Girls’ Voices: Strategic Fundraising for Cultural Change at St Paul’s

Challenge

We were engaged by St Paul’s Cathedral in October 2022 to scope and launch a ground-breaking capital and revenue campaign called Girls’ Voices, the Cathedral’s landmark project to integrate girls into its world-renowned choir for the first time in its 900-year history. The initiative was not only necessary in supporting the School to meet its equality and inclusion commitments around girls’ education, but also as part of a wider Cathedral vision for gender equity.

Response

We developed a detailed campaign strategy for the £2.8m capital requirement and c.£6m costs of bursaries, outreach and staffing of the programme. This took into consideration the various teams who were instrumental to the success of the project across the Cathedral and School, including its US Friends, and also built on existing cultivation and stewardship activity. The campaign strategy mapped out key milestones to meet a tight project timeline. We used our initial internal consultations, donor prospecting and benchmarking insights to create a compelling case for support and breakdown of the fundraising target across income streams.

One key recommendation was to create an Advisory Board, a high level committee of fundraising and sector influencers ranging from royalty to corporate leaders who would act as ambassadors for the programme.

Impact

Once active fundraising for the campaign and ongoing revenue was transitioned to the in-house team, Philanthropy Company was retained to establish and steward the Advisory Group, supporting key engagement events for target audiences.

The capital fundraising target has been achieved, with the first cohort of girl choristers now in the choir and outstanding new facilities open to accommodate them. Our work has contributed to the growth of an engaged pool of supporters for ongoing funding of the girls’ and boys’ chorister programmes for years to come.