Retired projectFounded 2020

Turning donor data into sustainable giving

HopeEngine was a social-impact startup built to help small and mid-sized nonprofits attract new donors, grow recurring giving, and learn from every campaign.

The beginning

A growth partner for nonprofits

Founded by Justin Lyons, creator of Blaze Global, and Dave Husain, then CEO of Leapfrog Online, HopeEngine began with a straightforward question: could the same data and growth practices used by modern consumer companies help nonprofits build more durable donor relationships?

Many smaller charities had years of donor history but limited capacity to turn it into action. Revenue often depended on grants, events, major gifts, or a small group of loyal supporters. HopeEngine set out to diversify that base by combining donor analytics, audience strategy, campaign execution, and a planned software platform.

The premise was simple: intelligent data should lead to more relevant stories, better donor experiences, and stronger recurring support.

The model

From raw records to a learning fundraising system

HopeEngine was more than an agency and not yet a standalone software product. It was an early fundraising growth system that connected analysis directly to activation.

Collect

Bring donor records, communication lists, creative, channel data, and fundraising goals into one working view.

Understand

Analyze giving recency, frequency, and value alongside demographic and behavioral signals to find meaningful donor groups.

Activate

Match each audience with the stories most likely to move them, then reach them through paid social, landing pages, and email.

Learn

Use campaign and transaction data to sharpen the audience, message, channel strategy, and renewal journey over time.

In the field

Two pilots put the idea to work

Wine To Water

The global water charity worked with HopeEngine to study donor history, identify five audience clusters, build lookalike audiences, and test creative across Facebook, Instagram, landing pages, and email.

Facing Forward

The Chicago nonprofit brought a mission centered on permanent supportive housing and ending chronic homelessness. The work explored donor insights, storytelling, online giving, and funnel measurement.

18,536

donor accounts studied

donor clusters identified

469K

paid-social impressions

9,104

link clicks recorded

These figures describe activity documented in the Wine To Water pilot, including a March-April 2021 paid-social export. They are useful operating signals, not proof that the campaign caused every donation recorded during the same period.

Product vision

Making the work repeatable

The planned MVP would let charities securely upload donor data, explore modeled segments and insights, activate campaigns, and monitor KPIs. Discovery work also considered marketing integrations, landing pages, email logic, and privacy requirements.

Designs, integration flows, dashboard concepts, and security policies show a serious product effort. The surviving work supports an MVP and design phase, but does not establish that the full platform shipped.

Justin's role

Justin co-founded HopeEngine and led the connection between audience intelligence and donor conversion: deciding where to find likely supporters, what stories to test, how to run the campaigns, and how product requirements could support real fundraising outcomes.

When outside creative work did not meet the bar, he also stepped into content production, helping turn strategy into the actual ads, pages, and stories donors encountered.

Looking back

What HopeEngine left behind

01The real opportunity was closing the loop from donor data to outreach, transaction, nurture, and renewal.
02Segmentation becomes valuable only when it changes the story, audience, or experience a donor receives.
03Early campaign signals are useful, but proving fundraising impact requires stronger attribution, baselines, and retention measures.
04A service-led model can create early value, but repeatability depends on standardizing data ingestion, activation, and reporting.

HopeEngine progressed well beyond an idea, with partners, campaigns, analytics, creative, and product discovery. It was retired before becoming a repeatable software business.

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