Delivering cross organisational working in a hybrid environment

Context

This case study is designed to share the experience of one of our clients and the approach that they took to cross-organisational working in a hybrid environment.?

Most people know that success in fundraising is rarely achieved without joined up working across the organisation. Charities that achieve their fundraising potential always have organisation wide ownership and smooth collaboration between teams. Working in this way means that fundraising teams get:

• A sound understanding of the problems their organisation is trying to solve
• Timely information about project plans and budgets
• Feedback about the impact of the charity’s work on the people the organisation serves
• A flow of personal stories that support fundraising asks by illustrating both need and outcomes of the charity’s work
• Support from Marketing and Communications team with delivery of key messages, stories and public engagement to drive people towards fundraising offers

The fact that cross working is difficult to get right is not surprising and it certainly isn’t new. I first wrote about my experiences of trying to do this in Third Sector magazine in 2012. However, most organisations are now using a blend of in-office, remote, and on-the-go workers. This makes cross-organisational working even more tricky.

One health organisation’s story – the problem

Earlier in 2022, Darnell Consulting worked with a health client to help deliver a new way of approaching cross-organisational working. This project was driven by a desire to address a range of specific problems including:

1. A lack of timely project information and budgets for fundraising teams to build propositions and proposals?
2. Reluctant and patchy support for Fundraising from the Communications team
3. A feeling that fundraisers did not fully understand the need for brand consistency and that requests for support came to the Communications team at short notice with unclear briefings
4. A lack of beneficiary stories with illustration of need and over-reliance on written content only (no film)
5. Very scant feedback from services about impact (beyond contractual impact reporting that is a specified condition of a grant)?

Darnell Consulting’s role was to build a joined-up approach and establish a more collaborative way of working between the Fundraising, Communications and Services teams.?

The solution

One of the first things we did for this organisation was to combine our experience with innovative examples of how to tackle similar problems.?

When we first got involved, staff were required to be in the office for two days per week, but these days were not coordinated across teams. This meant key members of different teams were not co-located on the same days. By providing examples from companies like Google and ITV, our findings led the organisation to tweak its approach to hybrid working.?

The new approach to hybrid working focuses on co-locating key people from different teams in the office at the same time. The new approach changed the emphasis on what in-office days are for, and frames office time as having a focus on: joint problem solving; cross-team planning; information sharing; participating in multi-disciplinary project teams. This shift in focus delivered a robust platform for better cross-organisational working.?

Secondly, we delivered a workshop for a cross team working group to showcase what good cross working looks like and enable teams to co-create processes to achieve a more successful approach. Specifically, the workshops established a clear understanding of each team's needs and enabled the participants to co-create processes to meet these. We ensured there was an agreed action plan to embed the outputs from the workshop as new ways of working.

Outcomes

The change of focus for hybrid working coupled with the workshop approach has delivered some clear outcomes. Whilst we are only five months on from completing this work, the client has told us that the agreed processes and tactics have been embedded and cross-organisational working is notably better as a result. Specifically:?

• Project information and budgets are being shared much earlier with teams – a member of fundraising attends a regular planning meeting and is now aware of new projects at concept stage
• There is a much smoother two-way relationship between fundraising and communications. More notice about when support is needed is given to Communication teams by Fundraising teams, and briefings are of higher quality
• Communications support for fundraising is more consistent and some notable metrics have improved - critically the last two fundraising campaigns had an uplifted engagement rate when click throughs were taken as the key measure?
• A new process for populating the story library has been created; fundraisers report that both a greater volume of stories is available and that the stories better meet fundraising needs??
• A process has been set up for reporting back on impact and there is now a small but growing pattern of drip-feeding impact stories through to fundraising on a regular basis

Conclusions

There is no doubt that using a blend of in-office, remote, and on-the-go working practice makes cross-organisational collaboration harder. The case study above shows how the dual focus of a more structured approach to hybrid working, alongside workshopping to build understanding and co-create new processes, has embedded a new and more integrated approach.?