My Story

Hi. I’m Sam Hawkins ( s h )

I worked on my first grant application in 2006. It was for £2500 for a festival of one-man-band’s. I wrote 300 words about marketing for it.

I started my career working in live music in 2000, first in Glasgow then in London.

I co-founded the London Word Festival in 2008, which ran for four years. The festival won a Paul Hamlyn Breakthrough award in 2009. I learned some great foundational stuff from that about forecasting, evaluating, and balancing projects across multiple funders, as well as how the relationship with trusts work and how funding schemes evolve.

I started advising and bid writing for my first clients in 2011, shortly before I moved to Brighton in 2012.

I spent five years running vocational courses for 16 – 24 year olds, including some cool youth-led projects such as the first-ever under-20s run Brighton Fringe Venue and Great Escape Alternative Escape venue. I got a feel for more statutory funding there and got to know some education charities Running European Social Fund projects set me up well for future funding work, while having the tightest of budgets taught me a well-timed crowdfunder could make the difference between a project happening or not.

I worked in skills until 2020. COVID was then a real turning point for me. Crazy, horrible times for the type of companies I work with, but also 24 months where I could put my grant skills to real use, and where I honed the approach I bring to fundraising now.

I worked on a range of COVID Recovery Funding schemes, providing high-speed grant reviews that I could turn around on demand. My experience working within all sorts of grant criteria, plus my skills in writing actionable feedback honed in teaching, led to really good results helping at risk organisations survive and thrive.

It showed that detailed, bespoke, support is what I can do fast and do well. I got to work with some great trade bodies, helping a large number of their members, including the Associations of Independent Festivals and the Music Venues Trust.

2020 was also when I went to work with the consultancy always possible, managing business development, strategy, evaluation and Theory of Change projects. A job all about measuring and communicating impact has been invaluable in building skills that help balance business case with funding case. It is also where I managed a two year project supporting small businesses across East Sussex to access £750k of capital growth grants.

Since 2022 I’ve managed a London Borough of Culture bid leading to an award of £200,000 with £300,000+ committed match funding.

This has all added up to Hush. If my services allow innovative and energetic businesses and charities to spend more time and money on helping society and the economy grow, then things are going in the right direction.

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