Bringing our diverse strengths to bear new fruit
Fundraising strategy - Action Against Medical Accidents (AvMA)
“David and his team really took time to understand us, our passion for the cause, how we get our money now, and what we are trying to do. In other words, they understood the problem they were trying to fix. They held up a mirror to us and made us see what they were seeing; a mindset implication. ‘Actually we can think big.’ It was a liberating moment for us.”
Paul Whiteing, Chief Executive, AvMA
Background
AvMA (Action against Medical Accidents) is a charity that provides support to people harmed by an avoidable medical accident, in the form of advice and assistance about everything from how to obtain an apology or explanation, to making a complaint and/or seeking redress such as financial compensation. Where it is seen as necessary, they connect people with accredited specialist clinical negligence lawyers who AvMA accredit through a robust process. Finally, for families in need of support with an inquest, it can also provide support, given there is no legal aid available to support families with the legal advice.
The charity’s main sources of income are conferences, corporate partners, sponsorship, occasional legacies and fees from services from law firms. This means its income is skewed towards the legal profession. There has been general agreement that there is a need to increase and diversify income.
When Paul Whiteing joined as Chief Executive in December 2022, he agreed with the Board that the situation required professional help and advice. As a member of ACEVO, he was put in touch with a small number of potential suppliers, one of which was Action Planning.
Brief
Paul contacted Action Planning with a proposal, seeking professional advice to ensure AvMA could be financially sustainable over the medium to long term. David Saint helped him to refine the proposal and then put together a team to pitch for the work.
Process
When the proposal came in, David received responses from a range of Action Planning Associates with lots of different skill sets. The remit was very broad, and it was hard to see one simple way to address it, given the unique challenge AvMA faced into, so David made the radical decision to involve all the Associates who had responded to the proposal, as it wasn’t yet clear what skills would be needed. As well as David himself, they were David Burland, Kate Griffiths, Ned Wells, Eleanor Mitchell, Naomi Buckler and Ruth Dwight.
This team conducted a series of workshops with the AvMA team to gather information and report the initial outcomes to Paul. These outcomes included clarification of the income target and a realisation that if AvMA was to successfully implement any of the suggestions put forward, AvMA would need to invest in additional skills and capacity - specifically a Director role to lead AvMA’s comms, marketing and fundraising.
“Putting a number of consultants on the project to widen the outlook was really helpful,” said Paul. “They took different strands of thinking about income opportunities, then met with trustees and some staff to analyse and give us some thoughts. They came forward with a series of very helpful recommendations.”
Emerging from the workshops were two significant cultural observations: one, that AvMA had a “small charity” mindset, when actually it is not a small charity at all; two, that there was a belief that people “won’t give us money as we’re too niche”. Action Planning successfully challenged both these assumptions.
Paul invited David to come in and talk to his staff, to make sure they were taken along on the journey, especially regards the cultural assumptions that needed unpicking. “He talked about the mindset and how could we ask for money. There was a real liberation in the room. ‘Hey, why can’t we do all that?’ People were giving suggestions about asking for money and practical ways to do it without causing offence to those we support. And when he stated that the number one reason people give is because you ask them to, it was a lightbulb moment!”
David wrote a business case for the appointment of a Director of Fundraising, Marketing & Communications. The business case for this was accepted by the Board and Action Planning was appointed to run the recruitment process. This was handled by two more members of the Action Planning team - Sara Ginn and Sarah Divina, who succeeded in filling the role with an excellent candidate.
Consultant’s insight
Although the initial brief was for a fairly small piece of consultancy, we used our strength as a multi-disciplinary consultancy to deploy a large and multi-skilled team – albeit for only a day or so each. In terms of numbers of consultants this ‘small’ project thus turned into one of the most significant deployments of Action Planning’s Associate Consultants on one project. As a result, the final outcome was as much a surprise to the consultants as to the client! But we were delighted that this unorthodox approach gave the client the confidence that all bases were being covered, and that the final recommendations really stacked up.