181st Street previously worked with this charity client to develop a communications strategy to support the roll-out of a national, digital service, to identify their communications needs as an organisation, position their employer brand for recruitment and build their in-house team.
They are a small charity with a £500k annual turnover, but have a national presence for service delivery, key delivery partnerships with the NHS, several UK-wide institutional organisations and larger charities. They were also recipients of Government and National Lottery funding.
When the charity was approached with the offer of a CSR partnership with a well-known FMCG brand, the Trustees commissioned 181st Street to conduct a risk assessment and provide senior advisory services to help them determine how to proceed.
The potential partner had recently faced some high-profile reputation issues, and the CSR partnership would form part of their rebuild. Their products were also in a potentially controversial retail category given some of the charity’s key service users. However, the donation on offer was too significant to turn down without consideration, which is why the Trustees wanted a full risk assessment to provide oversight and clarity about the risks and options available.
Our reputation experts analysed how the partnership would align with the charity’s mission, conducted a full stakeholder analysis to determine how it would potentially be perceived by all key stakeholders (including service users) and how it would be perceived by grants and trusts they were currently working with, and intended to apply to for further funding.
We provided a comprehensive overview of the risks involved, rating them from severe to minor and outlining potential mitigation strategies and possible outcomes, to help the Trustees weigh up the financial value of the donation vs the potential damage to brand trust, stakeholder engagement and fundraising.
Based on our assessment, which highlighted several key risks without strong options for mitigation, which the Trustees hadn’t previously identified, the decision was made to turn down the CSR partnership at that moment in time.
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