# How to turn a £100k gift into a £1 million donation

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2014/10/02/turn-100k-gift-1m-donation/
- Published: 2014-10-02T09:53:24+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

How do you turn a donor’s pledge of £100,000 into one of £1 million? You hope that
someone else insults them and their pledge in public.

That’s what happened yesterday. Former Conservative Party donor Arron Banks had 
pledged to give £100,000 to Ukip. But, without any request from the political party,
he increased it tenfold after William Hague MP, leader of the House of Commons, 
said that he had never heard of him.

In what he described as a “fit of pique” Mr Banks, founder of the Go Skippy insurance
company, decided to make a much more substantial donation to the party. “I’m hoping
Mr Hague will now know who I am”, he told The Guardian.

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Hague had earlier said on BBC Radio 5 Live:

> “I’ve never heard of him so we are not going to get too upset about that”.

Of course, this tactic is unlikely to figure in most major gift fundraisers’ repertoire.
But most will know that prestige matters to some major donors, and the size of a
gift can depend on the the size of gifts given by associates or indeed rivals and
competitors.

 

_Photo: [One million pounds](http://thumb9.shutterstock.com/thumb_small/68500/68500,1190837044,2/stock-photo-one-million-pounds-written-on-a-blackboard-5659336.jpg)
by Stephen Rees on Shutterstock.com_

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