Alder Hey Children's Charity Strategy 23-26 by Alder Hey Children's Charity

Our Strategy 2023-2026

How we plan to make the biggest difference to children and families, now and in the future.

Introduction Over the last 3-years Alder Hey Children’s Charity have had to adapt to the changing environment, introduce new activity, find new ways of working and delay or move up timeframes for new areas of growth. However, our overall focus for the last 3-year strategy remained the same, investment and putting the building blocks in place for sustainable income growth and maximising the impact of the charity.

There are some big areas of focus ahead including; the cost of living crisis, our response to global climate change, how we maximise the opportunities from the levelling up agenda and focus on regional inequalities, how we support the Trust with its global ambitions but also its commitment to ‘starting well’ and preventative outreach more locally, embedding our equality and diversity strategy and the long term impact of the pandemic on the future workplace, culture and wellbeing. The Charity has been preparing for many of these challenges over the last 12 months, and is well placed to tackle each of them in the coming years.

Having taken the brave decision to invest, whilst many others had to cut activity or make redundancies, we have seen strong year on year growth. We have also seen positive benefits from our focus on staff wellbeing, flexible working and team building, helping to create a great team culture and spirit of learning within the charity which has been crucial to the success we have seen.

As part of our strategic focus we have updated our charitable funding priorities, ensuring these link to the Trust’s new 2030 strategy. Our funding priorities are our purpose for being as a charity and help ensure charitable funds are spent in the best way possible, have the largest strategic impact and make the biggest difference to children and families now and in the future.

Looking to the next 3-year strategy we want to build on the successes, learning and investment of the last few years with a continued focus on sustainable growth and investment for the medium and long term, whilst mindful of internal and external risks to income performance.

Fiona Ashcroft Chief Executive

Our Five Charity Funding Pillars

We support the Trust and have a joint vision for a healthier, fairer and happier future for every child and young person.

Specialist Equipment Alder Hey treats over 900 patients every day who deserve access to the highest quality care, facilities and technology available. We are proud to fund lifesaving and advanced specification equipment, cutting edge technology and distraction innovations to help Alder Hey clinicians do the very best for our patients.

Research, Innovation and Education We build strong partnerships and work with leading innovators to constantly push the boundaries of what is possible. We invest to drive research excellence in areas including childhood cancer, inflammatory diseases, genomics and respiratory health. Donations support patients at Alder Hey but also help to make the future brighter for children around the world though our support of today’s innovators and the education of tomorrow’s pioneers.

Alder Hey Magic Alder Hey Children’s Charity is committed to going above and beyond what is available on our hard-working NHS. From ward musicians and arts workshops to the latest distraction technology in clinical areas, we strive to provide the best patient experience possible for all our children. We call it the ‘Alder Hey magic’.

Campus and Community

Advocacy

Our charity is helping to create the best possible environment to nurture bright futures for children across our health care campus and through outreach across our communities. Our supporters have helped us raise millions of pounds for unique facilities devoted to community, mental health, research, bereavement and improved neonatal outcomes. We work with organisations to focus on prevention and early intervention and to reduce the impact of social inequalities on families.

We are committed to making change and amplifying voices that have the potential to create brighter futures for all children. Utilising the vital research, innovative work and projects we fund, along with the partners we work with, Alder Hey Children’s Charity drives to influence positive change for the next generations to come. 3

Patient families enjoy the events held at Alder Hey throughout the year.

Activity y t i or

Pr i

Org an i

Objectives l a on i t sa 1. Maximising Impact of Charitable Funding 2. Investing in People, Wellbeing & Culture 3. Focusing on Sustainable Income Growth & Consolidation 4. Providing Excellent Stewardship 5. Growing Awareness, Acquisition & Partnerships

• People, Wellbeing & Culture • Equity, Diversity & Inclusion • Climate & Sustainability

Enablers • People • Data & IT • Funding Priorities & Information

Organisational Objectives Maximising Impact of Charitable Funding To ensure funds raised are spent in the best way possible, have strategic impact and make the biggest possible difference to children and families now and in the future. To do this we need to be involved in the development of the Trust’s strategy and agree the key priority areas where the Charity can have the biggest impact. We will develop strategic plans for each funding pillar, including the next 3-5 years of funding campaigns and a strong suite of USP funding opportunities with national and international reach to appeal to a range of potential funders. To achieve this, we need to ensure project information flow between the Trust and Charity and work together to identify future funding needs. We also need to ensure we communicate our impact and will develop a framework to measure our impact.

People, Wellbeing & Culture To create and maintain a high performing, inspiring and supportive workplace and organisational culture and be known within the sector for our commitment to our people. To do this we need to be innovative, especially as organisations look to keep the best things from the pandemic and develop future ways of working. Key development areas will include continued focus on wellbeing and flexibility for our workforce; providing development opportunities to our staff through training and cross organisational working; and reviewing our wider staff benefits. We recognise the importance and benefits of a diverse and inclusive workplace and will implement the actions from our EDI audit and maintain our focus on this priority area. We have also developed our volunteering strategy and offer and will be actively looking to grow our volunteer numbers over the next 3-year strategy.

Providing Excellent Stewardship To provide the best possible donor experience, building strong relationships and engagement with current and new supporters. To do this we will focus on relationship building and providing meaningful and magical touch points and continued development of supporter journeys and cross promotion. Although there was an increase nationally in the numbers of people giving to charity during the first year of the pandemic this was not sustained, and there has been a return to a decrease in numbers of people giving to charity. This is expected to be exasperated in 2023/24 by the impact of high inflation and reduction in disposable income. This means it is vital we are providing the best possible donor experience so we can retain as many of our loyal donors as possible. Our new CRM gives us the opportunity for better segmentation across all teams, leading to better communications for donors and cost savings for the charity. We are also investing in new AI technology and investigating automation and streamlining but without losing personal contact.

Sustainable Income Growth & Consolidation To invest in resources and activity with a focus on long term sustainable growth and development.

Growing Awareness, Acquisition & Partnerships

This was a key focus of our previous ‘Growth & Recovery’ 3-year strategy, and we have achieved significant income growth with income of £7.8m for 2022/23 being 56% up on 2019/20, despite the impact of the pandemic. We plan to continue this focus on long term sustainable growth whilst recognising the current external environment and that the speed of growth is unlikely to continue over the next 3 years. We are also mindful of the £1.2m extraordinary grant income from NHS Charities Together stage 2 funding and gifts in kind that will need to be replaced over time with sustainable income.

To raise awareness of the Charity, form new strategic partnerships, engage new supporters and position Alder Hey Children’s Charity as the children’s charity of choice and promote Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust as a leader in children’s health and wellbeing. We have strong metrics to measure success in this area including a target of 60% national awareness by 2027, increasing active supporters on our database, pipelines for new business and philanthropy, ensuring visibility of our events across the region and growing our lottery player base.

The focus in 2023/24 will be on sustaining current growth. This will be a challenge with the sector due to contract and many charities predicting a drop of income in 2023/24. We then aim to return to stronger growth in the second half of the 3-year strategy. To achieve this, we need to ensure we have the enablers in place, especially strong appeals and world leading projects, to attract significant philanthropic support from individuals and large national corporates.

Our focus on increasing our supporter numbers through targeted recruitment enabled us to double our regular giver numbers over the last 3 years, reversing a previous downward trend and increasing our long-term sustainable income. We have continued growth plans in this area whilst recognising cost of living will be a challenge for acquisition and growth within most areas. We also want to grow national corporate partnerships and have more partnerships with other charities. 7

Enablers & Priority Activity Within this strategy, as well as our key objective areas, we’re also looking at both the enablers that facilitate and support achievement of our objectives along with priority activities that run across the organisation and need to be built into the DNA of the Charity and our objectives. Our enablers are the support infrastructure for the organisation, comprising of our support teams (Marketing, Finance, People & Operations, Data & IT), the technology we have in place to support staff, and the systems and processes that we employ. These areas, particularly our teams, are crucial to the smooth running of the Charity.

Over the coming 3-year strategy there will be a focus on continuing to enhance the way the CRM system can be utilised including a focus on automation; further investment in integration of core systems, including the finance system, and an upgrading of communication technology to ensure this meets the needs of the organisation; and investment in automating and integrating the grant giving system into the CRM. A focus will be maintained on system architecture to ensure that any developments work together to support the organisation.

Enabler - People Our people are at the heart of what we do, whether we are talking about the fantastic people employed by the Charity or our amazing volunteers and trustees. The support, creativity, heart and courage of the people involved with the Charity are the life blood that will enable the success of the coming strategy. This is both an enabler and a priority activity area that goes across all our objectives and the Charity’s ethos. It is important whether looking at recruitment, team development, well-being or our culture that this continues to be a priority area.

Enabler – Funding Priorities & Information One of the key enablers for our fundraising teams is ensuring we have clear funding priorities from the Trust and the information to support these. Donors have different reasons for wanting to support the work at Alder Hey and it is important that we can offer a range of different ways for people to engage with us.

Enabler – Data & IT

This flows down from the strategic priorities of the Trust in support for some of the key development areas, but also flows up from the wards to ensure funding is making a difference to the day to day lives of the patients and staff. This enabler relies on good communication and information sharing between the Charity and the Trust to support the needs of both organisations. Focus within this area will be on relationship building, working on a pipeline of key priority areas for the strategy period and ensuring that these are developed into strong cases for support.

At the core of our support infrastructure is our data and IT systems. Over the previous 3-year strategy, core systems were upgraded to enable home working, a new CRM system was put in place, the finance system was updated, and there was investment in growing the Data Team. These were crucial developments to meet the growing data needs and complexity of working practices faced by our teams.

Priority Activity – People, Wellbeing & Culture The last 3-year strategy had an important focus on well-being within the organisation to support staff during the pandemic. We need to retain the focus on our people and their well-being over the coming 3-year strategy. We want to create a culture where all staff and volunteers feel supported, engaged and empowered. We want to ensure that we develop our teams so that they can grow, maximise opportunities and achieve goals. Key development areas will include continued focus on wellbeing and flexibility for our workforce; providing development opportunities to our staff through training and cross organisational working; and focusing on further enhancing our people systems and processes, for both staff and volunteers, to ensure they feel well supported and appreciated.

Priority Activity – Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

Priority Activity – Climate & Sustainability

As a Charity we are committed to making EDI a central part of our strategy. These principles are written into our values, and we want to ensure they are embedded both in our culture and every activity we undertake. Over this next 3-year strategy, we want to both move forward with embedding principles of EDI into everything we do and look at priority areas that fit with our Charity objectives and supports the work the Trust is undertaking. A key focus will therefore be looking at child health inequalities and how we can use our funding, our organisational practices and our voice to reduce these in any way we can or raise the issue on a regional and national scale to support positive change.

Ensuring that we have a focus on practices that support the environment is a crucial part of our vision of a healthy future for children and young people. Our charity shops by their nature help with recycling of goods and we have started to review the other products we sell to see how we can make them more sustainable. Our Finance Team also took the crucial step to become paperless. Key priority areas for the coming 3-year strategy will be engaging with and supporting the Trust with their green strategy and reviewing practices across the Charity to see where we can be more sustainable, including within our investment strategy.

Risk to performance ‘The pandemic taught us that mitigating risk is not about predicting what can go wrong or monitoring and maintaining an average risk score on a grid. It is about having a strong, competent collaborative team, with clear lines of risk accountability and robust, dynamic contingency planning processes.

We demonstrated a robust approach to contingency planning throughout the pandemic and ability to adapt to challenges and take advantage of new opportunities. We ensure we are regularly reviewing internal and external risks and monitor trends and threats.

It will be particularly important to improve external orientation, constantly scanning data and trends to identify external threats before they play out. Reactive monitoring and managing of internally contextualized risks will not be enough.’ (After the Storm Report 2022).

The main risks to our income performance have been reviewed and updated. The following are our top risks at this time: • Continued high inflation/ cost of living and potential of a recession • Current political, global and environmental uncertainty • Staff wellbeing, burnout, recruitment and retention • Delay to capital campaigns and lack of information for funding requests 10

Our new Surgical Neonatal Unit will be the first of its kind in the UK.

Our strategy aligns with Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust’s new 2030 strategy. Our funding priorities are our purpose for being as a charity and help ensure charitable funds are spent in the best way possible, have the largest strategic impact and make the biggest difference to children and families now and in the future.