Strategy and Business Planning

paint brushes and paint

The Benefits

The RFSA Foundation now has a strategy and strategic plan that has been derived in a collaborative way by members of the Board of Trustees. This should enable work to proceed to deliver the desired outcomes, that is, more effective and efficient services to the beneficiary community over the timescale of the strategic plan. The outputs from this project could also be used to help generate additional income streams for the Foundation.

"The OR Society was the perfect fit to help us with the specialist knowledge we needed to assist with this quite daunting yet vital project. It was wonderful to work with such a great team at the Society to help find a suitable volunteer who would be passionate about the project. Not only did the volunteer bring experience and understanding of the task, but he mapped out an approach to the issue which enabled the Trustees to focus their limited time to work together to produce something that, without assistance, would have taken months of work. We achieved so much in such a short space of time! Having someone from outside the organisation meant the whole team could focus on the task at hand. The volunteer listened and responded to changes to the plan as the day took shape, allowing the team to produce work in a way that suited them, but still keeping their focus on the bigger picture. The involvement of OR in our strategy development has definitely helped us to think hard about what it is we are trying to achieve and provided us with the framework to do this, in a short space of time, which is one thing which we don’t have enough of." (RFSA Secretary & Grants Manager)

 

The Client

The Royal Female School of Arts (RFSA) Foundation is a charity currently providing grants for students and arts outreach programmes through nine academic institutions in the Greater London area with the objective of widening access to arts education within the region. 

The Client's Problem

The Foundation required assistance with the creation of a new mission statement and strategy for the future of the charity, to better enable the organisation to focus its resources more effectively and efficiently.

The Approach

The volunteer facilitated a one-day strategy workshop for members of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees. The facilitator began by outlining the strategic planning process, reviewing the current business model, and helping the group to distil a mission statement for the Foundation. This was followed by a structured debrief on current operations and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. The group then went on to generate a vision statement and identify the relevant components of a strategic plan before deriving a prioritised list of actions for taking things forward, including the assignment of actions and target completion dates.

The Solution

The OR Society volunteer produced a Facilitators Notes and Observations Report to assist the foundation with work to take things forward. The foundation then used this document and other outputs generated during the course of the strategy workshop (mainly flip charts) to produce a Strategy document and accompanying Strategic Plan 2019-2024.