Case Study:
Scale-Up Strategy and People Planning for National Charity
Following a rapid period of unexpected growth, Grassroots Consulting worked with Multiple Milestones to tackle a disengaged workforce and develop a more sustainable scale-up strategy – including talent planning for volume volunteer recruitment and redeveloping their organisational culture and values.
The Challenge: Understanding their Growth Ambition
Multiple Milestones is a national charity delivering at-home support to the families of triplets and quadruplets. Borne out of a North-West community group run by a small number of higher-order multiple parents, they became a registered charity in 2016 and gradually expanded their services across England and Wales.
By 2020, the charity had achieved some impressive outcomes – amassing a team of 18 practitioners and volunteers and delivering pre- and post-natal support to more than 50 families. But the rapid pace of growth caused problems, with a lack of strategic planning, infrastructure and resources leading to the CIO needing urgent help to meet rising demand.
With a growing customer waiting list, the charity’s priorities included the need for a new fundraising strategy to workforce planning for volunteer recruitment and engagement.
The Solution: Delivering People Planning for Sustainable Growth
Working closely with the MD, GR Consulting began with an initial Discovery Phase – using a range of proven insight tools and health checks to fully understand the charity’s current position. We established a strategic board to bring together senior leaders and key stakeholders, completed surveys with volunteers to ascertain the current pain points and spoke to families about their experience of using the charity. We then delivered a Culture & Values Workshop to refocus their purpose and charitable aims to determine the what, how and why.
The GR team was then able to work with the Strategic Board to develop a business plan to drive forward the future direction of the charity based on an ambitious and collaborative vision, bringing together its immediate priorities and longer-term goals.
Having identified high-level objectives for all areas of the business (from financial planning to marketing to service delivery), we then translated these into tactical plans and detailed actions underpinned by a restructured organisational chart and targeted talent acquisition strategy to scale-up the team.
Over a 6-month period, GR worked with the newly formed Strategic and Operational boards to implement the changes, including training and volunteer engagement, governance and reporting structures. We helped implement new technology, compliance and quality mechanisms to capture key metrics and embed continuous improvement.