Return on investment
Impressions
Video views. Beating target by 457%
The brief
Family Fund, the UK’s largest grant-making charity supporting families raising disabled or seriously ill children, wanted a winter fundraising campaign that could stand out in the noisiest moment of the year — and do more than just keep pace. The goal was clear: beat fundraising targets while building stronger, longer-term supporter relationships.
Social was positioned as the engine of the campaign. It needed to drive awareness, emotional engagement and action, reaching well beyond existing supporters to connect with new audiences at scale.
Rather than leaning into urgency or hard asks, the brief called for authentic, human storytelling. Stories that reflected the real lives of families supported by Family Fund, and invited people to care before asking them to act.
Success wouldn’t be judged on income alone. It would also be about whether the campaign could:
- Cut through seasonal noise
- Hold attention and spark emotional connection
- Bring new supporters into the organisation
- Prove its value as a serious fundraising channel
The challenge
Winter fundraising is tough. Attention is limited, emotions are stretched, and audiences are exposed to countless appeals every day. Standing out, let alone being remembered, is hard.
On social, the challenge is even sharper. Content that feels overly promotional or donation-led is quickly deprioritised by algorithms and scrolled past by users. To succeed, the campaign needed to work with how social platforms behave, not fight against them.
At the same time, Family Fund had a responsibility to tell families’ stories with care and credibility. Push too hard and trust could be lost; play it too safe and the campaign could disappear into the background.
The task was to find the balance: human stories that could cut through, perform at scale, and still beat fundraising targets.
Our approach
Creative agency MOREVER led the campaign and invited Social Firefly to collaborate closely on the project. MOREVER also led the creative direction, shaping the campaign idea, narrative, and visual storytelling, and delivered the hero film at the heart of the campaign.
Social Firefly led the digital strategy, spanning social, paid media, as well as email and newsletter communications to support and convert audiences.
Together, we built One Good Day around a simple, powerful idea: one good day can change how you feel about every other day.
From there, everything followed:
- Emotion-led, cinematic video storytelling rooted in real families and real moments
- A hero film supported by cluster content, designed to perform across a mix of video, social, graphic design, email and web
- Platform-first creative, built to feel native in-feed rather than overly produced or overly promotional
- Distribution treated as part of the creative strategy, including targeted outreach to high-profile supporters to authentically extend reach
- Early momentum, with hero content and paid amplification front-loaded to build awareness quickly
- Email and newsletter activity, timed to reinforce key social moments, re-engage warm audiences and support conversion without hard asks
- Clear channel roles, with social driving awareness and emotional connection, while email, search and web captured higher-intent supporters
- A three-stage paid advertising funnel (awareness, consideration and conversion) guiding people from watching to acting without pressure
The hero video became the emotional anchor of the campaign. Amplified by well-known public figures and organisations including Alex Brooker and Edinburgh Zoo, it outperformed cluster content across most social channels, helping the campaign reach far beyond Family Fund’s existing audience.
This wasn’t just about visibility. The credibility of the storytelling directly influenced giving behaviour, including significant donations from charitable foundations who explicitly cited the campaign as their reason for donating.
Alongside the storytelling and digital strategy, the campaign also benefited from strong fundraising infrastructure. Family Fund participated in The Big Give, securing £17,500 in matched funding. This matched funding created additional incentive to give and contributed meaningfully to the overall donation total.
Crucially, none of this was delivered in isolation. The strength of Family Fund’s relationships — with the families they support, internal teams and trusted partners — underpinned the campaign at every stage. Those connections ensured stories were told with care, activity across social, email and web worked cohesively within the wider marketing mix, and advocacy extended reach in a way that felt credible and values-led.
The results
One Good Day delivered across awareness, engagement, supporter growth and fundraising:
- Fundraising targets exceeded by 54%, comfortably surpassing both the base and stretch targets
- 2.1 million impressions and 200,000+ engagements across organic and paid social
- Nearly 278,000 video views, demonstrating the power of emotion-led storytelling
- 326 new supporter leads, significantly above target
- Strong audience growth across Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn
- ROI of 3.02x. For every £1 invested, the campaign generated £3.02 back. This includes agency fees and advertising spend.
- Major gifts from charitable foundations, directly attributed to the campaign
More importantly, the campaign proved that emotion-first social storytelling, when backed by strong creative craft, smart digital strategy and supportive email and newsletter activity, can drive both immediate fundraising success and long-term supporter value — even at the most competitive time of year.
“We’ve had an excellent experience working with James, Sarah and Abi at Social Firefly. Their support on our recent Winter campaign, along with our ongoing retainer work, has been consistently attentive and always delivered to a really high standard. They take the time to understand our goals, come back quickly with helpful ideas, and have made a noticeable impact on our digital fundraising across social, our website and e-newsletters. Highly recommend!”
Julie, Group Director of Fundraising & Volunteering at Family Fund
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