Hello, we’re thirtyone fundraising and we’re here to raise as much money as possible for great causes [and not charge them the earth to do it.]

Armed with lots of experience and a cunning plan, two of us quit our jobs and founded thirtyone in November 2012. We started off in a cold office, with our laptops on our knees, knowing most of our friends thought we were mad. By February 2013 we had five fundraisers working with us and had won our first contract.

Today, we have a team of sixty people, been nominated for awards, have local and international clients and warm colourful offices!

With an original start up budget of £60k, our vision was to become a fundraising agency not a call centre. We began as a small company and we haven’t really changed the way we approach the business. We aren’t afraid to do things differently, and we’ve never given up on a good opportunity no matter how scary it seemed.

We’ve gone through two expansions in the last year, both funded from company profit. We opened up a second floor when a contract doubled in size and then the ground floor as a dedicated training and development area. Last year we were lucky enough to become part of the Future 50 and the support we’ve received has been brilliant. Knowing we have local support has really helped us to grow in confidence and last year we were finalists in two categories in the EDP Business Awards, Director of the Year and Business of the Year. We didn’t win either but watch this space for this year!

Back in July 2014 we hit our first massive £1 million milestone for Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic campaign, it’s one of the biggest campaigns Greenpeace has ever undertaken. We started working with Greenpeace in February 2013 and it’s been truly inspiring to see how hard our team worked to achieve this great milestone.

Then we did it again in November 2014, but this time for the brilliant Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) via their lottery campaign. For us this was a great campaign to be involved in as an increasing number of charities are
turning to lotteries as a way of making steady money. Lotteries stand out from other fundraising methods because they are a form of incentivised giving: supporters are rewarded. This helps to attract people who might not normally donate to an organisation.

We are keen to do more locally and have already worked with the East Anglia Air Ambulance to drum up support for their lottery and we sponsored an award at the EDP’s Stars of Norfolk Awards.

Jonathan, our MD, keeps a close eye on the numbers, we wouldn’t still be here if he didn’t! The company has no debt and needs no additional funding to achieve its forecasted targets. Ultimately we want to deliver growth for us, our clients and our fundraisers too.

We’ve just given our offices a makeover and now they are bright and colourful and our website has been given an overhaul by our brilliant pals at Selesti.

Being a local employer we are mindful of our impact on our community and the environment, and have made our offices as ‘green’ as possible, doing away with most of our paper (all our guys get their payslips and P60s electronically) and we recycle everything we possibly can. In the years to come, we want to be able to look back and be really proud of the business we’ve created.

Thanks for reading and if you fancy popping in to say Hi, please do 🙂