A four-week Meta plan for a Ramadan appeal

For many Muslim charities, Ramadan brings a large share of the year's giving. Every other charity knows it too, so the cost of advertising rises just as donors are most willing. The appeals that do well are usually the ones that prepared before the month began and kept the plan simple.

The dates move each year with the lunar calendar, so count back from the expected start of Ramadan when you plan.

Before Ramadan: get the foundations right

Test your donation tracking. Make a real donation and confirm it appears in your ad platform with the right amount. Nothing else matters until this works.
Build one page per appeal. One cause, one clear ask, suggested amounts, and a short explanation of what a gift does.
Say clearly what kind of giving it is. Donors want to know whether an appeal is eligible for Zakat, or is Sadaqah. State it on the page and in the ad, and make sure it is accurate.
Gather your warm audiences. Past donors, email subscribers, recent website visitors and people who engage with your pages.
Prepare creative early. Several short videos and images around two or three different angles, ready before you need them.

First ten days: start warm

Begin with the people who already know you. They respond at the lowest cost and give the delivery system its first results to learn from. Run a steady budget, see which angle earns donations, and fix anything on the page that is getting in the way while there is still time.

Middle ten days: widen

Take the angle that worked and show it to a broad new audience. Keep the structure simple: few ad sets, each with enough budget to gather results. Splitting a modest budget across many audiences leaves each one unable to learn. Keep the warm audience running alongside.

Last ten nights: the peak

Giving concentrates heavily in the last ten nights. Hold back a meaningful part of your budget for them and decide in advance how you will raise spend, since large sudden budget changes can unsettle delivery at the worst moment.

Offer giving across all ten nights. Many giving platforms let a donor split a gift automatically across the last ten nights. If yours does, make it the main ask.
Refresh the creative. Your warm audience has seen the earlier ads many times by now.
Return to people who visited without giving. They have already shown interest.
Remind donors about Zakat al-Fitr in good time, if you collect it, since it is due before the Eid prayer.

Throughout: three rules

Avoid large edits mid-flight. Significant changes send ad sets back into learning at the most expensive time of year.
Expect higher costs. A rising cost of being seen during Ramadan is the season, not a fault. Judge the appeal on what came in against what went out.
Count money that reached you. Reconcile against your donation platform, after processing and platform fees, with one-off gifts and new monthly donors shown separately. That is a different figure from the one in Ads Manager.

After Eid

Write down what worked while it is fresh: the angle, the audience, the cost per donation, the average gift. Thank your donors and show them what their gift did. A new monthly donor is worth far more than their first gift suggests. These notes are also where your Dhul Hijjah and Qurbani planning should start.