The Grand Appeal is the only charity raising funds exclusively for Bristol Children’s Hospital, whose expenditure exceeds NHS provision. LeaderSpace coached the Appeal’s senior leaders, including their Director, Nicola Masters. The work we did together reinvigorated and raised the charity’s ambitions and helped them to achieve unprecedented revenue growth.
The challenge our client was facing
Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal is a small, energetic charity created and supported by Nick Park and Aardman Animations. When they first met their coach at LeaderSpace, they were facing the continuing challenge of raising funds to bridge the gap in the hospital’s annual expenditure. Their coach helped them work more effectively, building on their past achievements to increase the charity’s income.
How we approached it
Our coach began with the senior managers, helping them approach their many challenges and responsibilities more pragmatically. She used – and even created – a variety of coaching approaches tailored to each individual manager. Nicola soon noticed that their newfound energy was having a massive positive impact on the wider team.
Our coach went on to work one-to-one with Nicola, and introduced LeaderSpace’s ‘ARC Leadership’ qualities: Authentic, Responsible and Courageous. These really resonated with Nicola, and served as a tool to guide her decision-making.
The ARC framework helped her see how Authentically she and her team believed in the charity’s mandate, and how overwhelmed she was by the Responsibility she felt for her team, the charity’s trustees and their fundraising objectives. The challenge, she realised, was being truly Courageous.
‘The aspirations were there,’ she said, towards the end of the coaching, ‘But not the courage to make them reality. The charity sector isn’t a brave world. The financial climate is tough at the moment, the sector is shrinking and we’re not one of the huge ‘super-charities’ with a strong, diverse support base. But if you’re not Courageous, you stand still; you become lost in a mire of greyness. The coaching gave me permission to be Courageous.’
Coaching enabled Nicola to give herself ‘permission to act differently’ and focus on developing the charity. Since then, she has taken to calling the ARC qualities ‘the mighty three’ and they have always informed the decisions and actions that she and her team have taken.
The impact we had
Nicola said the work helped her team work more creatively, smartly and with greater focus, ambition and energy. There were four very tangible signs of this:
The transformation of their office space: from littered with boxes to a clutter-free working environment, then expanding to fit a team that trebled in size in the course of two years
Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal beat much larger national charities to win the highly coveted Fundraising Team of the Year award, in 2012
An increase of 45% in the charity’s income in the year that followed the coaching
A shift from smaller fund-raising initiatives to large-scale programmes, such as Gromit Unleashed: 80 uniquely decorated 5ft-high sculptures of Aardman’s famous dog placed in a trail around Bristol in the summer of 2013, drawing over 200,000 visitors and attracting national and regional media coverage that exponentially increased the charity’s profile in the public eye. The closing auction hoped to raise £1 million and brought in £2.3 million, outstripping any other single project in the charity’s history
“I found your coaching challenging, thought-provoking and stimulating. It enabled me to overcome barriers – personal and external – to achieve my goals and, importantly, the coaching motivated me, reinforced positive thoughts and gave me ‘permission’ to act.
Your work has helped me improve overall performance, increase individual and group productivity, and ultimately deliver significant revenue to the Appeal. I would highly recommend you to any organisation.”
