Saving the past, persuading the present: the media challenge of heritage fundraising.

When it comes to heritage fundraising, passion is plentiful, but press coverage is much harder to conjure, more so getting the public to part with their increasingly hard-earned cash.

In a landscape where everyone is chasing the same dwindling pots of funding, the true challenge isn’t just raising money, it’s about raising relevance.

Cunningly Good Group has worked on a range of exciting heritage fundraising projects over our two decades in business and, through our profile-raising comms strategies, we’ve helped to breathe new life into some of Scotland’s most iconic cultural landmarks.

From the majestic RRS Discovery to Scotland’s oldest ship, HMS Unicorn, to Perth City Hall’s recent reinvention as Perth Museum, and Perth Theatre’s multi-million pound redevelopment, not to mention the original Oor Wullie Big Bucket Trail that raised an amazing £883k for The Archie Foundation,  we have first-hand experience of how heritage and cultural projects with a steep fundraising need to position themselves to grab a share of voice in a noisy, emotionally charged, media landscape.

From our experience, there’s key comms challenges to overcome:

It’s a very crowded marketplace

Although every fundraiser would like to think differently, heritage fundraising campaigns do not exist in a vacuum. They’re part of an extremely crowded marketplace of giving, jostling alongside health, poverty, climate, and numerous other causes that tug on public heartstrings. With funding pots shrinking, especially post-pandemic, the race for relevance and connection is tighter than it has ever been.

Our team are experienced at pinpointing the gaps in the narrative and then developing innovative ways to bring them to life. The aim is not just to get people talking about your project, but to give them a compelling reason to donate, mindful that everyone’s reasons for supporting good causes can be intensely personal.

Emotion is everything

If you are looking for the public to hand over their hard-earned cash, then emotion is everything. While you may care deeply about preserving the past, most people care more deeply about getting to work on time, or having enough money to get to the end of the month. You need to go far beyond the what you are trying to do and delve deeply in the why what you are doing matters – crucially – to them.

A great fundraising message isn’t about what needs saving, it’s about why it matters. That emotional hook needs to be vivid, relatable and resonant. By giving, doners are not just preserving a building, for example, they’re safeguarding their local identity, their family legacy, or memories.

Creating urgency

There’s no covid pandemic surge equivalent in heritage fundraising. You won’t see “Donate NOW! Or this lovely castle will fall down tomorrow” on the BBC news. This makes a sense of urgency hard to evoke, and even harder to communicate. We are all acutely aware of the difference in the public’s response to something urgent like the covid pandemic versus the climate crisis.

Urgency doesn’t always need to look like crisis – it can be positioned as an opportunity, a key moment in time, or a chance to be part of something bigger than yourself.

For the RRS Discovery campaign with Dundee Heritage Trust, we framed giving as a legacy act. Not “save it someday,” but “join us now.”

Understanding the psychology of giving

People don’t give to buildings or ‘things’, they will contribute to something that means something to them. Heritage supporters are often driven by identity, nostalgia, civic pride, or a sense of stewardship. The right message taps into that psychology with precision.

This is where your storytelling becomes strategy. Case studies, personal testimonies, unexpected angles, these are our currency in media relations.

With HMS Unicorn, we told the story of its Wavemakers volunteer programme that had transformed over 100 individual lives since it began in 2021, many of whom faced barriers to employment. Without the necessary funds to save the ship this invaluable work of providing real people with essential employability skills and confidence would have to stop.

Crafting media worthy stories

The truth is that straight fundraising stories won’t make the cut. The BBC won’t isn’t interested in a ‘please donate’ press release, no matter how historically important the venue. Cunningly Good Group are adept at building layered narratives into our fundraising media relations. We find a media hook, such as an anniversary, a historical find, or a community impact angle and we use that as a platform to include the fundraising ask. Media engagement isn’t the end goal, it’s the multiplier.

And when it works, it really works. As Matthew Bellhouse Moran, former Executive Director of the Unicorn Preservation Society, recently said:

“The latest campaign continues to get individual donations which is amazing, the Scotland’s Sounds interview over the weekend was great, really good messaging so wonderful to have that in the bag too.
Thank you personally for your amazing work with UPS over the last couple of years and the exceptional results that you have produced for us. I know we are not necessarily the most organised(!) client but the impact on awareness of Unicorn and Project Safe Haven has been fantastic.”

Cunningly Good Group doesn’t just campaign for heritage, we champion it. With a cunningly good communications strategy and compelling messaging, we turn ‘just another fundraising story’ into a series of headlines that cuts through. Because heritage is only worth saving if people believe it’s worth saving.

If you are working on a heritage fundraising project and would like help crafting and executing a communications strategy around your fundraising ask, we would be delighted to help. Please call us on 01738 658187.