The Power of Ideas
When we’re thinking about the journey ahead, who better to know what’s next for the British Red Cross, than the people who work day in, day out ensuring that those in crisis are supported and cared for?
With that in mind, on the 19th August the Innovation Hub opened their online platform to invite staff from across the organisation to submit the ideas they have to ensure the ‘future financial sustainability’ of the organisation. In plain English, it’s an open question to all our colleagues to tell us how we save some money and raise cash to make sure we’re able to last another 150 years and more.
Why this? Why now?
Nobody really knows what the future holds — no one was expecting the ‘keyboard-less’ iPhone to revolutionise the mobile industry (especially not Blackberry) and strangely, Kodak assumed that their ‘digital camera’ was never going to take off. What we can do for the future, is make informed decisions about the way that we’re heading, and who better to do this than the people that see and do the work that we’re known for? This challenge asks the 3500+ people that work with us to share their vast and varied experiences; good ideas come from diversity of thought and background and we need to harness that, now is as good a time as any to ask for help.
The BRC are facing a highly competitive landscape — not only in terms of other charities who also need funding, but businesses that want your disposable income and even in the way the way potential donors or recipients perceive us. How do we respond to a world that is slowly moving cashless? To businesses that also have a charity department? To an aging population? To a world that’s more connected than ever before?
What are we looking for?
Nothing will be considered too big or too small for the challenge. We’ve already heard ideas from saving money by not re-issuing lanyards, to in-office yoga sessions, all the way through to our Giggle Aid charity comedy show. It goes to show that these small steps that can lead us to big journeys. Fantastic solutions are created by teams and individuals across the organisation every day and we now have a space for them to be shared and be recognised.
Pilot first
This is the first time that the BRC have launched anything like this, released as a pilot to our thousands of dedicated staff (with the intention of growing this to volunteers and even the general public in the future!). What the pilot lets us do is test the technology, the appetite for this project and the way we work to make this a success in the future. So far, we’re doing well; we’ve worked through a few bumps in the technology and we’re consistently adopting new ways to reach out to people, testing and learning as we go. Everything that we have learned in this round will be taken into consideration if we run this again. We have already received a wonderful range of innovative solutions, from projects that are already in motion, to new and inventive ways to raise money and awareness of the work that we do.
Alongside the platform itself, the Innovation Hub are travelling up and down the length of the U.K. all the way from Plymouth to Inverness to chat to people about how we innovate. Over the month of September and into October, we’ll be visiting 21 offices to run mini-innovation workshops to hear from everyone and anyone. We’ve found that the easiest and most effective way to reach people is the most obvious — go and chat to them, listen to their ideas, help develop them and preferably bring snacks.
What happens next?
On the 18th October the challenge will close, and 15 ideas will be shortlisted to pitch to a panel of reviewers for feedback. Every single idea submitted will receive personalised feedback, whether it is successful or not. We may even recognise that people are working on the same thing and will be able to join people up across the country and cross-directorate to tackle challenges together.
The panel of reviewers will be made up of staff and volunteers from all levels and directorates. The three solutions with the most potential impact for the British Red Cross will then work with the Innovation Hub to test and prototype. Depending on the nature of the final ideas the Innovation Hub will go on to test/support its development through to a Proof of Concept (or a pilot like the one we’re doing now!).
If this pilot is successful, we’ll be looking to run another challenge in 2020, hopefully with volunteers too!
