Consultants to the Visitor Attraction Sector
Fundraising is rarely just about writing a good application. It is about sequencing funders, managing risk, and presenting a project in a way that lets a grants officer say yes with confidence. We have secured more than £8 million for clients over the past three years, including more than £4 million for a single client in the past twelve months, from first conversations with funders through to the conditions of the grant offer. It is money that is supporting genuinely transformational change.
Fundraising for museums, heritage and visitor attractions
What we do
Funding strategy
We map the funders that fit your project, work out the order in which to approach them and build a realistic timetable. Many capital funders will not commit until others have, and most pay in arrears, so the strategy covers cash flow and match funding as well as the headline target.
Applications and business cases
We write applications, expressions of interest and the supporting documents funders ask for, including the business plan, activity plan, financial forecasts and risk register. We know how assessors read, and we write for them. Where a funder wants a HM Treasury Green Book business case, we prepare it.
Funder relationships and reporting
We make early approaches, prepare funder information packs and handle the conversations that turn interest into an offer. After the award we can support claims, reporting and the evaluation that keeps the relationship healthy for the next project.
How we work
Fundraising has become markedly more competitive, and the answer is never simply to hand the writing to AI. Having written hundreds of applications in the last two years alone, we know how to align a client’s story with the differing requirements of each funder, and we learn from the approaches that failed as well as those that succeeded, which is how success rates improve quickly.
We tell clients what is realistic. If a target is too high for the funding market, or a project is not ready, we say so and help fix the problem first. We work alongside your team rather than around it, and we are happy to help an organisation build its own fundraising capacity so that it needs us less over time.
Experience
The sources are varied. They include significant public funds and large foundations such as the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Wolfson Foundation, the Pilgrim Trust and the Tay Cities Region Deal, alongside a wide range of smaller trusts and several successful crowdfunding campaigns that we have planned and delivered. Clients have included Dundee Museum of Transport, Montrose Air Station Heritage Centre, Waverley Steam Navigation Company, Aero Space Kinross and Dundee Heritage Trust. Our fundraising work often sits alongside business planning, because the two depend on each other.
Who this is for
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Museums and heritage trusts raising capital for buildings, collections or new displays.
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Attractions that need revenue funding to bridge a transition or launch a new programme.
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Boards that want an experienced hand to lead a campaign or test one before it starts.
Ready to talk it through?
Email paul@xcentuategroup.com
or call +44 (0) 7824 376390
