The first £100,000 is never about the money. It is about the people willing to believe in what you are doing.
That is something I wish someone had told me very early on when I started out because when you sit down to plan a fundraising campaign for the first time, the number on the page can feel enormous. £100,000 feels like a mountain. £250,000 feels impossible. £1 million feels like something only other people do.
After more than 30 years of working in fundraising, raising over £4.5 million for charitable causes, and learning from every single conversation along the way, I can promise you this. The number is rarely the hard part. The hard part is believing that you are allowed to ask and have the confidence to to so.
Most new fundraisers I meet are not held back by a lack of ideas. They have brilliant ideas. They are held back by something much quieter. Self doubt. A fear of being seen as pushy. A feeling that the people they need to approach are somehow out of reach. A worry that the cause is not quite ready, the website is not quite finished, the pitch is not quite polished. None of that matters as much as you think it does.
What matters is that you understand who you are asking, why you are asking them, and what you genuinely believe their support will make possible.
The first £100,000 is very rarely raised from cold contacts. It is raised from the people closest to your work. Your founders, your trustees, your existing supporters, the friends of friends who already half know what you are trying to do. The first six or seven gifts of any campaign tend to come from the relationships you already have, even if you have not yet realised it.
Before you draft a single pitch, write down every single person who might already be willing to help. Not just the obvious ones. The people you used to work with. The clients who became friends. The neighbour whose son benefitted from the cause or the pro The trustee who introduced you to your chair. The doctor who treated your father. The teacher who shaped your daughter. Write them all down. Most fundraising campaigns I have seen stall in the first month because the list was too short.
Once you have the list, do not start with a pitch but just start with a simple conversation.
I have always believed that fundraising is not really about asking. It is about inviting. You are inviting someone into something. A campaign. A mission. A story. A community. The strongest fundraising calls I have ever made have not started with money. They have started with, “I would love to tell you what we are working on. Can I come and see you – i would so value your help?”
Almost every major gift I have helped secure across three decades, including support for The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Help for Heroes, the Soldiers’ Charity and the Duke of Wellington’s Regimental Memorial, began with that single phone call – meeting. Not a deck. Not a brochure – but just being able to talk face to face.
When you do begin to make the ask, be specific. Vague asks raise vague money. If you need £100,000, break it down so the person sitting opposite you can see themselves in it. Ten gifts of £10,000. Twenty gifts of £5,000. Two transformational gifts of £25,000 and the rest from a curated event. People give more confidently when they understand the architecture of what they are being asked to support.
Then something I feel is so important and which can so easly be forgotten. Say thank you properly.
I do not mean an automated email. I mean a handwritten note within seven days. A phone call. A photograph from the event. A real and human acknowledgement that says, you mattered to this. Because the people who give to your first £100,000 are the people who, if treated well, will give to your first £500,000 or more but and will feel valued.
Stewardship is fundraising. Stewardship is the whole game.
The other thing I wish every new fundraiser knew is this. You will be told no. Often. Sometimes by people you were sure would say yes. That is not a sign that you have failed. It is a sign that you are doing the work. The fundraisers who reach the big numbers are not the ones who are never told no. They are the ones who keep going kindly, professionally and without resentment after they are.
I was once told you may have to go through 100 no’s to get a yes — or even more!
And here is the quiet truth nobody really says out loud. Some of those nos turn into yeses two years later. Sometimes the relationship was not ready. Sometimes the timing was wrong. Sometimes the person needed to watch you for a while before they were willing to back you. Almost every long career in fundraising is built on the slow, patient cultivation of people who said no the first time.
So if you are sitting at a desk somewhere, looking at a campaign target that feels too big, with a list of contacts that feels too small, please hear this from someone who has been doing this for a very long time.
You do not need a polished plan to start. You need clarity, courage and a willingness to have honest conversations with people you already know. The first £100,000 is not raised in a meeting room. It is raised at kitchen tables, at long lunches, in handwritten notes and on the phone calls you nearly did not make.
The money follows the relationships. It always has.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou
Who is the first person you need to have an honest conversation with this week?