Social Bite's annual Festival of Kindness is one of Scotland's most ambitious Christmas fundraising campaigns, raising vital funds to provide meals, gifts, and essential items to people experiencing homelessness. After strong growth in 2024, the ambition for FoK25 was clear: reach more donors, grow cold appeal income, and test new channels and geographies.
Deliver a multi-channel paid media campaign to drive significant income growth, recruit high-quality new supporters, and generate the attribution insights needed to plan confidently for 2026.
FoK25 delivered exceptional results. Overall income grew by over 35% year-on-year, with donor volumes up by nearly 50%. Those donations helped fund over 310,000 meals, gifts and essential items - including hundreds of hot Christmas dinners, tens of thousands of gifts distributed to people in hardship, and emergency winter accommodation in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London.
Income from new donors increased by 25% as a result of strong performance across cold channels. Standouts included Teads, which delivered an impressive conversion rate of 6.68%, and AudioAdPro, which delivered a strong positive ROI. The campaign generated over 44 million impressions across all paid digital channels.
Working with creative partners Catalyst Works, Root Media delivered a coordinated multi-channel campaign spanning TV, radio, digital audio, programmatic display, door drop, press inserts, and social media. A full-funnel approach combining broad awareness with precision retargeting ensured new audiences were reached efficiently and converted at scale, while the warm direct mail programme remained the campaign's most efficient channel.
