VSO and Adroit
Transform supporter journeys and fundraising intelligence
Background
VSO is a leading international development charity with a bold vision: "a fair world for everyone." Established in 1958, VSO's singular mission is to create lasting change through volunteering, and it operates across more than 90 countries through a blended model of international, national and community volunteers working alongside the world's most marginalised communities.
The challenge
VSO's initial driver was operational efficiency. Campaigns were previously reliant on manual selections, fragmented data extracts, and disconnected comms tools - limiting the ability to target individuals based on behavioural triggers, giving potential, or engagement history.
The combined data and technology transformation project had the following core objectives:
- Establish a Single Supporter View (SSV): unify supporter data from three systems, using robust match rules to remove duplicates, arbitrate conflicting data and establish a trusted, campaign-ready base
- Implement the Apteco platform with Apteco email: allowing the team to segment, automate, and execute campaigns from a single interface
- Enable journey-based marketing: move beyond bulk campaigns to behaviour-driven sequences based on model scores, response windows, and recency
- Embed predictive modelling within supporter journeys: leverage lifetime value and ask strategy models within selections and dynamic content
- Introduce new channels, such as SMS to improve responsiveness, test re-engagement, and increase donor choice
- Improve supporter experience and relevance: delivering comms at the right time for the individual
- Free up staff time: reduce repetitive manual selections and create reusable journeys
Watch the full customer story
Watch the video, presented by Kathryn Ginn and Pete Edgcombe, to discover how VSO was able to automate sophisticated, data-led supporter journeys with confidence and precision.
The Apteco solution
VSO previously held supporter and volunteer data across multiple platforms, often with overlapping records. Adroit were tasked with creating a Single Supporter View (SSV) by integrating three key systems. The resulting SSV layer enabled structured, deduplicated data to flow into Apteco, significantly enhancing its power and usability and enabling selection, modelling, and journey orchestration on a clean, person-level universe. The Apteco solution has now become the strategic backbone of VSO’s supporter engagement and fundraising activity. It sits at the heart of supporter communications, enabling a step-change in sophistication and targeting. The platform now supports multi-channel automated communications such as new supporter welcome journeys and regular giving conversion journeys. A regression-based ask strategy model has also been implemented, allowing personalised ask amounts to be scaled across campaigns.
This was not a one-off build. The aim was to build an intelligent, scalable supporter marketing ecosystem, with Apteco at its core - capable of supporting continuous optimisation and innovation. This growing sophistication is enabling VSO to take a longer-term strategic view. The initial regular giving conversion campaign has delivered early conversions, with projected retention rates indicating a strong long-term ROI.
With Apteco underpinning model integration, channel orchestration, and audience segmentation, VSO now has a platform from which to test, learn and grow its fundraising. Apteco is no longer simply a data tool - it is a strategic enabler supporting VSO’s supporter engagement ambitions, delivering smarter journeys and laying the foundation for future innovation through social integration and advanced modelling.
Apteco email and SMS functionality was piloted to automate communications and in summer 2025, an SMS campaign formed part of the Summer Appeal delivering a positive return and performing a valuable data-cleansing role. Learnings from this will shape future SMS use, which VSO sees as a rapid-response test and learn channel. Both email and SMS are now priority channels, enabling Apteco’s journey automation and a readiness for future use of soft opt-in data.
Apteco has empowered us to deliver more tailored and sophisticated supporter journeys, enhancing the overall supporter experience. The platform has brought significant efficiencies for our internal team, and - built on a strong single supporter view from Adroit - it’s enabling deeper engagement and, ultimately, improved supporter retention and long-term value.
Kathryn Ginn, Head of Data and Insight, VSO
Kathryn Ginn, Head of Data and Insight, VSO
The impact on the business
Apteco is used collaboratively by the fundraising, digital and data teams to plan, execute, and monitor all campaigns. This multi-team collaboration has reduced briefing cycles, reduced the need for laborious checking and quality control - because this is now built into the solution - and fostered a more data-led culture. In less than 12 months since adopting Apteco and launching journeys, VSO achieved the following:
Hours of manual selection time saved per campaign equivalent to one FTE, releasing resource in the team
Faster turnaround between planning and execution
Dynamic, personalised ask strategy showing higher response than control
SMS campaign achieved net-positive ROI, even in test phase
Regular giving conversion communications showing early signs of long-term retention uplift
SMS campaign helped identify invalid phone numbers and enhanced consent and channel preference logic built into SSV
By implementing Apteco on top of a robust Single Supporter View - built by Adroit using complex matching across three systems - we enabled deduplicated, individual-level insight. This foundation has been critical to unlocking the full power of Apteco, allowing VSO to automate sophisticated, data-led supporter journeys with confidence and precision.
Pete Edgcombe, Account Director, Adroit Data & Insight
Pete Edgcombe, Account Director, Adroit Data & Insight