Inside Global Humanitarian Fundraising - Part 2 of our EAA Workshop Recap
Following the discussion on global trends, the second part of the workshop explored benchmarking insights from a cross-alliance review of recent Disasters Emergency Committee appeals.
The analysis looked across seven appeals delivered between 2020 and 2025, providing a single integrated view of how humanitarian fundraising has performed across very different crisis contexts.
The aim was not to focus on individual appeals, but to understand the broader patterns shaping income, channel performance and strategic drivers across the Emergency Appeals Alliance.
A small number of appeals drive most income
One of the clearest findings from the benchmarking review was the variation in scale across appeals.
A small number of large-scale emergencies account for the majority of income across the dataset, while the remaining appeals sit at a much smaller and more consistent level.
This creates a highly uneven landscape where performance is heavily shaped by the nature and visibility of individual crises rather than any single structural model.
It also highlights that large-scale appeals behave very differently in terms of fundraising mix, particularly around digital investment and cold acquisition activity.
Income is highly concentrated across a small number of organisations
Across all seven appeals, income generation is consistently concentrated among a small group of member organisations.
A relatively small number of agencies account for the majority of total income, with the same core group often leading performance across multiple appeals, although not always in the same order.
This pattern reinforces the idea that performance is not purely linked to organisational size, but also to strategy, positioning and channel effectiveness within each appeal context.
Warm channels remain the backbone of performance
A consistent finding across all appeals was the central role of warm fundraising channels.
Email and direct mail continue to provide the backbone of income generation across every appeal reviewed, typically contributing a significant proportion of overall funds raised.
By contrast, cold acquisition activity plays a more variable role. It tends to scale meaningfully only in the largest, highest-profile appeals where there is sufficient public attention to justify significant investment.
Even in those cases, the return on digital spend remains relatively limited compared to overall investment levels.
Across the dataset, it was noted that a substantial proportion of digital spend delivers a relatively small share of income, highlighting ongoing questions around efficiency and optimisation.
High-value giving is a major but underdeveloped lever
Another important theme was the growing importance of high-value income.
Across the appeals reviewed, high-value giving represents a significant proportion of total income, including support from corporate partners and major donors.
However, this area remains unevenly developed across the alliance, with activity often concentrated among a small number of organisations.
The benchmarking highlighted that there is currently no consistent, shared approach to high-value engagement at an alliance level, despite its clear importance to overall performance.
Three key patterns across all appeals
Bringing the dataset together, three consistent patterns emerged across all seven appeals.
1. Concentration is the norm: A small number of organisations consistently generate the majority of income across appeals. This reflects differences in strategy and execution as much as organisational scale.
2. Warm audiences drive performance: Warm channels remain the most reliable driver of income. Cold acquisition has a role, but it is highly dependent on the scale and visibility of individual crises.
3. High-value giving is the most underdeveloped lever: High-value income represents a significant share of overall fundraising but remains uneven across members and lacks a coordinated alliance-wide approach.
Looking ahead
These benchmarking insights formed the basis for the final part of the workshop, which focused on strategic implications for alliance-based fundraising models and the future direction of humanitarian response coordination.
AAW was pleased to contribute to this important discussion and to support shared learning across the Emergency Appeals Alliance network.
