Client notes
Annual fundraising report and donor visual pack
Our treasurer used to read the gift spreadsheet aloud while the rest of us watched the total cell. Elspeth’s report named the Christmas mailing, the failed challenge gift, and the Gift Aid still outstanding. I could chair the AGM without a private briefing the night before.
Campaign close briefing
After the spring appeal I wanted one number for the staff list. Rohan would not give me one. He split cash, Gift Aid, and three pledges that had not cleared. The staff email was duller. The trustee paper was honest. I still wince at how late I sent him the appeal codes.
Grant-maker visual annex
The trust’s offer letter used activity names our finance system had never heard of. The annex mapped expenditure onto those headings so I stopped rewriting the same paragraph in three places. Print looked quiet, which is what a programme officer actually wants.
Quarterly trustee board pack
Meredith numbered the pack to match my agenda. Restricted hall-roof money sat on its own page so nobody treated it as spare cash. We still argued about the café takings — the pack cannot stop that — but we argued from the same page.
Stewardship letter illustration set
The autumn letter used to carry a screenshot with truncated axis labels. The new plates named the conservation internships and the repair of the east window. One regular giver wrote to say she finally understood where the £15 monthly gift sat. The plates still needed a last caption change the day before print, which I should have caught.
Helen Morley’s coastal charity had three new trustees who had never seen a Gift Aid line. The previous year the treasurer projected a spreadsheet on the village-hall wall. Hands went up only at the tea break.
We took their gift export, named the Christmas mailing that had fallen short, and put the still-outstanding Gift Aid in a footnote the chair could read aloud. The donor letter went to fourteen households. One household wrote to correct a programme name; we changed the caption before print. The AGM still ran long — a path dispute on the agenda saw to that — but the gifts paper took eleven minutes instead of forty.
James Okonkwo closed a spring mailing and wanted a single number for staff. The close briefing split cash, Gift Aid, and three uncleared pledges. Two pledges never arrived. Because they had never been in the ‘received’ line, the autumn forecast did not have to be rewritten in public. James still sent the appeal codes late; the briefing slipped by three days. We would rather slip than guess a code.