Tidewater Trust looks after the stretch of coast most of us only see from a deckchair: the kelp, the seagrass, the rock pools and the people who volunteer to keep them clean. They came to us with a tiny advertising budget, a big autumn beach clean to fill and a supporter list that had gone quiet. We built a paid social campaign around the volunteers themselves, then kept the momentum going with a steady stream of organic content.
New supporters signed up
12,000 in 6 weeks
Cost per new supporter
25p each
Beach clean volunteers
1,840 people
Reach across the campaign
2.1M people
The brief was simple to say and hard to do. Turn £3,000 of paid social into as many new email supporters as possible, fill a coastal clean-up weekend in October and do it without the glossy production budget the big national charities enjoy. The Trust also wanted every pound accounted for, so a clear reporting dashboard was part of the deal from day one.
We started with the people, not the platform. Over two blustery mornings we filmed and photographed real volunteers on the shingle, asked them why they turn up and cut the answers into fifteen-second clips. Those became the backbone of a Meta and TikTok campaign split into three audiences: locals within ten miles, lapsed supporters and lookalikes built from the most engaged donors. Budget moved weekly towards whatever was winning.
The volunteer-led creative beat the stock-image control by a mile, with a cost per sign-up under a quarter of the sector average. In six weeks the Trust added 12,000 names to its list, the October clean sold out twice over and we kept posting organically through the winter so none of that goodwill drifted away. The dashboard still runs today and the board gets a one-page summary every month.
We’d been told a budget our size couldn’t move the needle on social. Lido proved otherwise within a fortnight, and they explained every decision in language our trustees actually understood.
- Rosa Whitlock, Fundraising Lead, Tidewater Trust
Running a charity on a shoestring and need social to pull its weight? We’d love to hear what you’re protecting. Drop us a line at hello@lido.example.
