Measuring Impact in Innovation

Description

I worked with the British Red Cross Fundraising Innovation team to quantify and measure their activity and output beyond revenue generation, using OKR and KPI frameworks. Quarterly results were used to inform the health of the fundraising Innovation product portfolio and team prioritisation for the next quarter.

These results quantified Innovation activity (product development and Design Sprint facilitation) and the value it brought to the Fundraising Directorate through culture building, training and exploring growth opportunities.

Information

Brief

Defining the value of Innovation in Fundraising

Client

British Red Cross

Field

Innovation & Growth Strategy

Product

Impact Report

Year

2023

Timeline

3 months

Team size

Challenge

When I started working with the Fundraising Innovation team they were struggling to meet fundraising targets despite operating at full capacity, demoralising for the team and an issue for budgeting and reporting.
There were no systems in place to measure the team’s impact outside of financial returns, which came at the very end of the product lifecycle, sometimes only after years of testing and iteration.

Opportunity

There were no measures in place to track the core tenants of innovation: testing, failing, learning, iterating i.e. the rate of experimentation
Whilst there were fundraising and product launch targets for ‘operational’ innovation activity, there were no goals encouraging innovative ways of working and experimentation to foster a culture of continuous improvement and growth.

Solution

I worked with the team to revise their overarching mission, vision and values of fundraising innovation, aligning it with the strategic goals of the Fundraising Directorate and where the team believed innovation added value to the British Red Cross mission.

I organised an OKR & KPIs best practices training day for the team to introduce them to the frameworks and how to use them. The workshop concluded by helping the team set annual Objectives and Key Results collaboratively as well as setting up a quarterly and twice weekly cadence for reporting and tracking.

The process of setting OKRs enabled the team to identify the biggest blockers they faced: pace & prioritisation whilst designing initiatives and new ways of working to help them overcome these challenges.

Outcome

Reduced workload by 40% by deprioritising non priority projects.
Increased team wellbeing scores by 30% due to less overwhelm
Created Innovation Impact report using OKR & KPI results, showcasing the impact of innovation activity beyond fundraising revenue.
Increased team fundraising 8 fold by focusing on H3 (high risk, high reward) innovation opportunities.