Women's Aid Ireland didn't just hit their target for Cold Swim for Women 2026—they smashed it before the event day arrived.
With a mobile-first campaign site, real-time insight, and a community of over 2,200 women braving the Irish Sea on St. Brigid's Day, the small but driven team created a fundraising experience that led to €295k raised, a 39% fundraising activation rate, and 59% more raised than the previous year—all against a target of €116k.
We sat down with Emma Greally, Community, Digital and Events Project Lead at Women's Aid Ireland, to find out how they rebuilt a campaign that was losing ground—and turned it into their best ever.
Keep reading to find out how they did it.
About the campaign
Cold Swim for Women is Women's Aid Ireland's flagship peer-to-peer fundraising event. Since 2022, it has brought hundreds—and now thousands—of women together to brave cold water in solidarity with women and children affected by domestic violence across Ireland.
The premise is simple: register, fundraise, and take a cold swim on a single focal day while wearing a purple Women's Aid hat. But what the campaign has built over four years is far more powerful—a community of women who show up for each other, year after year, in one of the most visibly empowering acts of fundraising in the Irish calendar.
In 2026, on St. Brigid's Day (February 1)—Ireland's patron protector of women and a bank holiday since 2023. Over 2,200 people took the plunge together in 2026—their highest ever.
The challenge: More competition, less control
The first two years of Cold Swim for Women were remarkable—year one saw €130k raised. The second year, the campaign nearly doubled again. Then came year three, when they decided they needed to shift platforms to take their fundraising to the next level.
By 2024, cold swim fundraising had gone mainstream. Eleven other Irish charities were running similar challenges in the same Christmas window, and Women's Aid's event fell at the end of a long string of cold swims. Three compounding problems had to be solved:
A saturated market and spiking ad costs:
Competing with 11 other charities over Christmas drove cost per lead to unsustainable levels, squeezing both registrations and ROI.
Logistical chaos at a challenging time of year:
Post-Christmas postal backlogs meant the purple hat—the campaign's defining physical symbol—wasn't arriving before the swim. Suppliers were unreachable. The team couldn't react in real time.
Making decisions a month too late:
On a previous platform, a two-week data lag during a four-week campaign meant the team was essentially blind. Post-campaign reviews happened in February—too late to change anything. "In previous years, we would make decisions at the wrap-up period. We'd be doing that at the end of February."
"It's not enough to have registrations. We needed people who would actually fundraise—and we needed to be able to see in real time whether that was happening.
Emma Greally
Community, Digital and Events Project Lead
Women's Aid Ireland
The solution: Rebuilt for speed, clarity, and scaled for growth
Working with Funraisin, Women's Aid rebuilt Cold Swim for Women from the ground up—new date, new registration flow, and a platform that finally gave them the visibility to act in real time.
A new date that changed everything
Moving from Christmas to St. Brigid's Day (February 1)—Ireland's patron protector of women—solved the logistics problem and created a cause-cultural alignment that resonated immediately with supporters.
Real-time insight as a decision engine
Emma logged in every morning to see registrations, active fundraiser rate, average raised, and ad conversion. That daily visibility gave the team the confidence to increase their budget mid-campaign.
Designed to convert—and keep supporters fundraising
Invite-a-friend: Organic growth built in
160 invites sent. 96 people registered. Zero acquisition cost. In a campaign where supporters were already tagging friends in social ads, this feature turned word of mouth into a measurable growth lever.
Community beyond the finish line
The Facebook group was alive all day with photos from beaches across Ireland. The event page fed participant UGC in real time—real faces, real stories, a live donation ticker keeping the energy going all day.
"If we didn't have that insight, we couldn't have made the decision to add more budget. We would have maybe hit our target—but we wouldn't have surpassed it."
Emma Greally
Community, Digital and Events Project Lead
Women's Aid Ireland
The results: Their best cold swim yet
Cold Swim for Women 2026 wasn't just their best campaign—it was record-breaking. The team smashed their €116k projection before the event day arrived, then kept going.
- €295k raised against a €116k projection—nearly three times the target.
- 96% registration conversion rate
- 59% more raised than their previous year.
- €291 average raised per person—their highest ever.
- 34% more registrations year-on-year
- 39% active fundraising rate—against a team target of 20%
- 96 registrations from invite-a-friend alone—zero acquisition cost
The moment: Braving the cold to stand against domestic violence
On St. Brigid's Day, women flocked to beaches all over Ireland—Donegal, Cork, Dublin, Clare—in purple hats. Some in groups of twenty. Some alone, phone raised to the grey February sea, sharing exactly why it mattered to them.
One in three women in Ireland will experience domestic violence. The act of getting into cold water—uncomfortable, communal, visible—was a way of saying: we see you, and we're doing something about it.
To have over 2,200 people come together on one day, wear a purple hat with the Women's Aid logo on it, and jump into the sea—that's really special."
Emma Greally
Community, Digital and Events Project Lead
Women's Aid Ireland
Five key takeaways: What you can apply to your next campaign
Make decisions in real time, not in hindsight.
If your post-campaign review is the first time you're seeing what worked, you're already a year behind. The most valuable thing about daily data isn't the numbers—it's the confidence to act on them while the campaign is still running.
Align your event to your cause, not just your calendar.
The move to St. Brigid's Day solved a logistical problem and created a cultural resonance that drove both registrations and media attention. Ask whether your event timing earns its place—or just inherits it.
Simplify before you optimize.
Women's Aid went back to basics: a supporter survey, a mobile-first registration flow, a clean event page. Before testing new features, make sure the fundamentals work.
Let your community recruit for you.
96 registrations from 160 invite-a-friend prompts—at zero acquisition cost. In a campaign built around solidarity, word of mouth isn't a side benefit. Build for it deliberately.
Protect your incentive promise.
The purple hat wasn't merchandise—it was the physical symbol of belonging to something. When logistics threatened it, it hurt the campaign. Treat your physical touchpoints as seriously as your digital ones.
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