Charity fundraising
Raising over £1,000,000 to fight extreme poverty with The Big Quiz Night
I designed Tearfund’s most successful and long-running fundraising product, uniting tens of thousands of people across the UK for an evening of fun in support of a great cause.
Big Quiz in numbers
Over £1,000,000 has been raised to help fight poverty.
Over 19,000 people take part each year.
Around 500 Big Quiz Nights are hosted each year.
50,000 social impressions are viewed on the night.
2020 saw the quiz go online for the first time.
2024 marks the 7th year of The Big Quiz Night.
Situation /
Research conducted externally showed that the idea of a UK-wide quiz night strongly resonated with Tearfund’s target audience.
It appealed to churches as hosts and to attendees looking for an enjoyable way to support Tearfund’s mission to end extreme poverty.
Task /
The brief was to develop a new fundraising product where hundreds of churches across the UK would simultaneously host a quiz night to raise money in support of Tearfund’s work.
As the UX lead and Tearfund’s sole digital designer at the time, I was responsible for leading the design of this project, collaborating closely with a Graphic Designer.
In year one
Lead the end-to-end design of this new fundraising product.
Create the look and feel of The Big Quiz Night.
Map the user journey.
Deliver high-fidelity web designs.
Deliver other digital elements including a dashboard and totaliser.
In subsequent years
Use data insights to iterate and improve the product.
Make producing The Big Quiz Night webpages more efficient.
Following Tearfund’s 2021 rebrand, integrate The Big Quiz Night journey into the new website, using the new design system.
Creating the visual branding – featuring an early sketch of mine capturing my idea of small figures interacting with bold, oversized typography.
Bringing a sense of fun and excitement, the illustrations became central to the web designs, helping attract over 500 host sign-ups in the first year.
Action /
I designed the very first Big Quiz Night in 2018, before the development of Tearfund’s brand personas, so I leaned heavily on external research that had been done into our target audience.
Creating the look and feel of The Big Quiz Night
I led the visual concepting for this product, working closely with a Graphic Designer from Tearfund’s Design team.
I came up with the idea of using small figures interacting with large typography and worked with the Graphic Designer to flesh this out.
I worked on the digital designs while they developed The Big Quiz Night typography and worked on the print deliverables.
Commissioning attention-grabbing illustrations
I made a shortlist of potential illustrators as my idea was built around engaging, impactful illustrations. After getting sign-off from key stakeholders and the Head of Design on a suitable choice I commissioned Andrew Lyons.
I had a great creative partnership with Andrew Lyons, the illustrator, where we bounced ideas off each other to fully bring the vision to life.
Andrew provided the illustrations as layered files, which I was then able to animate in After Effects for use across various channels.
Designing landing pages that converted
Working with the illustrator early in the project was useful as I was able to lay out the webpages using his rough sketches.
This meant I could be creative and design around specific illustrations rather than designing with boxes and adding the illustrations later. This really helped make them as impactful as possible, attracting over 500 host sign-ups in the first year.
Designing a hosts dashboard and live totaliser
As well as the online journey, I was also responsible for a number of other digital elements, including an online dashboard for hosts to enter information on the night, which then fed into a dynamic totaliser.
The totaliser was displayed for attendees at the end of the night, and displayed key stats like the total amount of money raised, total number of quizzers and the number of churches taking part. We know from social posts from the night as well as post-event feedback that this was a popular addition.
“The dashboard was a great idea.”
“Liked adding our numbers into the national picture.”
Feedback from hosts
Accessibility learnings
In year one, some aspects of the design, such as colour contrasts didn’t meet the minimum WCAG standards - which is something I later remedied.
My understanding of accessibility has come a long way since then.
I’ve invested time and effort into learning how to design accessible digital experiences and in 2024, I joined the Interaction Design Foundation and earned a distinction in their course, Accessibility: Designing for All.
Listening to feedback and iterating
A big part of what has made The Big Quiz Night a lasting success story is in the iterative approach we’ve taken, listening to users.
Each year the Project Manager has run a post-event survey, which has included a mix of qualitative and quantitative feedback.
These surveys have been well engaged with and, together with insights from website analytics and heat maps, have proved invaluable in allowing us to effectively improve the quiz each year.
Improvements based on user feedback have included:
Offering flexibility on the quiz date.
Pitching questions to the right level.
Supplying accessible versions of resources.
Including editable promotional posters in the resource pack.
Improving promotion, through better targeting and A/B testing.
82% of hosts rated their overall experience as 8/10 or more after the first Big Quiz Night
95% said they’d consider hosting again.
Less than 1% said they wouldn’t.
The Big Quiz Night after the Tearfund rebrand in 2021
As part of the 2021 Tearfund rebrand the Design team gave The Big Quiz Night a visual refresh, bringing the illustrations in-house.
How the new design system helped
I had designed Tearfund’s new component-based design system and their new website, and I worked closely with the Design team to get The Big Quiz Night journey working well on the new site.
The big difference was that the web pages were now much more efficient to produce, as they used repeatable components, which meant:
The pages were now accessible, meeting WCAG’s AA standards.
They were much better set up to accurately capture data analytics.
Our confidence level in the designs was higher, as we knew every single component used had gone through extensive usability testing.
Result /
The Big Quiz Night has become one of Tearfund’s most successful and long-running fundraising products.
It continues to excel across all metrics, with iterative improvements each year helping it achieve high income and overwhelmingly positive feedback.
Over £1,000,000 has been raised to help fight poverty.
Over 19,000 people take part each year.
Around 500 Big Quiz Nights are hosted each year.
91% of hosts rated their experience 8/10 or more in 2023.