Next week, PDV heads to the Chartered Institute of Fundraising’s Insight in Fundraising Conference 2026, taking place on Monday 21 September at the Leonardo Royal London St Paul’s.
It’s a milestone year for the CIOF Insight in Fundraising special interest group, marking 20 years of bringing the insight and fundraising community together, and this year’s theme, turning headwinds into tailwinds – transforming challenge into impact, is particularly fitting for what we’re bringing to the day.
We’ve got news to share, a partner to introduce and a main stage session that delves into one of the sector’s biggest current questions: how much trust is there in AI when it comes to supporter engagement?
PDV is proud to be sponsoring the conference this year, exhibiting on stand 13. And we’ve got something else to tell you: PDV is joining forces with THINK Consulting Solutions.
It’s a partnership built on complementary strengths. PDV brings 25+ years of experience in donor and customer acquisition, first-party data and multi-channel marketing. THINK brings deep expertise in strategy, insight and fundraising consultancy, helping charities become more insight-led organisations.
Individually, we’ve each spent decades helping charities understand their supporters better and turn that understanding into growth. Together, we think we can do more.
That ‘more’ has a name: CAUSE360. It’s a co-branded, postcode-level insight product, built specifically for the charity sector and we’ll be revealing it in full at and after the conference.
For now, here’s a teaser: it’s designed to help charities answer a question their own data can’t – not just who gave, but who else looks like your best supporters but hasn’t heard from you yet.
Find us on the day
You’ll find PDV’s Head of Data Consultancy, Scott Logie and Marketing Lead, Naomi Hurst on stand 13 (or diving in and out of talk streams!). Matt Smith, MD and Steve White, Director of Data at THINK Consulting Solutions will be attending too, so it’s a good chance to meet both sides of the CAUSE360 partnership in one place to learn more.
Scott takes the main stage
At 12pm, Scott joins the main stage in conversation with Dimitris Mandiliotis, Head of Income Data & CRM at Samaritans, for Artificial loyalty: what 260 marketers reveal about the trust AI can’t buy.
The session draws on research from the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) UK‘s Customer Engagement Committee, which Scott chairs. A survey of 260 senior marketers across brands, agencies, B2B and B2C, on how loyalty is changing as AI reshapes marketing.
The findings speak directly to fundraising’s own headwinds – economic pressure, a maturing supporter base and a widening gap between what supporters expect and what charities can realistically deliver.
Two in five marketers say loyalty has already declined. Trust in AI is split sharply along sector lines, with brand-side marketers considerably more confident in it than their agency counterparts. AI ranks lowest of all the skills marketers say actually drive loyalty right now, behind measurement, analytics and automation – while creative strategy, storytelling and insight generation are expected to matter most next, as agentic AI takes over the routine work.
Rather than present the findings alone, Scott will be putting them directly to Dimitris, how far they hold up against what he sees day-to-day in Samaritans’ own supporter engagement and across the charity sector more widely. It’s a chance to test cross-sector research against fundraising’s lived reality and ask the question the session closes on – is fundraising’s caution around AI-led donor engagement a headwind worth having or one we’re creating ourselves?
If you’re heading to the conference, we’d love to see you there. And if you can’t make it, keep an eye out for our full CAUSE360 announcement coming soon.
