Creating an award-winning fundraising campaign, Laura Firth

Creating an awardwinning fundraising campaign Laura Firth describes a proud tradition of wide-ranging access

Found between Manchester and the Lancashire Moors, Bolton School, Tes Independent School of the Year 2019, is one of the largest independent day schools in the country with almost 2,400 pupils on roll. One in five pupils are supported by bursary funding, and promoting social mobility through bursary provision and a sharp focus on fee levels sees the School leading the way in this important work. So how does a school take the steps to make wide ranging access to a fee-paying school a top priority?

Context and history are important. The Bolton School Foundation came into existence in its modern form in 1915, with the foresight and generosity of industrialist Lord Leverhulme, founder of what we know today as Unilever, bringing together two much older schools ‘to make it possible, for every child of ability, no matter what their social or financial background, to come to the School’. The combination of philanthropy and equality of access has remained crucial to the School’s success in the century since.

So too has clear direction and vision from the Governing Body. For its first 89 years, the Foundation received direct financial support from the Government. During the heyday of the Direct Grant era, one in three pupils at the School received financial support for their education, reducing to one in four in the days of the Assisted Places scheme. Governors anticipated

the end of this scheme as early as 1992 and launched a Bursary Appeal which has continued to galvanise Alumni and other supporters ever since. Established for over 20 years, the School’s Development Office now raises, on average, £1 million annually. Since those early days, the School has spent over £27 million on bursarial assistance, enabling over 1,800 children to attend the School who would otherwise have been denied the opportunity to do so. In the 2017-18 academic year alone, the School spent £2.8 million on means-tested bursaries: one in five pupils across the two senior schools receives some level of financial support for their education, with the aim of returning to one in three.

Any successful development activity inevitably has a slow start and needs investment, of both time and money, from Governors and from Heads. Open, honest collaboration between Bolton School’s Head of Development and its Heads has been crucial to its sustained fundraising success. The Head is the lynchpin of a School community: without their visible advocacy for a fundraising campaign - be that for bursaries or a capital project - there is no viable case for support. When a Head is able (and willing) to successfully articulate the school’s vision to a donor and explain how their financial support will contribute to the successful delivery of that vision, then gifts almost inevitably follow.

At Bolton School, Development is high on both Heads’ agendas and they play an active part in shaping the School’s

Alumni engagement and development strategy. Both set aside significant time within their diaries to host donors in School, to attend Alumni events and dinners at School and around the country, and to hand-sign a thank you letter for every gift the School receives – from six-figure sums to the widow’s mite. Both, too, recognise the importance of the Alumni network to current school life, and the benefits that actively cultivating the interest and support of Old Boys and Old Girls can bring for current pupils. Alumni act as speakers at almost every keynote event in the School calendar, and are the backbone of its careers programme, with over 70 individual Alumni returning to School to inspire and guide current pupils in the last academic year alone. Drawing Alumni back into School, to demonstrate to them first-hand that the ethos and attitudes which they value from their own time at School still remain today, has proven an excellent cultivation tool for potential major donors.

Of course, this close collaboration cannot work without a relationship founded upon mutual trust and respect. In order to devote such a significant portion of their congested diary to Development matters, a Head must know that their time will be guarded appropriately and that the level of access the Development Office is afforded to them is treated with respect. This active engagement in development from the Head is crucial. Many schools are recognising the needs for development work but it is simply not enough to appoint a Development Director and then leave them to it. In deciding development work is a strategic priority, Governors and Heads are committing their own time, and lots of it, not just committing to the creation of a new post.

The positive impact of this strategy of collaboration is evident in the success of Bolton School’s most recent fundraising appeal, the 100 Campaign for Bursaries, which was launched in 2015 as part of the School’s centenary celebrations and received the Institute for Development Professionals in Education (IDPE)’s Fundraising Campaign of the Year Award earlier this summer. In their shortlisting comments, the IDPE judges described the campaign as demonstrating ‘…what can be achieved if everyone is working to the same objectives’. The public endorsement of the two Heads, Philip Britton and Sue Hincks, and their repeated, visible advocacy for the aims of the 100 Campaign and the impact it would have at the School, created an overriding momentum towards the campaign’s £5 million financial target, which was achieved in just four years. The 100 Campaign engaged new and existing donors in their support for the Bursary Fund and embedded the School’s ambitious long-term vision for open access within the psyche of the School community, giving it a firm foundation for fundraising into the next decade and beyond. Laura Firth is the Head of Development at Bolton School

&THERE HERE

If you have news of topical interest, however brief, for ‘Here and There’, please email it to Tom Wheare at tom. wheare@gmail.com. Items should not exceed 150 words. Good colour photographs are also welcome.

To Russia from Stamford

Ted Genever and Fabian Darbost, both in Year 9, are studying Russian at Stamford School. They have each been awarded sponsorship of £400, which they will use to help fund a trip to Russia. They were selected to receive the funding after a competitive process that required them to produce a report on the country, and complete a one-to-one interview to assess their knowledge of their chosen topic.

The awards are designed to increase understanding of Russian culture, business, history and politics, and to give young people an insight into one of the world’s most powerful nations.

The funding was generously donated by Richard Wallace, himself an Old Stamfordian, who studied Russian Language and Literature at Birmingham University, and who has spent twenty years working in Anglo-Russian relations and international trade.

Richard said: ‘It is vital that the next generation understands our relationship with Russia, which is and will remain one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world. It’s incredibly important that students study other languages and cultures, and develop the skills to think about how we relate to other nations, and work with them in every area of our lives.’

Caroline Wray, Head of Russian at Stamford School, said: ‘Trips and exchanges add a tremendous amount to the study of languages – without them, students are learning in a vacuum. It has also been extremely valuable for the pupils to have to complete such a rigorous assessment as part of their funding bid: that assessment has been a useful experience in its own right, and has introduced them to the research, presentation and interview skills that they will require in their professional lives.’

Stamford School runs an annual exchange trip to Russia, which is now in its 25th consecutive year. Russian is thriving at the Stamford Endowed Schools as a whole: 21 students completed GCSE Russian in 2018, and 100% of students achieved A*-B at A Level.