16% lower cost per donation: how Depaul UK fixed donation tracking | Orla Incremental Media

Depaul UK is a charity dedicated to ending homelessness, with a particular focus on supporting young people. Their mission is to end homelessness and change the lives of those affected by it. 

To fund these vital services, Depaul UK invests significantly in digital advertising to attract donors, increase campaign visibility, and recruit volunteers. The organisation recognised that the quality of data feeding into Google Ads and Meta Ads was crucial for improving campaign efficiency and ensuring that every advertising pound generated the greatest possible social impact. However, they needed specialist support to achieve this. That is why they collaborated with Orla Incremental Media, a Stape partner.

Like many nonprofit organisations, Depaul UK lacked in‑house expertise to set up and maintain a modern, privacy‑compliant tracking infrastructure. Several issues were limiting performance:

• Missing donation tracking meant campaigns could not accurately measure or optimise towards real results.
• The team was unsure how to generate and send the hashed user data required for Meta’s Conversions API.
• Incomplete consent integration created concerns around trust, transparency, and compliance, especially as Google began enforcing Consent Mode for Google Ads.
• Browser restrictions, ad blockers, and ITP further reduced the reliability of client-side tracking.

These challenges resulted in inefficient appeal campaigns and reduced visibility into the performance of key fundraising activities.

Depaul UK partnered with Orla Incremental Media to rebuild their tracking framework from the ground up.

After auditing the existing setup, all client-side issues were resolved, missing donation tracking was restored, and their preferred cookie management platform was integrated with Google Consent Mode to ensure compliance and supporter trust.

Orla Incremental Media then implemented Stape’s Server-Side Google Tag Manager hosting, choosing Stape for its reliability, nonprofit-friendly features, and ease of deployment. 

Key parts of the setup included:

• Custom Loader – reducing the impact of ad blockers and browser limitations so that tracking loads reliably when users consent.
• Data tag and Data Client, and templates – enabling secure capture and hashing of user data before sending events to Google, Meta, and other platforms.
• Straightforward configuration, supported by Stape’s extensive documentation and video tutorials, made implementation fast and stress‑free.

With server-side tracking in place, Depaul UK gained both improved data quality and a fully compliant, future‑proof setup.

The impact of implementing Stape server‑side tracking was immediate and measurable.

• 2024 Winter Appeal (before Stape sGTM): £27.98 cost per donation.
• 2025 Winter Appeal (after Stape sGTM): £23.51 cost per donation.
• 16% reduction in cost per donation.

• 8.06% of purchases/donations recovered through enhanced server-side event processing and improved matching.

These improvements enabled Depaul UK to reach more young people in crisis while maintaining tight control over fundraising costs.

Depaul UK now has a scalable, compliant foundation for all analytics and conversion tracking. Orla Incremental Media will continue expanding its server-side setup, testing new integrations, and refining event data to support long‑term improvements in fundraising efficiency.

Jason Salt, Founder at Orla Incremental Media:

“For agencies working with charities, every optimisation matters because it directly impacts people’s lives. Stape gives us the accurate, consent‑safe data we need to maximise campaign efficiency and deliver better outcomes for organisations like Depaul UK. It’s genuinely transformative.”

Carolyn Hardy, Supporter Experience Manager at Depaul UK:

“Every donation helps us support young people facing homelessness, so ensuring our digital campaigns are as efficient and transparent as possible is vital. Partnering with Orla Incremental Media and implementing Stape’s server‑side tracking has given us clearer insight into our fundraising performance and improved the efficiency of our campaigns. It’s strengthened both our data and our confidence.”

• Reliable server hosting. Stape gives a stable place to run the Google Tag Manager server container.
• Tools for strong data collection. Products like Custom Loader and ready templates help recover more useful data and send it safely.
• Easy rollout to deploy the setup quickly.

Depaul UK and its sister organisations worldwide support people facing homelessness every day. If this case study has inspired you, you can help them continue this vital work: www.depaul.org.uk, and internationally at int.depaulcharity.org.