Where does your story begin?

The Royal Hospital School is an independent co-educational boarding and day school for 11-18 year olds. Founded in 1712, in Greenwich, London it moved to its spectacular site, set in 200 acres of Suffolk countryside overlooking the River Stour, in 1933. The school has a long-standing heritage of providing bursaries, from the original seafarer bursary supported by Greenwich Hospital to the work they do with organisations such as the Royal National Children's Springboard Foundation and legacy gifts like the De Neumann Scholarship. Combined with the generosity of the RHS Funds the Royal Hospital School has been able to provide bursaries to young people from any background so they can access an education that becomes the foundation for their happiness and success.  

Why did you decide to run a Giving Day?

The Royal Hospital School is committed to providing life-changing opportunities through bursaries. In November 2022 we launched the Centennial Bursary campaign in which we set a goal to transform the lives of 100 children by 2033, the centenary of the Royal Hospital School’s move to Holbrook. We wanted to raise money for this goal and to increase our audience. We ran our first Giving Day in 2023 which raised £102,000 and our second in July 2024. 

Why did you choose Hubbub?

The expertise and history of Hubbub, particularly with so much experience of working with independent schools like ours. We heard good things through word of mouth from other schools, with a good reputation, who had run similar programmes, so Hubbub seemed like an obvious choice. 

The Hubbub offering worked for us, particularly the email package made a big difference. Being consultant led, with direct experience of an independent school development office made a huge difference as the team understood our audience and stakeholders. 

Did you achieve your Giving Day goals?

Yes it definitely did achieve its objective, we wanted to exceed our Giving Day 2023 fundraising total, which was nerve wracking, but we did it! It definitely helped that we had already run a Giving Day as we had our heads around what we wanted to achieve. 

Will it help with your longer term goal?

I think so, the platform has really helped us reach thousands of people we wouldn’t normally have reached. We engaged people through email and social media, spending a lot of time planning our strategy to reach our different stakeholders and share bursaries stories. Our marketing team was really supportive, we managed to get into the local BBC News (Look East), local radio (Suffolk Sound) and paper (East Anglian Daily Times). This reach has been amazing! Certainly, without the Giving Day we wouldn't have the audience that we have.

What was your experience of working with Hubbub?

The second time round had a different feel, we had the experience and had learned a lot from the first one. Both were good, but the extra understanding we got this year from our consultant having experience of independent schools and knowing what we’re going through was helpful.

A real standout was the ability to change our strategy as we were going through the Giving Day. For instance, we were offered a major donation part way through the Giving Day, so being able to leverage that in the best way, for the best outcome. We ran Power Hours, we wouldn't have known that we could do that without Hubbub’s guidance.

We also appreciated being able to tweak the emails and segment in any way we needed to, this resulted in a couple of very last-minute changes which they were able to do. 

What advice would you give others considering running a Giving Day? 

I think the success really comes down to your major donors and having that pot of money there originally. You definitely need to know who your donors and supporters are beforehand and have a really good base financially. 

To have ambassadors - people that are really supportive of your cause, publicly or not. People who are promoting what you are doing and being really positive about it, so are supporting you.

To have whole school support as well, that's really important. I was really fortunate that our Headmaster was very much behind the Giving Day. Being able to get a whole school involved in something, it creates an atmosphere and a buzz. You don't necessarily need all of those people to be making donations, it's just about having their buy-in to what you're trying to achieve.

Finally, being able to share bursary stories is so important for us. Humanising the impact of donations and creating an emotional connection between donors and our cause is vital. We are a school that celebrates bursaries and being able to share their impact from current pupils and alumni is inspirational.

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