| Collection | Craigmyle Fundraising Consultants Collection |
| Admin history | Founded in 1959 as the John F Rich Company, named so after the Company’s first chairman, Craigmyle Fundraising Consultants was founded by Donald Shaw and Michael Hooker, who met during the 1940s whilst studying at the University of Oxford. Donald Shaw, 3rd Baron Craigmyle was a wealthy Roman Catholic convert and a philanthropist who allied his own immense personal generosity towards good causes to the desire to encourage good fundraising practice in others. Michael Hooker was an educationalist who, following experience of working in New Zealand for the American fundraising group the Wells Organisation, returned to Britain during the 1950s and utilised this skillset to undertake fundraising work. Michael Hooker was installed as the first managing director of the Company once an office was set up at 11 Old Burlington Street.
The following year, two more fundraisers were recruited, including the future managing director Jimmy Bell who undertook this role in 1972. The year 1960 also saw the implementation of a programme of skills training and expertise sharing for staff. In 1963, the Company was renamed Hooker Craigmyle and Co Ltd. Craigmyle underwent further expansion in 1966, and a Scottish company was established based in Edinburgh. Meanwhile, the Company’s head office moved to The Grove in Harpenden around this time, where Craigmyle remains to this day. The Company became Craigmyle and Co Ltd, as it remains to this day, following a major restructure involving the departure of Michael Hooker at a time when the company was employing 57 resident campaign directors. The company faced another major restructure in 1981 with the resignation of Jimmy Bell, who was followed as managing director by Frank Berry and then Philip Watts. By the mid-1980s the Scottish company had been closed and the main house Head Office of The Grove in Harpenden had been sold, although the company retained offices in the Stables at The Grove until 2015.
The Company continued to grow during the 1990s and 2000s, with Gill Moody joining Craigmyle in 1998 and, alongside director Geoff Howard, was one of the first wave of consultants to be appointed from a non-military background and with extensive fundraising experience prior to joining the company. Mark Jefferies, another of Craigmyle’s managing directors, also joined in 2000. Another major restructure took place in 2012 and the company was carried through in the face of a changed fundraising landscape in which clients increasingly have in-house fundraising capability and require smaller and more specialist services from fundraising consultants. Craigmyle now comprises a small team of highly experienced self-employed consultants who work under licence from the Company in accordance with its Code of Practice and fundraising philosophy. Further talent was brought in in 2016 when Bernie Morgan joined Craigmyle as a licensed consultant bringing new skills to the company as an expert in social investment and social enterprise, continuing the tradition of Craigmyle evolving its offering to meet new client needs and circumstances. 2019 saw further changes with the appointment of Sian Newton as Director. Sian was also joined by Christine Buccella and Gijs Elsen, marking a new era for the Craigmyle Board.
In the present day, the Company works with various clients that are classified as arts, community welfare, ecclesiastical, education, health, heritage, and social enterprise, but the Company’s earliest focus was on education and schools. Initial clients include Bradfield College, Charterhouse School, The King’s School in Ely, Nottingham High School, St. John’s College in Durham, Tonbridge School, and Wycombe Abbey. Craigmyle also worked closely with higher education organisations early on. Following the Robbins Report and a period of massive expansion and investment in this sector, Craigmyle’s involvement with this sector began with a £1 million foundation campaign for the University of Essex in 1963 (which raised £1.34 million). Craigmyle then embarked on a succession of foundation campaigns for other new universities including Lancaster and Stirling. Relationships with school clients has continued into the 2000s and 2006 saw the first of several campaigns was run with current client Elizabeth College, in Guernsey, raising £1.5 million against a target of £850,000. This was followed by the inauguration of a legacy society, The Dead Donkey Club, which has so far raised a further £1.2 million for the College.
In 1966, Craigmyle began working with ecclesiastical clients, with Salisbury Cathedral becoming their first cathedral client, and in 1984 Craigmyle supported the campaign to restore the south transept of York Minister following a devastating fire that made headlines around the World. The campaign which raised £1.5 million was the third to be completed at York Minster with Craigmyle involvement. Ecclesiastical clients have continued to look towards Craigmyle during the twenty-first century and in 2018 Craigmyle was engaged to provide expert advice to the National Churches Trust on developing the Trust’s grant giving support for churches.
By the 1970s Craigmyle was supporting health and medical clients, and in 1972 the first of 30 campaigns was run for Macmillan Cancer Relief during a period of major expansion in the hospice movement in the UK. Another important new client in this era was Nuffield Hospitals for whom 23 appeals were run up to the early 1990s. 1983 saw the Company launch a successful appeal on behalf of the Radiotherapy Department of Mount Vernon Hospital to raise £1.25 million for a whole-body scanner. The campaign was notable for pioneering new approaches to community fundraising including the use of direct mail, which would increasingly come to the fore in the 1980s and 90s. Indeed, the campaign was so successful in raising over £2.3 million that a second scanner was bought.
In 1979, Craigmyle was retained for the first time by the young charity The Woodland Trust for specialised consultancy services, establishing a relationship which extended for more than 20 years through a period when the Trust grew to become one of the largest membership charities in the UK. The Company also had a significant impact on the arts and heritage sector. Their support through Geoff Howard’s work on a campaign for Kingston Theatre Trust, for example, led to the opening of the Rose Theatre in 2006. Craigmyle have also worked with The Home of Horseracing Trust, Newmarket, establishing a relationship with this organisation in 2005 and with whom they raised £15 million towards the opening of The National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art at the Palace House site in Newmarket.
Craigmyle’s methods in fundraising also responded to social changes. For example, the ending of the direct grant scheme for grammar schools in 1975 led to increased demand to fundraise for bursaries and improved facilities as many schools opted to go independent. This trend was exemplified in the first of 19 appeals for the Girls Public Day Schools Trust. Moreover, the advent of a new Conservative government heralded an era in which major cuts in public expenditure led to increased demand for Craigmyle’s services from universities, hospitals and other bodies hitherto dependent on grants from central and local government
As part of their service, Craigmyle also produced The Craigmyle Guide to Charitable Giving and Taxation, which remained in print until the 2000s. For many years this was used by Inland Revenue as their principle reference book on charitable fundraising. Other ways in which Craigmyle made an impact was through their contributions to professional fundraising bodies. For example in 1983, Craigmyle became a founder member of the new Institute of Charity Fundraising Managers, which became The Institute of Fundraising in 2002. In 1990 Craigmyle was a founder member of the Association of Fundraising Consultants with Godfrey Jackson as its first Chair. Individuals from Craigmyle also became involved in advising the Government and during the 1990s, following his appointment as managing director in 1988, Godfrey Jackson sat on a working party set up to advise the Government on charitable fundraising.
Other changes that Craigmyle responded to was the introduction of Gift Aid in 1990. Gift Aid was first introduced making it far easier for donors to make one-off gifts in a tax efficient way. The rules were further liberalised in 2000 at which time Craigmyle successfully lobbied the Treasury to clarify that traditional Deed of Covenant giving had not been abolished, as was being widely reported at the time. Moreover, the 1990s witnessed a growing trend for large charities and universities to recruit and set up their own fundraising departments, and by the 2000s a similar trend was prevalent in Craigmyle’s core schools market. These developments reduced traditional clients’ dependence on professional fundraising consultancies such as Craigmyle to run their fundraising campaigns and led to a reduction in the size of the Craigmyle business as well as the evolution of the business towards the provision of different types of service and a focus on developing a presence in new markets. The establishment of the National Lottery Fund in 1994 also changed the landscape for heritage fundraising in the UK and, in response, Craigmyle supported numerous National Lottery funded projects over the years with early successes delivered with St Anne’s Hospice in Gwent, Sports England, and Bournemouth School.
Craigmyle has been a longstanding fundraising consultancy and in 2019 celebrated six decades of working with and supporting clients – between 1959 and 2019 we helped nearly 2000 charities raise over £1 billion at modern day value for capital and revenue projects.
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