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A development office that does it all
AGS runs fundraising, alumni relations, and communications from a single three-person team, all working part-time, term time only.
Development Director Alison Cox joined in 2011, on the day her son started at the school, and has built the office from the ground up. Today, the team is structured around complementary strengths: Alison leads strategic fundraising and major-donor relationships; a development assistant looks after alumni relations and their ToucanTech database; and a communications lead writes almost everything that goes out about the school, with a clear, established tone of voice.
And it’s a powerful combination. By keeping development and communications under one roof, the team has built a consistency that runs through everything — backed by a 110-page brand book and a reputation for messaging that finally matches the quality of the education.
"When I joined, the branding didn't align with the excellence of the education. We've done a lot of work on that and now it all sits quite comfortably."
Before ToucanTech, the team worked from spreadsheets and an inherited legacy CRM. After meeting ToucanTech at a sector conference, Alison made the case to the governing body to invest in a proper system, and AGS became an early adopter.
The Pitch In campaign: A community effort
The Pitch In campaign was the most ambitious of the four capital campaigns AGS has run, raising £820,000 for a new 3G all-weather pitch. It was also the most community-driven — and the team approached it differently from the start.
They began by recruiting a strong campaign board, identifying the most sporting pupils across the lower year groups, cross-referencing with prospect research, and inviting parents to a headmaster's briefing where the campaign launched. Board members were drawn from those parents alongside engaged alumni.
Then came a bold move: AGS launched the campaign with a Giving Day, believed to be the first state school in the country to do so.
"It was a great launch. It raised money, but it also raised awareness and created some theatre around the campaign. After that day, it would've been very difficult not to know we were in campaign."
The team then kept the momentum going for a full year — trusts and grants, major benefactors, dinners, a question of sport, and a relentless community focus — before closing the campaign with a second Giving Day, this time run in-house. Throughout, alumni communications and all campaign events were managed in ToucanTech. The pitch was delivered ahead of schedule, and the boys are already benefiting.
From acrylic boards to a digital donor wall
For previous campaigns, AGS recognised supporters with acrylic donor boards mounted around the school. For the Pitch In campaign, that approach didn't fit.
Because the campaign was so community-based, there were far more names, and far more ways for things to go wrong. A physical board attached to an outdoor pitch raised real concerns: the weather, the wear, the sheer volume of names, and the risk of someone being missed or a name spelled incorrectly.
So the team built a digital donor wall instead, using the ToucanTech online directory in a new way. It was a labour of love that was managed in-house, name by name, but the result is something an acrylic board could never be.
"It's searchable, which is really nice. People don't have to trawl through lines and lines to find themselves. And visually it's impactful. It looks really nice."
The team wrote to every single donor, told them they'd be featured, and asked how they'd like their name to appear. Anonymous gifts were respected, and supporters who gave anything from £5 upwards were displayed alongside the headline benefactors.
To keep that range of supporters clear, the wall is arranged into three tiers — Charities & Trusts, Major Donors, and Donors — so grant-makers, headline benefactors, and the wider community each have their place, without amounts ever being shown.
The feedback: Recognition people didn't expect
Many donors gave without expecting any recognition at all, meaning the donor wall landed as a genuine, welcome surprise.
"When we wrote to say thank you and told them we were creating a board, we had lots of positive feedback: 'that's a really good idea, making it digital', 'it's really nice to see we're being recognised."
The team sees the donor wall as more than a thank-you. Because it's digital, searchable, and built to last, it's become a marketing asset for future campaigns, a visible legacy of what the community achieved together.
Beyond the donor wall
The donor wall is one creative use of the platform, but the AGS team also relies on ToucanTech daily:
- Research and records — Looking up Old Aylesburians ahead of meetings and events, and building out biographies for major-donor research
- Events — All alumni events, including the full Pitch In campaign programme, are managed in one place
- Communications — Letters, newsletters, and alumni comms, with ToucanTech increasingly used as a publishing channel alongside social media
- Reporting — Building a clearer picture of the community as the team moves more of its records off spreadsheets and into one system
"We're trying to get everything onto ToucanTech — who was head boy, who was in the debating team, who was in the school play. So when we run our next campaign and want to know who was in a performance club, we can just pull a report."
Advice for other schools
- You don't need a physical board. A digital donor wall removes the risk of weather, wear, and missed names, and can scale for a community campaign with hundreds of supporters
- Acknowledge everyone. Writing to every donor to ask how they'd like to appear turns recognition into a relationship — and many supporters won't expect it
- Segment as you go. Grouping donors by giving level or preference during the campaign saves a major sorting job at the end
- Think of it as an asset, not an afterthought. A searchable, digital wall becomes marketing collateral and a visible legacy for the next campaign
