Case Study: Oxfam’s Partnership Opportunities Team
In 2016, after reviewing which areas of our work were having most impact, we took a decision to move away from desk research and focus on having more strategic input into our wider Philanthropy & Partnerships team. The context of the concerns and restrictions around the new GDPR rules actually helped us to evolve the team's purpose in this way.
We rebranded as the Partnership Opportunities Team and have spent much of the last year focusing on helping our fundraisers build and strengthen their relationships with existing and potential supporters, whilst transforming from a profile production team into a supporter insight and networking opportunities hub.
We’ve spent more time identifying events and opportunities for fundraisers to engage philanthropists, strengthened our team’s relationship with stakeholders across the organisation so that we can leverage pre-existing meetings and connections for the benefit of our fundraisers and supporters; and we have undertaken a programme of work to support the development of our fundraisers’ questioning and listening skills so that they can have better conversations and build deeper levels of trust and engagement with supporters instead of relying on extensive profiles.
Our biggest transformation has been spearheading and running an audience insight research project looking at trends in wealth, luxury and philanthropy to gain a deeper understanding of philanthropic trends and philanthropists in the UK. This project has involved more than 70 interviews with philanthropists, wealth experts, and existing supporters and, crucially, internal Oxfam staff to understand not only the needs of philanthropists, the trends in philanthropy, but also our own organisational context so that we can start a process of organisational change to meet those needs and trends. As a team we have managed and executed the entire project – from conducting interviews, to analysing the data, writing the insight report, drafting and compiling recommendations, as well as tackling the embedding and implementation of the insights across Philanthropy & Partnerships as well as the rest of the organisation.
In the last year, we have developed new skills in interviewing, qualitative analysis, presenting and been able to meet colleagues across Oxfam and experts, philanthropists and supporters externally.
At times these changes have been challenging, and we have felt outside our comfort zone, but as a team we understand that we are doing something that hasn't been done before, and it feels brilliant to look back and see how far we've come.