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Bespoke event services, tailored to your organisation or festival

Part of your team, not an outside agency. We learn your organisation inside out and create events that are unmistakably you, just with more impact. All for a fraction of the cost of a full-time Event Director.

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Gareth Brocklebank

Led by Gareth Brocklebank, founder of Top Dog and 7 years on the Big Church Festival senior team. More about Gareth →

Our experience

We’ve spent 25+ years at the heart of hundreds of incredible events, and we specialise in bringing that expertise to Christian charities, ministries and festivals. With 7 years on the Big Church Festival Senior Management Team, Gareth brings a rare mix of experience across partnerships, artists, live music and festivals, and knows how to make events make complete commercial sense.

  • 25+ yearsin Christian events
  • 7 yearsSenior Management Team, Big Church Festival
  • 4.2% → 14%+acquisition, held across 60+ events

Organisations Gareth has worked with

  • World Vision
  • Compassion
  • BGEA
  • Samaritan’s Purse
  • Convoy of Hope
  • The Chosen
  • CBN Europe
  • A21
  • International Justice Mission
  • Hope for Justice
  • Mercy Ships
  • Youth for Christ
  • Prison Fellowship
  • Christian Solidarity Worldwide
  • Barnardo’s
  • Stewardship
  • Tearfund
  • Christian Aid
  • Methodist Church
  • Christian Vision
  • Bible Society
  • Street Child
  • MAF
  • Christians Against Poverty
  • Premier Christianity magazine
  • Leprosy Mission
  • UCB
  • Home for Good and Safe Families
  • Big Church Festival
  • Church Army
  • Embrace the Middle East
  • Boys’ Brigade
  • Spring Harvest
  • Agape
  • Rock UK
  • Scripture Union
  • Care for the Family
  • TLG
  • Evangelical Alliance
  • FEBA UK
  • Urban Saints
  • Fusion
  • iSingPOP
  • Kintsugi Hope
  • Mission India
  • Toilet Twinning
  • Light
  • The Good Book Company

Our signature

Events that tell your story, and move people to respond

Whilst there is a place for ‘bolt-on sponsorship’, our events are immersive.

Bolt-on

A charity buys a short slot, often ten minutes, on someone else’s tour. Good for reach, but the audience came for something else.

Immersive

The whole evening is built around your story. Carefully curated storytelling, paired with impactful films, builds trust over a couple of hours. Many guests arrive having never heard of the charity and leave as long-term supporters: zero to hero in a single night.

  • The storyShaped around real people and real change, told with honesty and care.
  • The people on stageHosts, artists and speakers chosen and briefed to carry your message.
  • The askEvery event built around your call to action, with hosts, ambassadors and artists coached to make the ask with confidence and integrity. Gareth has helped curate these moments for years.

Who it’s for

Built for Christian charities and ministries that use events to serve their mission

Fundraising events

Story-led evenings, dinners, concerts and appeals, shaped so they raise more, bring in supporters who stay, and are a wise use of supporters’ giving.

Supporter engagement

Gatherings, tours and supporter programmes that deepen relationships and turn interest into lasting commitment.

Festival & conference presence

Exhibiting and partnering at Christian festivals and conferences with a clear reason to be there and a plan to make it count, long after the event. That includes the follow-up, because the contacts you collect only matter if you do something with them.

Tours & artist partnerships

Working with artists, speakers and church networks on tours and partnerships that carry your message to new supporters.

Services

One partner for the whole event picture

Gareth leads the core work personally, drawing on more than 25 years as an event director, artist relations lead and tour manager. Where you need specialist support, including on-the-day event management, he brings in trusted partners from our extended team and leads them, so you deal with one point of contact from first conversation to final report.

Led by Gareth

Headline strength

Story-led fundraising events

Curating events that tell a charity’s story and turn audiences into supporters. It’s what Top Dog has delivered for World Vision, Compassion, Mercy Ships and others, and it shapes everything below.

See selected work →

Event Director

Senior leadership of the whole event: strategy, story, concept, venues and production, directing the people who deliver it, with one person accountable for it all. On-the-day event management is available through our extended team.

Event Strategy

Independent audits and practical 12–24 month strategies, so every event has a clear purpose, audience and measure of success.

Commercial & Partnerships

Sponsorship, commercial income and partnerships that work for both sides, from charity partners at festivals to ministry collaborations.

Artist Relations

Booking, briefing and looking after artists, hosts and speakers, backed by over 25 years of managing artists and running an artist booking agency.

Tour Management

Planning and running tours on both sides of the Atlantic, with tour management experience across the UK, USA and Europe: routing, travel, production, catering, accommodation and venue contracts, handled end to end.

Christian Music Festivals

Decades of experience in the UK’s Christian festival world, and the churches, artists and organisations around it. Seven years on the Senior Management Team at Big Church Festival, the UK’s largest Christian music festival: 40,000 people, 100+ artists and 45 official charity partners.

Through our specialist network

Marketing

Campaigns, audience building and supporter communications that fill rooms and turn attendees into supporters.

Legal & HR

Contracts, compliance, safeguarding and staffing support from specialists who understand charities and events.

PR & Communications

Media relations, messaging and campaigns from faith and nonprofit communications specialists, so your story reaches the right audiences in the UK, US and beyond, with crisis support to protect your reputation when you need it.

Financial Management

Event budgets, cost and income tracking, and the numbers your leaders and trustees need to make good decisions.

Specialists are brought in as your project needs them, briefed and coordinated by Gareth. One relationship, one plan, one point of accountability.

After the event: your donor journey

Collecting contact details is the easy part. What happens next is what counts. We help you plan your follow-up before you go: how you’ll keep in touch, what story you’ll tell and when, so a simple enquiry or a spark of interest has the chance to grow into long-term support.

Because the event is just the start of the conversation.

Selected work

A track record of events that tell charities’ stories

A few highlights from Top Dog’s 25 years of events.

Gold fireworks over the Big Church Festival main stage at night, with the crowd holding phones up

Christian music festivals & tours · 7 years

Big Church Festival

Seven years on the Senior Management Team of Big Church Festival, the UK’s largest Christian music festival (40,000 people), as Artist Manager, Partnership Manager and Commercial Manager. That included artist and content booking for the festival, and tour services for its sister touring company: planning and booking tours, routing, travel, production, catering, accommodation and venue contracts.

Scenes from the main arena.

Daytime view across the Big Church Festival 2025 site, with the main stage, screens and a large crowd
Festival-goers singing with hands raised in the crowd at night
Main stage lit up in gold and orange light in front of the evening crowd
Rows of festival flags above the crowd at the main arena
Young people in the crowd dancing with hands in the air on a sunny afternoon
A gospel choir in red shirts singing on the main stage
A worship artist singing and playing acoustic guitar on stage
A packed crowd at the front barrier with hands raised at night
Carrie Grant on stage at Girls’ Night Out

World Vision · Fundraising events

Girls’ Night Out

World Vision asked Top Dog to find a celebrity host for a new event. Top Dog set up a meeting with Carrie Grant (Fame Academy, The One Show) and Girls’ Night Out was born. Alongside comedian Jo Enright, Carrie took women-only audiences on an emotional journey through their own lives as they learned about the issues facing women in some of the world’s hardest places.

Top Dog then ran the event management for four years, around 15 events a year: finding venues, coordinating production, and supplying staff and crew.

The result: more than three times as many guests sponsored a child.

Hear what World Vision say about Top Dog

Aerial view of a Mercy Ships hospital ship at seaThe Top Dog team in front of a Mercy Ships Tour screen

Mercy Ships · Tour & storytelling

Mercy Ships UK Tour

Top Dog created and delivered the Mercy Ships UK Tour, built to bring audiences close to the work happening on board the ship. Gareth travelled to Benin, West Africa, to visit the ship and film the tour’s artists there, and Top Dog led the shoot and the edit.

The result was six short films, woven through the live programme on every tour night, so the story unfolded alongside the music.

World Vision Journey of Hope replica mud hut set up in a UK town centreInside a Journey of Hope hut: a family home recreated with furniture, photos and a World Vision display

World Vision · Experiential · UK town centres

Journey of Hope

A walk-through experience of two replica mud huts that lets the public step into the life of a real family in Sierra Leone, then see the change World Vision brings. After five years in storage, Top Dog rebuilt and repainted it, helped craft the family’s true-life story, secured shopping centres with the right footfall, and ran transport, build and pack-down for month-long stays in town centres across the UK.

Ladies Night tour: a singer with a guitar on a church stage under blue and pink lights, the Ladies Night title on the screen, a full seated audience in frontLadies Night tour: the view from the production desk across a packed audience to a singer with a guitar on a pink-lit stage

Compassion · Tour · Created by Top Dog

Ladies Night tour

A short tour for women, created and delivered by Top Dog for Compassion and hosted by singer-songwriter Philippa Hanna. Live music, comedy and stories, with Compassion’s work at the heart of every night.

Joss Stone performing on stage at the Roundhouse for Barnardo’s 150th anniversary

Barnardo’s · Music event · 150th anniversary

Joss Stone & Friends at the Roundhouse

To mark its 150th anniversary and reach new audiences, Barnardo’s brought Top Dog in to produce a charity gig, and Top Dog secured the headline act, Joss Stone.

“Without your skill and guidance and unbelievable patience we wouldn’t have had an event at all.”

Victoria Veats, Barnardo’s
4.2% 14%+ Acquisition rate

Guests signing up as regular monthly donors on the night: 4.2% when the charity ran its own events, over 14% on average once Top Dog came in.

Measurable impact

A result that lasted across 60+ events

The charity ran its first events in-house, with 4.2% of guests signing up as regular monthly donors. After bringing Top Dog in, the average rose to over 14% and held across more than 60 events. And those donors stayed: attrition has been very low, as it has been for the regular givers recruited on other similar event tours.

The same thinking sits behind every audit and strategy: understand why an event exists, then change what it takes to make it work.

How it works

Start small. Go as far as you need.

  1. 1

    Event Health Check Free

    A focused 30-minute conversation about your current events, the most important questions, and whether an audit would add value.

    Booking the same festivals every year? Before asking “Where shall we go?”, ask “Why should we go?”

  2. 2

    Event Audit

    An independent review of your last 12–24 months of events: why each exists, what it really costs, who it reaches and what it delivers. Yours to use whether or not we work together on the next stage.

  3. 3

    Event Strategy

    A clear plan for the next 12–24 months: which events to stop, start, continue or improve, aligned with your fundraising, brand, budget and mission, as a roadmap your own team can deliver.

  4. 4

    Fractional Event Director

    Senior leadership without a full-time salary. Typically two to four days a month: strategic direction, team support, leadership meetings and accountability for delivery.

Doing nothing can mean another year of limited budget and staff time spent on events without knowing what they really achieve.

Gareth Brocklebank

About Gareth

Gareth Brocklebank

Founder, Top Dog · Event Director

Gareth has spent more than 25 years in the UK Christian events sector. He founded Top Dog Promotions in March 2000, and went on to spend seven years on the Senior Management Team at Big Church Festival as Artist Manager, Partnership Manager and Commercial Manager. He has also served as a trustee on various charity boards for over 20 years, so he understands the decisions leaders and trustees face.

Alongside that, he has decades of experience in music tour management and Christian music festivals, and in curating fundraising events that tell charities’ stories, delivered through Top Dog for World Vision, Barnardo’s and others.

Today he uses that experience to help Christian charities and ministries make better event decisions: reviewing what they already do, building clear and effective strategies, and providing experienced leadership that helps their teams deliver greater impact.

  • Founded Top Dog in 2000
  • Event Director, artist relations & tour manager
  • Big Church Festival Senior Management Team, 7 years
  • Charity trustee, 20+ years
  • Available to Christian charities in the UK and US
Gareth Brocklebank on a red dirt road in West Africa

On the ground

First-hand experience of the causes charities serve

Gareth has travelled across West Africa and India over many years, visiting projects from several charities. He has also taken artist ambassadors, including DC3, Lindz West (LZ7), Faithchild and Gemma Hunt (BBC TV/CBeebies presenter), to film content for forthcoming events. He brings that boots-on-the-ground experience to the charities he works with.

Start here

Book a free 30-minute Event Health Check

A no-obligation conversation about your events and the questions that matter most. You’ll leave with a clearer view, whether or not we work together.

Book your free Health Check
gareth@topdogpromotions.co.uk +44 7788 137799