Food Bank Aid fundraising campaign

Food Bank Aid is a grassroots, volunteer-led charity that acts as a central distribution hub for London’s food banks, sourcing and supplying essential cooking ingredients and household items tailored to what people actually need in their homes.

The challenge

Their major annual appeal is their primary income generator, run via a match-funding platform where donations are doubled (up to £600,000) and driven through a peer-to-peer model using ‘Team Champions’ sharing links through personal networks.

The campaign had hit a strong total value (around £1.3m), but participation had been declining year-on-year, with fewer people giving larger amounts: a clear signal of donor fatigue and a format that was starting to feel overly familiar. The brief was explicit about what needed protecting: Champions as the core engine, the excitement and urgency of a tight time window, and an authentic, volunteer-led tone that feels local and optimistic rather than corporate.

At the same time, there were friction points holding the appeal back. A ‘big reveal’ approach had limited reach and left Champions too little time to prepare, so the campaign needed a longer warm-up and teaser phase. The campaign also needed to broaden beyond loyal circles, because new recruits were becoming harder to attract. And, critically, the match-funding mechanic itself had proven difficult for general audiences to understand quickly, a problem when the job is immediate action in a narrow window.

The creative had to land a motivating call-to-action, avoid visual and tonal cues that felt confrontational or overly political, and create a stronger emotional connection than the previous year’s more graphic, stock-led approach.

The process

We treated it as a participation problem first, and a design problem second. The strategic question was: how do we make it easier for Champions to ask, and easier for friends and colleagues to say yes, fast, while keeping the voice recognisably Food Bank Aid?

We built and explored two distinctive creative routes side by side, each developed as a standalone campaign concept with its own visual identity, copy, tone and CTA exploration, so decisions could be made on evidence rather than preference. The ‘Mind the Gap’ route came with clear legal and brand risks, including the protected nature of the phrase and the danger of visual/copy association with Transport for London; it also risked sounding passive. That insight sharpened the more action-led direction: ‘Fill the Gap’ – transforming awareness into direct action, and naturally lending itself to visual storytelling about completing and restoring.

The requirements

Development of an action-led campaign platform that shifts from awareness to immediate participation
Retention and strengthening of the peer-to-peer ‘Team Champion’ model as the primary engine for reach, sharing and conversion
Clear articulation of the match-funding mechanic
Extension of the campaign timeline to include a structured warm-up and teaser phase
A flexible, distributed campaign toolkit designed for mutiple on and offline touchpoints

We then pressure-tested messaging and layout options with a group of engaged volunteers who already understood the charity, its mission and the patterns of previous appeals. That gave us honest read-outs on what felt fresh, what felt ‘same again’, and what people could imagine sharing in their own words. This sat alongside the moodboard testing approach, using a dashboard of votes for and against different tonal and visual components to guide the creative direction.

Those findings shaped three practical decisions that ran through the work:

Make the tone active, local, clear and warmly persuasive, with plain-English phrasing and emotion anchored in action.
Give the ‘doubling’ story maximum clarity, because it’s the single biggest conversion lever and a known comprehension challenge.
Design with breathing room, so the call-to-action and time pressure could land instantly across posters, social and Champion assets.

We also designed the creative system as a toolkit, because the campaign is fundamentally distributed through people: outputs needed to equip Champions, build pre-campaign awareness, and drive immediate participation in the match-funding window.

The solution

The final campaign centred on an action-led creative platform built to make the ‘gap’ instantly understandable and emotionally motivating: a clear invitation to close the gap between need and provision as a collective London effort.

At the heart of the system was a simple, ownable motif: a paper cut-out hand placing the U of HUNGER into the space between H NGER – literally showing the act of filling the gap. That became the visual shorthand across assets, reinforced by the strapline: U CAN FILL THE HUNGER GAP. It’s a device that does two jobs at once: it visualises the problem (the absence) and makes the solution feel achievable (one small action completes the word). It also carries the right behavioural energy – a direct, practical action rather than abstract awareness – in line with the campaign’s ‘Fill the Gap’ intent.

We delivered a full suite of print and digital outputs designed to raise awareness, motivate action and equip Team Champions with tools to promote the appeal, including campaign posters, social media assets, web and platform banners, countdown graphics, email signatures, and WhatsApp assets. The system also included dual-branded belly poster formats for corporate and community supporters, and a Schools Activity Pack to support wider engagement.

To push beyond the usual channels, we developed a guerrilla marketing strand that could travel through neighbourhood London: a set of shareable deliverables for local shops that highlighted the contrast between full shelves in-store and empty cupboards at home, turning everyday retail environments into prompts for empathy and immediate donation. This approach built on the brief’s appetite for unexpected creative formats when executed well, and the inclusion of ‘surprise & delight’ moments.

Throughout, the creative stayed true to Food Bank Aid’s required tone: professional but human, community-led, hopeful, and warmly persuasive; active and motivating without becoming confrontational.

£1049881

raised in just 36 hours

104%

of the fundraising total met

4322

donors converted across the campaign lifecycle

Would you like to see results like these for your organisation?

If you’re interested in finding out more about how we could work together, send us a message and we’ll get back to you.

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