Justin Smith Director of Enterprise and Community, Wymondham High Academy

I thought you might like to hear some good news. Not long after hosting your Fundraising Masterclass here at the academy I submitted a bid to the EFA Academies Capital Maintenance Fund for £166,541. The bid focused on replacement windows for our 1960’s teaching block. I’m delighted to report that my bid was accepted and that tendering is now underway with the work planned for the summer! The EFA announced that £1.1 billion was bid for from 1364 academies, far in excess of the £325 million that was available. I’m delighted we managed to secure a piece of that pie!!
There’s no doubt that your fundraising masterclass helped prepare me for that bid application, so thanks again for all your support and encouragement.
Let’s hope there's more to come!!

Carol Laister, School Manager, Woodhouse West Primary School

Having attended the Funding Masterclass with Bob Jennings I submitted my first funding application in January. I never really expected anything given the criteria but thought it would be a useful experience. Today I received a cheque for £400 plus £50 worth of Kelloggs vouchers - highly delighted!!!

Nicola Matthews, Fundraising, PR and Marketing Manager, Birkenhead High School Academy

I just thought I would give you an update on a bid we have just been successful with. I applied for funding to send a group of pupils on a residential to Arvon in Shropshire to take part in a writing for radio course. Unfortunately competition was very high and we were unsuccessful, however, a couple of weeks ago I got a phone call to say another school had applied for funding to the John Thaw Trust, had been successful and had then dropped out (??!). Our application form was passed to The John Thaw Trust by Arvon and we were successful and selected to take the other schools place.
'Set in the beautiful surroundings of Shropshire, in the playwright John Osborne's house, The Hurst, the sixteen students and two accompanying teachers from Birkenhead High School Academy will work as a group - they will be the only students on the course that week and therefore have the run of the place - embarking on a series of group writing tasks in the mornings, and they will then have one-to-one sessions in the afternoons with guest authors whose names will be confirmed as soon as possible. Arvon's philosophy is that all students and staff cook the evening meal together and share their writing in the evenings. The writing workshops in the mornings for this cohort of very able students will be designed for them to learn specifically about writing for radio, whilst a variety of other fiction will be explored in the afternoons.'
The funding also covers return transport to Arvon. The funding to cover the whole project is just under £13,000!!