Client Overview
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Critical is an Irish charity dedicated to saving lives. Their network of first responders, both qualified personnel and volunteers, can be first on the scene of an emergency providing life-sustaining support, until the emergency services arrive. The rural landscape of Ireland means that there are huge swathes of isolated communities, many miles of winding road away from city hubs, so an on-the-ground network of lifesavers across the country makes all the difference.Â
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Jeppe Rasmussen, Critical’s Head of Fundraising got in touch after a big change in the organisation demonstrated that their corporate partnerships had been quite reliant on a specific service. The charity had rebranded and moved to a new operating model after a period of running Ireland’s air ambulance - and without the ‘pull’ of the ambulance service, their partners started to fall away.
Background
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Critical commissioned us to work with them to price their partnerships offer. We helped them to answer two burning questions: what can we offer to our partners, and what can we charge them in return? Through this kind of work, Fireside helps clients build a menu of truly bespoke corporate partnership offerings, determining pricing frameworks, and support on how to test and take them to market.
​Jeppe told us:
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'We couldn’t rely on our historical supporter base any more. We had to find new partners and we needed to figure out what was a good offer for us. We have such a small team and we needed external help to do this to ensure we’d get it right first time.'
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Approach
Jeppe told us:
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‘You guys were really good at asking what we really needed. Originally what I asked for wasn’t what we got: through the process, there was a big part of figuring out that what we were asking for wasn’t exactly what was missing. This meant that what was delivered was much more useful and implementable than if you had just taken what I said and run with it.’
We firstly held a ‘mining’ workshop with the wider fundraising and communications teams to generate lots of ideas about what partnerships offerings could include. This was followed by a ‘refining’ workshop with the team responsible for partnerships, to start to focus and prioritise on the ideas we wanted to take forward. We conducted competitor research to bring to Critical some key themes that we could learn from and build into their offering. This work culminated in a products and pricing report laying out 4 distinct partnership packages that Critical could develop.
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‘Fireside have taken our ideas, qualified and built on them, applying best practice and come up with four compelling offers that we can take to partners at different levels. We wouldn't have thought to give them names that linked directly to us - we probably would have just used bronze / silver / gold or something. But the added detail of having specific and relevant names felt so in keeping with our ethos!’
Results
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Jeppe and the team are working to refine the proposals and get them ready to launch in 2025. But he is clear on one thing:
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‘Fireside has helped us gain the confidence to elevate the price we offer. We would have felt safer to ask for lower amounts. But now we see our worth. Knowing that these offers are rooted in evidence and experience means we understand the value of what we can offer, and are not afraid to ask for it.
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‘We have all of the foundations in place, and there is so much from the report that we can just take and immediately implement. It’s clear throughout the process that the Fireside team delivers with operation in mind. It can be easy to produce work that looks good in the meetings but doesn’t translate, but what Fireside produced is so tangible and will absolutely work when we get it into operation. I wouldn’t say you underpromised, but you definitely overdelivered!’
We also worked with Critical on developing their story-led fundraising approach, which they have already started to implement and see the benefits of:
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‘As well as the practical tools that mean we are now collecting and telling better stories, there is a visible sense of pride. People are much more proud of what we do. We so often see ourselves as just a tiny fraction in a bigger story, but Fireside has helped us embrace the importance of our role and the pride in what that really means. Being able to share a unified way of telling stories has been so beneficial to our culture.’
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Client Insights
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Jeppe told us:
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‘It felt like you became a part of our organisation very quickly. You picked up on what we feel is important - nuances that can take people a long time to understand. There are lots of agencies out there that claim to be experts at everything, but we really valued the specialist expertise that Fireside offers in the corporate partnerships world. It’s sometimes hard to look up from the day job and see the value of your organisation, so being able to work with consultants like the Fireside team, who bring fresh energy and an external eye is such a vitamin boost!’
Given that corporate partners work with the whole organisation, not just the fundraising department, it was important the rest of the organisation were equally bought in. CEO David Tighe reflected after one workshop:
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‘I’m so impressed. Some of this work could have been quite painful, and quite arduous, but you guys made it a breeze! It’s a real reflection on the Fireside process - we’re all pulling in the same direction.’
Get in touch
Want to find out how Fireside could work with you to idevelop and price your corporate offers? Contact us today on andy@firesidefundraising.com
To find out more about Critical please visit criticalcharity.ie