starting point could be to revisit the goal you set on part one. 

Your campaign objective should help shape the measures you focus on, but it’s important to look at results holistically. Alongside your primary goal, consider what other metrics can tell you about audience engagement, content performance and channel effectiveness. 

Together, these insights can help you understand both what happened and what you might do differently next time. 

Tracking your results

You don’t need specialist software to understand how your campaign is performing. 

Many organisations already have access to useful information through: 

• Website analytics (perhaps through Google Analytics or your website provider)
• Social media insights
• Email reporting (through platforms like Mailchimp or Mailerlite)
• Donation platforms
• Feedback from supporters and service users 

The important thing is to decide what you’ll track before your campaign begins. 

If in doubt, creating a simple spreadsheet can make it easier to record results and identify trends in your engagement throughout the campaign. 

Looking beyond the numbers

Not everything that matters can be measured with a number. 

Alongside quantitative data (numbers, analytics, stats etc), consider collecting examples that help demonstrate the impact of your campaign. 

This might include: 

• Comments on social media
• Supporter feedback
• Volunteer testimonials
• Feedback from partners 

These insights can help explain the difference your campaign made and provide valuable evidence for future communications, funding applications and reports. 

Learning from your campaign

Let’s return to Community Connect for the final time. 

Our fictional charity tackles loneliness among older people. Their campaign goal was to recruit 15 volunteer befrienders by the end of September through a volunteer recruitment campaign. 

At the end of the campaign, they review their results: 

• 18 volunteer applications received
• 4,000 visits to their volunteer recruitment page
• Strong engagement with volunteer stories shared on social media
• Positive feedback via emails and conversations from existing volunteers and community partners 

The numbers tell part of the story. They show the campaign exceeded its recruitment goal. But Community Connect also looks at what worked well outside of just signups. They notice that volunteer stories generated significantly more engagement than other content and decide to use more volunteer-led storytelling in future campaigns. 

They also identify areas for improvement. Their email open rates were lower than expected, suggesting they may want to test different subject lines or send times next time. 

Evaluation isn’t about proving everything was perfect. It’s about understanding what worked, what didn’t and what you can learn for the future. 

Reporting your impact

Once you’ve reviewed your results, think about who would benefit from hearing about them. 

Sharing campaign outcomes can help demonstrate impact to: 

• Staff and volunteers
• Trustees
• Funders
• Partners
• Supporters 

Keeping your reporting simple

Focus on: 

• What you set out to achieve
• What happened
• What you learned
• What you’ll do next 

This helps turn campaign data into useful insights that can support future planning and decision-making. 

Your campaign’s next steps

Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of Campaign Creator. 

Over the past five days, you’ve developed a campaign objective, identified your audience, crafted key messages, planned content, prepared for launch and considered how you’ll measure success. 

If your campaign still feels like a work in progress, that’s completely normal. You can build on this campaign plan long after Small Charity Week ends. 

Remember, successful campaigns aren’t always the biggest or most ambitious. They’re the ones that have a clear purpose, connect with the right audience and continue to learn and improve over time. 

We hope Campaign Creator has given you the confidence, tools and practical ideas to take the next step with your campaign. 

The Campaign Creator email series

Want to receive our 5-day email series on campaign creation? You’ll get an email from us each day for 5 days, including expert tips, links and your free campaign creator workbook!

You’ll receive a practical email and accompanying resource each day, guiding you through every stage of planning, creating, launching and evaluating a charity campaign.