Case Study
3 charities we work with raised £564,000+ in one Ramadan — from £8,900 of Google Ads.
These are three of our charity clients, and the figures here are from their Google Ads. Here is how much of a year’s giving lands inside that one window — and how many months before it the work has to start.
You might be wondering how big Ramadan really is for non-profit fundraising. You might also be wondering when you should start preparing for it. Don’t worry, I got your back.
I checked my Google Ads and went through three of my clients’ data to bring you this case study. You’re welcome. The results were ridiculous.
Keep scrolling and you will see results that show you how big Ramadan really is — and how seriously you should take it.
P.S. I have kept my clients’ names and their individual results anonymous, but everything here was tracked and verified.
How much of a year lands in one window
This is what every pound of Google Ads spend brought back, month by month. The ordinary months do respectable work — and then Ramadan arrives.
What each £1 of Google Ads returned, by month
Three UK charity Google Ads accounts combined. December 2025 is excluded from the chart — one account’s tracking had not yet settled that month — but it is included in the share figures below, which is why they do not total 100%.
Every donation counted here was verified three ways. Google Ads conversions were matched to Google Analytics by transaction ID, and those transactions were then checked against the charity’s own donation reports on their website. Nothing on this page rests on the ad platform’s own reporting alone.
The lead-up to Ramadan and Ramadan itself is what makes or breaks a charity’s annual revenue. Get this window wrong and you do not have a bad month. You have a bad year.
And it starts earlier than almost anyone plans for
This is the part that costs money. Ramadan 2026 began on 18 February — but the accounts were climbing well before it.
February on its own returned 25.6× — better than the entire Dhul Hijjah season that followed — and Ramadan was only eleven days old when the month ended. January had already tripled December.
And it is not simply that more people gave. The gifts themselves got larger as Ramadan approached. On one of the three accounts the average donation ran £7 in December, £25 in January, £82 in February and £219 in March. People do not just give more often in Ramadan; they give differently, in larger single amounts, and they start early.
A campaign switched on in the last week of Sha’ban has already missed the ramp — and then spends its most valuable days in the learning phase, bidding badly, while the money moves without it.
What “starting early” actually means
Ramadan 1448 is expected to begin on Monday 8 February 2027, subject to the sighting.
And most of what needs doing is not the ad account. A donor who clicks still has to reach a page that loads quickly, a donation form that does not lose them at the second step, and a name they half-recognise from somewhere other than the ad they have just seen. The advertising is the last thing you build, not the first.
Working backwards from February, and from what these accounts did in 2026:
- September to October — fix the foundations. Donation tracking that reports real amounts, or every decision you make in Ramadan is made blind. The giving journey tested on a phone, on a bad connection, by someone who has never seen it before. And a conversation with whoever hosts the site about whether it will carry a Ramadan spike — a donation page that falls over on the 27th night costs more than any campaign can win back.
- November — get live, and get known. Campaigns running on modest budgets so the bidding is out of its learning phase before it matters. Organic and social working alongside them: an ad from an organisation people already recognise converts far better than one from a stranger, and a footprint cannot be built in a fortnight.
- December and January — the climb has started. In these accounts the run-up month was returning 25.6× before Ramadan had even finished. Creative shot, appeals written, landing pages built, Gift Aid capture switched on. Finished, not in progress.
- From early February — optimise, do not build. Every hour spent fixing something during Ramadan is bought at the most expensive rate of the year.
The work for Ramadan 2027 starts now, not later
We will audit the things that actually decide a Ramadan: your donation tracking, the giving journey, whether your site will carry the spike, and what your last Ramadan really cost and returned. You get the findings whether or not you work with us — while there is still time to act on them.
And that was Google Ads alone
Everything above came from one channel. Plenty of people never saw Google Ads as a real fundraising platform. We wanted to prove them wrong.
Reaching people by faith stopped being something you could target. Religion is a protected characteristic, and the social platforms withdrew the detailed interest categories advertisers once used. For an organisation whose entire donor base is defined by exactly that, the obvious route closed. Search never needed those categories: somebody typing “Zakat calculator” in the last ten nights has told you who they are and what they intend to do.
So that is where we put our effort in, for this sector specifically. We have since done the same due diligence on Meta and TikTok — the creative, the targeting that is still available, and above all the measurement, so a donation can be attributed rather than guessed at. Both now sit alongside Google Ads in the ad management we run, next to the rest of the work we already do for our partners.
Which is why Ramadan 2027 is going to get even better for our clients, in sha Allah. We expect the spend, the conversions and the donation revenue on these accounts to rise substantially.
Are you looking to grow your non-profit?
Then the calendar above is ours as much as it is yours.
We take on new charities up to December. After that our books close until Ramadan is over.
It is simply this. If you come to us at the end of December, we will not be able to do justice to you or to the charities we already work with. Taking someone on properly at that point means hiring, and hiring in December to be ready for February is a nightmare — so what you would get instead is a makeshift strategy, and that does nothing except leave you more disheartened about working with agencies.
adlance’s vision has always been to empower Muslim brands. If we cannot see ourselves empowering you, we are simply wasting charity money — and Allah is watching how I use that money.
If you are not ready to hand an account over for an audit, tell us what you are planning instead. We will tell you honestly whether we can help this cycle — and whether it is worth doing at all.
Common questions
When does Ramadan 2027 begin?
Ramadan 1448 is expected to begin on Monday 8 February 2027, subject to the sighting. That puts the run-up month in January, and the work behind it in the autumn before.
How much budget is initially required to raise donations through Paid Ads?
We start with a budget of £300–£400 and optimise the campaigns until the cost per donation is where it needs to be. Once we have achieved that, we begin raising the budget, stabilising the cost per donation again at each increment.
Does adlance provide monthly reports on progress?
Yes. Every month we put all of your stats in front of you, take you through them, and set out the strategy for the month ahead.
Before any of that, we build a digital marketing strategy covering the whole year, so there are KPIs set to work towards.
How will I know whether our donation tracking is set up correctly?
If it has been set up properly, you should see a transaction ID for every donation in your Google Analytics reports, and those same IDs should appear in your own donation reports.
Does this apply to Meta and TikTok as well?
The seasonal shape almost certainly does — the giving window is the same whichever channel you reach people through. The figures here are Google Ads only because that is where we went deep first. Meta and TikTok now sit alongside Google Ads in the ad management we run, and we will publish those numbers as we get them rather than estimate them for you.
Is a 63× return realistic for our charity?
It depends on your charity’s current appeals and where they are focused. Some charities work in specific locations, which means the audience searching for those appeals can be smaller.
Recently we have begun working with charities that focus on fewer locations and do not run emergency appeals, and we are seeing promising results, Alhamdulillah.
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