About the Development and Foundation office

Wells Cathedral School's Development and Foundation team looks after fundraising, alumni engagement and communications end to end — for former pupils, former parents and former staff. It's a small team of three, just over 2.2 full-time equivalent, led by Jess Newman, Director of Development and Head of Foundation.

Bursaries are the team's main fundraising focus. Alongside major gifts, they are growing a regular giving programme and building an events calendar centred on smaller, more personal gatherings where they can get to know supporters properly. The school also ran its first Giving Day this year, attracting almost 250 donors, many of them first-time givers.

One place for every relationship

The team runs everything through ToucanTech: records, events, email and fundraising. For Jess, the real value is seeing a supporter's whole story on one record: donations, event attendance, and whether they've opened or clicked an email.

These same records also feed into reporting. While preparing a trustee report, Jess tallied around 85 supporter visits logged over the past year, including one-to-one meetings and school tours.

Ten years of Cedars Hall

Cedars Hall, the school's concert hall, opened ten years ago and was funded largely through fundraising.

Wells is marking the anniversary with a celebration concert in the concert hall made possible by donors, which will feature pupil performances, speakers from the original campaign as well as recent leavers.

The evening is first and foremost a thank you to donors, and is also ticketed with proceeds going straight back into music and expressive arts at the school.

Before: using spreadsheets and Canva

The team's seated events — the London Dinner and the Summer Reunion in a marquee on site — had always been planned by hand. Bookings came in through ToucanTech, but seating preferences were tracked separately, the plan was built and rebuilt in a spreadsheet as bookings changed, and the final version was laid out in Canva.

Jess also used seating software at a previous organisation and found it hard going. Building a 225-seat plan directly in ToucanTech was a pleasant surprise:

Building the plan

Using ToucanTech's event seating plans, the team built a single theatre-style template for Cedars Hall:

• 225 seats in one template
• Sections reflecting the hall's layout, from the main floor to the side and corner galleries
• Each section working as its own mini seating plan, with its own rows and seat counts, or even its own layout, if a venue mixes rows and tables

Choosing who sits where

Event seating plans lets guests pick their own seat at registration, or allows organisers to assign each seat themselves. With major donors, pupils and prospective supporters all attending, Wells chose to assign seats themselves.

Part of the original campaign was a “take your seat” appeal, so many donors' already have their names on the back of seats in the hall. Assigning seats gives the team room for thoughtful touches like assigning donors to their named seat where possible, making sure every guest knows exactly where to go.

Pricing and complimentary tickets

The concert is also the first time Wells has used discount codes in ToucanTech. A special code gives complimentary places to invited speakers and specific guests, within the same event as paid tickets and the seating plan.

A nice surprise: the event pass

Because seats are assigned after booking, the team needed a way to tell each guest their seat number before the night. Jess first looked for an email merge field — then found the event pass, a personalised ticket ToucanTech creates for every attendee, with their seat number already on it.

The pass also carries a QR code for check-in, which Wells will also use for the first time. With up to 225 guests arriving, scanning a code should be much quicker than finding names on a list.

One less thing to double-check

Every attendee's seat assignment shows against their record, so Jess can run the attendee list and find anyone still without a seat.

What's next

The seating template isn't a one-off, and Wells plans to use seating plans for the London Dinner and Summer Reunion, too — moving guests around quickly in ToucanTech, then using the final plan to create their own designed table plan.