Bridging the strategic marketing gap for a UK charity with global goals
Who
The Florence Nightingale Foundation (FNF) is a UK-based charity which supports the leadership development of nurses and midwives.
In the 87 years they’ve been running, FNF’s programmes have had a transformative effect on health and care, both for their programme participants and the patients they care for. In 2020, in recognition of their impact, they received funding which allowed them to expand their team and build their capacity.
When Glew started working with them, FNF was reaching approximately 200,000 nurses and midwives annually and generating £2m of income. Their goal was to grow their reach fivefold to 1 million worldwide and increase their income within 5 years.
Having relied almost solely on their hard-won and loyal network to date, the time had come to develop a robust marketing and communications strategy that would allow them to expand into new markets.
“We had reached at a critical point in our organisational development,”
explained the then Head of Engagement Rachel Morgan:
“We were seeking to deliver a bold and ambitious new strategy with a relatively new team, with a challenging and constantly evolving environment”.
Why Glew?
FNF had already recruited some new team members to deliver their growth plans but were still at the early stages of appointing a Marketing and Communications Manager. To help bridge the gap and create a structure to help the successful candidate hit the ground running, they approached Glew for some interim support.
Glew was selected following a competitive tender. Deputy CEO Professor Gemma Stacey said:
“Georgie’s personalised and collaborative approach to strategy development is what stood out. It was clear the strategy would be informed by the intelligence within the organisation.”
What Glew delivered
To kickstart the process, Glew ran an in-person strategic marketing workshop in FNF’s London office. This was a great opportunity to involve the whole team early on and a fantastic opportunity for their new recruits to meet the wider team.
Gemma said of the workshop:
“It was excellent and the output was incredibly helpful. It was clear that Glew had an understanding of the complexity and uniqueness of FNF in relation to our different audiences. This wasn’t a standardised or ‘off the shelf’ approach to strategy development. It was collaborative and responsive.”
During and following the workshop Glew:
- Audited the current marketing and communication activity
- Considered FNF’s brand position in relation to its competitors
- Mapped out a stakeholder engagement plan
- Segmented and analysed target audiences and articulated key messages for each
- Developed a clear roadmap to develop FNF’s marketing processes and outputs
- Created priority audience personas to guide marketing decisions
- Built an easy to monitor and update KPI dashboard in Excel
“We originally commissioned Georgie to help us create our first pan-organisation marketing strategy,”
explained Rachel.
“Since then, she’s worked with us on a few specific implementation projects, including one around how to improve our data-driven communications.”
Subsequent projects have included:
- Carrying out 5 marketing review workshops with different product teams
- Coaching the newly recruited marketing team on a strategic approach to email marketing based around the customer journey
- Supporting FNF in establishing a Google Ads presence via Google for Non Profits
How it helped
Gemma said:
“Georgie has an excellent ability to ask the right questions and draw together many sources of information to inform the next steps.”
“Since we’ve had the new strategy, our reach has increased to 250,000, income to £4.5million, and we are well set up to achieve our goal of reaching 1 million nurses and midwives by 2027″.
The newly appointed Communications and Marketing Manager at FNF, Jane Lennon said:
“It was fantastic to have this strategy near completion when I came into post. All the work that went into it meant I could hit the ground running, and the consultative process gave me confidence that there was buy in across the different teams. George’s understanding of what we do as an organisation also meant she was invaluable in helping roll out the strategy, facilitating next steps to make sure it didn’t just sit on a shelf.”