About us

The Arts Fundraisers was set up by Julie Eason and Hannah Travers in 2021. We both love the arts and had been working with a growing number of arts organisation through our sister organisation, The Fundraisers. We wanted to build a specialist organisation dedicated to Arts Fundraising to support arts organisations and artists to recover from the impacts of the pandemic and achieve their full potential.

We are proud of our track record, and high success rates

Currently clients are 4 times more likely to get a grant from the Arts Council if working with our team and our current success rate is 82.4% (Jan-June 2023). We raised £6,683,917 for the arts in successful grants in 2022, secured Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation funding for 6 arts organisations – including 4 new ones and 2 based in London and delivered an average bid writing ROI of 49:1. In the last round of ACE Cultural Recovery Funding and Emergency Grants, our team achieved 100% success for the artists and arts organisations we supported.

In addition to Arts Council England and Creative Scotland core and project funding, the team regularly secure major gifts from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, John Ellerman Foundation, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, Garfield Weston, The National Lottery (Reaching Communities and Awards for All) and the Heritage Lottery Fund, local and national governments and, historically secured funding from the EU.

In light of the complaints of sexual harassment and assault raised at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, and subsequent lack of action, we have chosen to resign our membership

We stand in solidarity with the women who experienced this terrible behaviour, and who have tried to engage in an open and frank conversation to ensure complaints of sexual misconduct are never again ignored or covered up. We hope that fundraisers will stand together with us to expedite the change needed and we remain optimistic that fundraisers will in the future; have a membership body we can all be proud to be part of.