Lifesaving performance.

Coastguard New Zealand is the country's primary maritime search-and-rescue charity, operating across more than 60 units nationwide. The organisation depends on lottery, membership and direct donation revenue to keep volunteer rescue crews on the water.

Coastguard's fundraising had to scale in a measurement environment breaking down with the deprecation of third-party cookies. The old playbook of broad audiences, vanity reach metrics and last-click attribution was not going to deliver the donations needed to fund operations.

Stitch designed a privacy-first measurement and audience strategy on first-party data. We unified Coastguard's supporter, member and donor records, then activated media at the moments and audiences most likely to give. Measurement was rebuilt around modelled outcomes rather than the metrics ad platforms hand back for free.

The same audience strategy now powers ongoing brand and member acquisition work.

• 2025 Winter Membership: 447 memberships driven through paid acquisition
• $5.23 cost per acquisition on lapsed-member retargeting, 5.6x more efficient than prospecting
• 238 memberships from warm web visitors
• $2.75 per membership on the Females 55 to 64 lapsed-list ad set
• $10 cost per lottery ticket
• 66.12% email open rate
• 7x ROAS on membership work
• $22 cost per acquisition on new sign-ups
• Lottery campaigns now contribute approximately 51% of fundraising revenue

This is what privacy-first media looks like when it is done properly. Not a workaround for cookie deprecation. A better approach that would have outperformed the old one regardless.