The Big Give Women & Girls Match Fund for GDST
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01. Context
The Girls’ Day School Trust was selected to take part in the national Big Give Women & Girls Match Fund — an annual one-week fundraising window where donations are doubled. GDST needed a compelling creative campaign that would activate current donors, re-engage lapsed supporters and inspire new audiences to contribute to bursaries for girls across the Trust.
This was the first time GDST had executed a strategically led, performance-aligned creative sprint for fundraising.
02. The Challenge
Fundraising campaigns often fail because the “ask” feels distant and abstract. Supporters don’t give because they don’t feel their donation creates a tangible or immediate impact.
The human tension was clear:
People care about opportunities for girls, but they need to feel the urgency and see the direct outcome of their contribution.
03. The Insight
Donors respond most strongly when they understand exactly what their money unlocks — not in broad charity language, but in concrete, emotional, human terms.
The breakthrough insight:
"When you show donors the life they’re helping build, the decision becomes emotional, not transactional."
This shifted the campaign from “support our fund” to:
“Your gift today changes her tomorrow.”
04. The Strategy
The creative hypothesis:
If we translate bursaries into vivid, human stories of possibility, donors will feel emotionally invested and act quickly - especially with the time-limited match incentive.”
Strategic angle:
- Narrative rooted in future impact
- Messaging built around urgency, clarity and emotional resonance
- Repetition of “double the difference”
- Multi-audience targeting (current donors, alumnae, parents, prospects)
- Content designed for scroll-stopping simplicity and high emotional clarity
Channels: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, email, internal networks.
05. The Creative
We built a modular creative system in a 2-week sprint:
Messaging pillars
- “Double your impact”
- “Her future starts with you”
Visual direction
- Clean, bold imagery and layouts
- Photo-led assets featuring real GDST students
- High-contrast typography for urgency cues
- Warm, future-forward palette
Content formats
- Short-form video
- In-feed carousel countdown and update posts
- Widescreen emotive stories of bursary recipients for email
- Optimised email headers, banners and CTAs
- Cross-channel social graphics
- LinkedIn impact posts for corporate donors
Why this worked
- Emotionally grounded narrative
- Simplified decision-making
- A clear “why now?”
- Assets purpose-built for speed, clarity and conversion
06. The Results
Target: £20,000 in 7 days
Outcome: £21,000+ raised
Achievement: GDST surpassed its fundraising goal, outperforming many larger charities in the match fund.
Additional impact:
- High engagement across alumnae networks
- Strong reactivation of lapsed donors
- Significant uplift in new donor participation
- Positive internal response, leading to future adoption of strategy-led campaign sprints
07. What We Learned
Emotionally precise storytelling outperforms generic fundraising language.
When donors understand the human impact of their contribution, they don’t need persuading - they act.
