In 2019, I led a small fundraising team with big ambitions. We had a "learner" major gifts programme raising approximately £150k p.a. We classed a major gift as anything over £5,000 (which was an increase from a few years before when it was £1,000). And we had never run a capital campaign. All of a sudden the government had committed £100 million to build a long-awaited Children’s Hospital. More was needed from philanthropy so after a feasibility study, we had committed to a joint campaign with the University to raise £100 million! Our contribution was set at £25 million net made up of major gifts and community.

Our charity’s reach was mostly limited to Cambridge and we were not very well-known in our home city. While the feasibility study had identified there was capacity in our region, we didn’t have the connections to potential philanthropists. Also the prospect of running a major community campaign throughout the whole of the East of England was a pretty daunting prospect. It was then that I had a light-bulb moment: to create a hub and spoke network of Ambassadors across all six counties in the East of England. This would help us spread the word in an authentic way, grow our prospect pool and gain local knowledge to inform the planning of our community campaign. We approached a local philanthropist who is incredibly well-liked and connected and asked if she might know potential Ambassadors to set up the programme. Not only did she love the idea but she ran with it at 90mph! We had anticipated a group of c.15 Ambassadors and before we knew it we had 55 Ambassadors co-ordinated by six Lead Ambassadors - one for each county.

‍Key to our successful Ambassador programme was starting with solid foundations: ‍

• Developing Terms of Reference outlining our expectations and their commitment
• Signing Volunteer Agreements
• A thorough onboarding process e.g. how philanthropy works, how the asking process would work in practice.
• An inspiring training programme to educate them about the project so they could talk passionately about it to their friends
• Treating them like major donors with a bespoke and thoughtful stewardship programme including hand-written notes, smart tailored newsletters, personal regular updates and treating them like part of the team.
• We travelled to regular meetings with each county team, usually hosted at an Ambassador's home. There was a running joke about which delicious home-made soup we'd be getting each week.
• In between time, we had monthly zooms with the Lead Ambassadors and quarterly virtual briefings about interesting treatment and research areas in the new hospital to keep the group engaged.
• We hosted bi-annual update meetings in colleges with fundraising strategy presentations, inspiring talks from doctors and nurses, networking time and always a Q&A which always led to tricky questions!

What did we ask them to do?

• We explained our fundraising strategy to the Ambassadors and asked them to help us focus on the "quiet phase" of the campaign.
• We talked them through the gift table to explain we were looking for a few people who might be able to give seven-figure gifts which would be essential foundation gifts for the campaign.
• We walked them through the cultivation process.
• We told them that we weren't asking them to ask for money. We simply wanted introductions. We "role-played" how this might look and spent a lot of time de-mystifying major gifts.
• We then asked them to consider as a group whom their Top 20 prospects might be in their county.
• We cross-checked these names to ensure that our University partners weren't approaching them, and also that other counties weren't approaching them.
• We asked Ambassadors to host small, intimate, inspiring events in their counties e.g. drinks receptions, dinners or to invite their prospects to lunch meetings. We travelled to each event with our Children's Hospital model and clinical speakers. Or we prepped them for how we would handle the meeting.
• We briefed them, we wrote proposals and we made the ask.

What were the results?

• The Ambassadors are passionate, enthusiastic, hard-working and diligent. Through their incredibly hard work they have raised over £15 million so far. Their contribution has been staggering - far exceeding our initial expectations.
• Gifts secured have ranged from £1,000 to £7.5 million.
• We learned so much along the way and learned valuable lessons. Working with the Ambassadors taught us so much, and made us better fundraisers!