Over £1 million raised for arts clients in 2025
HELPING ARTS ORGANISATIONS RAISE THE FUNDING THEY DESERVE
Arts Council England · National Portfolio 2028-33 · Portal opens 20 October, closes midday 15 December
Should your organisation apply for NPO? Decide before you write.
Most first-time applicants will spend the eight weeks writing. The ones who get in will have spent September and October deciding. Three ways to decide from strength, all checked against the Applicant Guidance published in September 2026.
The NPO Verdict
A written verdict: apply in this round, build for the next round, or do not apply. A 25-point score, the break-even calculation and three actions with dates. Deducted from any further NPO work.
The NPO readiness documents
Decide, evidence, restate the numbers, write the source document. Word, PDF and Excel, mapped to the eleven answer boxes, licensed for your whole board and staff.
The NPO Strategy Sprint
Three facilitated sessions with your staff and board, a full evidence audit and a source document written from your own facts. Sprints must start by 20 October.
WORK WITH DAHNA
GRANT WRITING
I often see artists being extremely passionate about their work and the creative idea behind it. It can be very inspirational and motivates me to help them adapt their language, shape their thoughts so that the applications are clearly answering the questions the funders are asking. With over 74% success rate in 2025, raising over £1 million - and already over £400,000 in the first quarter of 2026 alone, I am confident that I can reach them efficiently.
ACCESS SUPPORT
Some funders such as Arts Council, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Youth Music offer access support to those applicants who experience difficulties when writing applications. This is where I can step in and help you ease the process, making it more accessible for you to reach the funders so that they really hear about your project.
ARTS CONSULTANCY
You have a great idea, consistent team and need funding to make it a reality. You are not sure how to go about environmental sustainability or if your workforce represents your target community. Use the consultancy as an opportunity to develop your project and scale it up so that it reaches more people effectively and makes it more fundable by different funders.
FUNDRAISING
STRATEGY
IMPROVING YOUR CHANCES BY KNOWING YOUR OPTIONS
RESEARCH FUNDERS
Together we can explore and research your options for funding your project. Lots of factors need to be taken into account, but let me tell you - there are so many opportunities out there, you just have to be aware of them to be able to get them.
MAKE A PLAN
Once we’ve identified your options, it is important to make an action plan and build a 1-year, 3-year or 5-year strategy by setting clear targets you want to reach and laying the ideas for projects that will need to seek funding.
1:1
Coaching
Through my personalised coaching, I’ll work alongside you to develop skills and understanding in grant writing so that you can become a fundraising expert in your organisation / charity.
WHO WANTS TO BE A SUCCESSFUL GRANT WRITER?
FUNDING LAB RESOURCES
“ Working with Dahna has been transformative for The Hustle Collective. Across multiple projects and festivals Dahna has helped us fundraise over £450,000 in the last 3 years. This has been instrumental in allowing us to develop our organisations, build talent development programmes, deliver meaningful community projects and pay over 300 freelancers/practitioners and artists. Dahna is brilliant at making sense of and bringing clarity to ambitious and often scrambled ideas and helping bring them to life on paper for a variety of funders! .”
— Ben Welch, Hustle Collective