£160,000 in Two Weeks: A Whitgift School Telephone Appeal Story

The challenge

Whitgift School wanted to grow support for its Whitgift for All Bursary Appeal, a cornerstone initiative that opens up a Whitgift education to talented boys who could not otherwise afford it. Bursary appeals ask a lot of a community: they rely on parents and alumni not just giving, but understanding the direct, personal impact of their gift on a specific child’s opportunity, and on the whole school community.

Email and mail campaigns can carry that message, but they cannot answer questions, respond to hesitation, or convey the warmth of a genuine conversation. Whitgift needed a channel that could do all three, at scale, within a tight window, and a team that could deliver it without disrupting the school’s own staff and resources.

Whitgift already had a track record of community generosity, with its annual Giving Day raising over £130,000 from more than 350 donors in the spring. The question was whether a different channel, a real conversation rather than a short window of digital giving, could unlock a different kind of gift: not just one-off generosity, but a sustained, monthly commitment to bursary places.

The approach

Hubbub partnered with Whitgift to run a dedicated telephone appeal, reaching out to parents and alumni on behalf of the Whitgift for All Bursary Appeal. Over a carefully planned two-week calling window, a team of 11 callers, a mix of recent Whitgift leavers and alumni at university, worked through segmented contact lists, opening genuine conversations about the difference a bursary makes.

Crucially, callers did not work from a script. Hubbub’s approach paired the recruitment of callers who already had a real connection to Whitgift with supportive, hands-on training and coaching, equipping them to speak with confidence and authenticity rather than read from a page. The result was calls that felt like exactly what they were: one member of the Whitgift community talking to another about something they both cared about.

What Hubbub delivered:

• Recruitment of 11 callers with genuine ties to Whitgift, recent leavers and current alumni at university
• Script-free training and coaching focused on authentic, confident conversation rather than a fixed pitch
• Data segmentation across parent and alumni audiences so the right message reached the right supporter
• Live calling-room supervision and support throughout the two-week campaign, both on site and remote
• Full GDPR-compliant handling of contact data and donor preferences throughout

The results

Against an original target of £60,000, the campaign raised over £160,000 in just two weeks, more than two and a half times the goal Whitgift set out to reach.

• £160,000+ raised in total, against a £60,000 target
• 95 new Direct Debit pledges and upgrades, ranging from £5 to £60 a month
• 106 single gifts, ranging from £10 to £2,000
• 11 callers, recent leavers and current university alumni, engaging parents and alumni directly
• A two-week calling window from start to finish

The mix of results is telling. Alongside 106 single gifts, the appeal secured 95 new or upgraded Direct Debit commitments: regular monthly giving that will support the bursary programme well beyond the two-week campaign itself. That is a different shape of result to Whitgift’s annual Giving Day, which earlier in the year raised over £130,000 from more than 350 donors in a single day. Where the Giving Day mobilises the community at scale, the telephone appeal converted authentic, one-to-one conversations into sustained, ongoing support, showing what the two channels can achieve together.

Why it worked

Telephone appeals succeed when the conversation feels genuine, not performed. For Whitgift, that started with who was calling: recent leavers and current university alumni who understood the school from the inside. Removing the script and replacing it with supportive, one-to-one coaching meant every conversation could flex to the person on the other end of the line, whether that meant sharing their own experience of Whitgift, answering a parent’s question honestly, or simply listening before making the ask.

That authenticity shows up in the results. Supporters did not just make a one-off gesture; many chose to commit to a regular monthly gift, a sign that the conversation built genuine trust in where their money was going, not just a moment of persuasion.

What is next

Ongoing engagement and stewardship of donors will be key to retention and renewal, as well as upgrading their support over time. Whitgift have a calendar of touch points planned in the coming months to demonstrate the impact of the money raised, keeping the community informed in the lead-up to their annual Giving Day next summer.