Optimising corporate commitment to charity partnerships
I want to talk about our successful Charity of the Year partnership with Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer Scotland and how lessons learned will help with our ground-breaking role as a Principal Partner with BBC Children in Need. This is the first time ever that BBC Children in Need has created a new higher partnership category – Principal Partners which provide incremental support to the charity’s fundraising income; and Lloyds will be its exclusive Schools Partner for the next three years, as well as adopting it as our charity partner for the next two years.
Lloyds Banking Group launched its two-year charity partnership with Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer Scotland in January 2013 with the aim of raising £2 million to fund the 'Live Well' campaign, the charity's first ever UK-wide support programme for people with dementia and their carers.
This was only the second time the group had entered a two-year charity partnership, having realised from previous annual relationships with charities that a longer period would provide even more time to build a more sustainable and meaningful relationship between the charity and bank colleagues.
The Charity of the Year element of the BBC Children in Need partnership is also for two years, from January 2015 to December 2016, with the broader Principal Partnership and schools campaign running over three school years.
Selecting a partner
As a bank whose branch network touches almost every community across the UK, we place immense value on our commitment to 'Helping Britain Prosper' and within our public commitments we place a very strong focus upon our community support and giving. Our charity partnerships are extremely important to us – not only do they drive engagement and colleague pride across our workforce, they also help us demonstrate the immense value we place on supporting our communities.
We look to support charities which our colleagues and business can connect with and have seen that charities with an emotive or personal connection or which deliver in the communities in which we live and work, are very quickly taken to the hearts of our colleagues and supported robustly by them. Prior to Alzheimer’s we supported Save the Children, and it's clear from the results of those partnerships that our colleagues want to support causes which help make a real difference to the lives of those less fortunate than themselves.
We believe there were two core reasons our colleagues wanted to support Alzheimer’s charities:
- Many colleagues had first-hand experience of the impact dementia had on their own families and were inspired to fundraise because of that experience. Almost half of people in the UK know someone, or have known someone with the condition – as many as 45,000 of our own colleagues.
- Many colleagues had witnessed long standing customers exhibiting signs of memory loss or dementia, who seemed to lack the capacity to manage their personal finances.
Raising awareness of dementia and money to help people with the condition as well as their carers, which many of our colleagues are, was therefore a truly compelling and motivating prospect for colleagues. Working in partnership with Alzheimer’s Society, we also helped lead the way in building simpler processes that could be used across the financial services industry, helping us all become more dementia-friendly.
We also worked with the charity to jointly launch the Dementia Friendly Financial Services Charter as the lead bank and established a set of landmark protocols at a time when the financial services sector was viewed with a level of mistrust. Hence we were proud to be seen to be making a difference in this important area and where 76% of sufferers and their carers had reported of difficulties when dealing with banks, building societies, insurance companies etc.
This year, in line with our Helping Britain Prosper Plan, our charity partnership needed to align with our broad community themes of Education, Employability and Enterprise. With our BBC Children in Need partnership being much bigger than the Charity of the Year aspect, our steering committee and board selected the partnership, picking up on the insights gained from previous partnerships and understanding what motivated our colleagues and what they cared about as evidenced by their previous and unstinting support of children’s charities.
Indeed the work undertaken within our contact centres to collect donations for BBC Children in Need has long been popular with colleagues who will have the opportunity to help steer the direction of this new partnership.
Charities with the ambition to work with corporate partners need to recognise the importance of the significant level of resource required to manage such a partnership. Lloyds Banking Group has some 85,000 colleagues across almost every community within the UK.
We have a full-time small team managing Charity of the Year activity and need our partner to be responsive and understand the demands that a partnership of this size can have. Smaller charities, with an ambition to operate with a large corporate partner will need to evidence they have considered this aspect and be able to discuss how they will scale up to resource a nationwide partnership of this scale.
Mobilising colleagues long term
As a large business, with so many colleagues geographically spread across the UK, mobilisation of the workforce could be a challenge. But we recognise the need to ensure that we communicate our messages effectively and reach everyone who wants to play an active part in our fundraising campaign, as well as motivating and inspiring others to take action.
Our Charity of the Year team is very visible and takes part in team meetings across the business, motivating, informing and simply explaining how the money raised, no matter how little, will change lives. We also have a monthly steering committee, made up of directors from every key area of our group who play a key role in supporting fundraising activity, cascading information to their respective teams. They are ably supported by over 1,000 charity champions.
One of our greatest resources is being able to utilise the strengths of different colleague groups to support our charity partnerships. For example, our 180 graduates were set a ten month challenge which focused on three aspects: to fundraise, increase awareness of dementia, and to present a business case on how Lloyds could improve our offering to customers and colleagues living with dementia.
Teams were set a fundraising target of £12,000 each and the competitiveness of the challenge, together with their engagement and dedication saw most teams exceed their target and help to raise awareness of dementia both at work and in their local communities. We will be tapping into our graduates again for the BBC Children in Need partnership.
We have learned when delivering a charity partnership across different functional areas - such as our retail branches, corporate business, call centres or head office functions - that one size rarely fits all. By that we mean that a fundraising campaign which appeals to call centre colleagues may not work with our retail branches.
As a customer facing organisation we need to ensure that our charity activity doesn’t interfere with our ability to support our customers as they go about their business as usual activities. We may tailor specific campaigns to appeal to our different colleague audiences. For example, 'Tea and Talk' events were specifically developed for retail colleagues, whereas supporting the BBC Children in Need telethon is more effective for engaging call centre colleagues.
We work closely with our charity partner to develop campaigns which can engage as many colleagues as possible.
Whilst fundraising is crucial, to keep the momentum throughout the partnership, there needs to be another hook for colleagues to engage with. Not everyone is a fundraiser, so offering other opportunities - such as skills based volunteering, new awareness raising campaigns or training sessions - keeps the partnership fresh and exciting, therefore allowing the partnership to build a lasting legacy.
As part of our Helping Britain Prosper Plan, we are committed to being the banking group which brings communities closer together and helping them thrive and one of our targets is to deliver, through our colleagues, over 2.3 million hours of paid volunteering to support a range of community projects, by 2020. We are currently exploring opportunities with BBC Children in Need about how our colleagues can provide volunteer support in schools, ensuring that we adhere to best practice and legal guidelines about safeguarding and working with young people.
Providing support for colleagues
Colleagues are provided with lots of support to help them and let them know how much their efforts are valued, including fundraising idea packs and collateral, help with publicising their events, opportunities to volunteer during working hours as well as access to a bespoke hotline manned by a dedicated team.
During the Alzheimer’s partnership we had an Alzheimer’s Society employee based full time with the Charity of the Year team providing necessary insight and support on a day to day basis. With the BBC Children in Need partnership being considerably bigger and comprising not just the Charity of the Year element, we have a core relationship team of seven employees, with the support of the charity’s wider team, which replicates the team we have in place at Lloyds.
Having a team member from the charity seconded into our team is beneficial for both organisations and helps to streamline the relationship and maximise understanding of needs.
We have a plethora of online content that is shared with colleagues through our intranet; this is designed to drum up awareness and support of the charity partnership. A further strand that is extremely worthwhile is our extensive network of 'charity champions' – quite simply these are people with a passion for fundraising who offer local support and help colleagues throughout our branch and office network.
We continually update colleagues as to the group’s progress through every major fundraising milestone, publishing news articles and videos online that provide compelling stories. How colleagues raise money and the difference that makes to our chosen charity has an active audience and the amazing ability to further inspire and motivate.
We offer a range of fundraising projects for colleagues to engage with depending on how involved they want to be:
- EVENTS – these can be centrally planned by the Charity of the Year team and everyone has the opportunity to get involved e.g. our One Group quiz or cycling across Cuba challenge. These are easy for colleagues to support as all they have to do is participate.
- OFF THE SHELF– we provide colleagues with 'off the shelf' fundraising opportunities such as running the London Marathon. We cover the cost of entry and provide colleagues with a suggested fundraising target.
- TOOLKITS – all colleagues have access to a fundraising toolkit which showcases a range of opportunities they could participate in locally. Colleagues have the chance to choose what, if anything, they would like to do.
- COLLEAGUE PROJECTS – we also provide support and guidance to colleagues who have their own ideas for fundraising.
We have found that this approach provides the best opportunity to engage with as many colleagues as possible during the course of the partnership.
With the BBC Children in Need partnership we will also showcase not simply the activities undertaken by colleagues to help drive fundraising, but also our broader schools and customer facing campaigns, allowing us to further engage our colleagues through volunteering support.
Productive volunteering
We work very closely with our charity partners to offer colleagues a number of different compelling, but scalable, fundraising and volunteering activities. For branch colleagues during the Alzheimer’s partnership, one of our colleagues came up with the concept of 'Tea and Talk' events. These were aimed at raising awareness as well as money, and brought both customers and colleagues together over a cup of tea and a slice of cake to talk about their experiences of dementia.
We also committed to sign up at least 11,500 Dementia Friends across the Group, providing colleagues with an opportunity to develop and implement new skills directly as a result of the partnership.
We’re really excited about colleagues supporting local schools and young people to raise funds through our BBC Children in Need partnership. Indeed we've already had some wonderful feedback from colleagues who supported some of our 'test and learn' schools late last year.
Whilst we encourage colleagues to volunteer for our Charity of the Year we know that some also support other causes that are close to their heart. Our Day to Make a Difference taps into the energy and passion of our colleagues to help them volunteer for an organisation in their community. Community volunteering is offered by Lloyds Banking Group as an additional benefit for every colleague. Colleagues can take at least one day, or eight hours, to spend time in their community to make a difference. This is in addition to their annual leave allowance.
Delivery versus expectations
We set ourselves the target of raising £2 million in two years when we started the Alzheimer’s partnership. In fact, we raised well in excess of our target within the first 12 months and raised almost £7 million by the end of the relationship; exceeding our expectations more than three fold.
The extra money raised has funded a number of projects on top of the workshops for 9,000 carers which are running across the UK, including the provision of 200,000 dementia guides to those newly diagnosed, as well as contributing towards the Dementia Research Leaders Programme, a project aimed at prevention and ultimately seeking a cure, and finally an innovation fund that is encouraging creativity.
The relationships we build with our charity partners have been a key success driver. Working as one big cohesive team, communicating effectively and demonstrating an understanding of each other’s needs and priorities have been essential - as are the enthusiasm and dedication of all of our colleagues, of whom we are amazingly proud.
