How the Cranfield Trust pro-bono business and management support has strengthened EOSI’s organization
If you are a charity leader and feel that professional business consultancy and mentoring can bring your charity to the next level, do not miss this post!
Since we decided to venture into the non-profit world and constitute the Ersilia Open Source Initiative as a charity, we have had to wear many hats. A sometimes overwhelming, but definitely fun journey that has ranged from striking partnerships with key stakeholders to writing scientific projects and articles, including social media handling, website development, project managing and, of course, business planning.
Strategic and business planning are key to any company, be it for-profit or non-profit. These documents will guide the next steps of the enterprise, allocate your (limited) resources to essential activities and set metrics to demonstrate success. Success in the non-profit world is often measured as impact, a tricky factor to assess but vital to report to funders, government, contributors and the public in general. Proper strategic and business plans will help your organisation grow sustainably and open new venues for funding, but, without prior experience outside academia, it posed a real challenge to us. After a couple of months into the venture, we learned about the Cranfield Trust, a provider of business skills to UK charities for free, thanks to a large network of volunteers and collaborators, mostly from the commercial sector, that put their knowledge in service of building stronger and successful non-profit initiatives.
I think we can frankly say that the experience of collaborating with the Cranfield Trust and its volunteers has been a milestone in our first year of life, and one of the main drivers of our growth. First of all, because from the first moment they transmit a sense of “caring”, they are genuinely interested in understanding your project and providing accurate support. Only having someone listen to you means a lot when you are part of a small organization, working endless hours in the pursuit of a mission even you start to doubt about at some point.
In February 2021 we had a first onboarding meeting with Ian Williams, the Cranfield project manager in our region (Cambridge, East England), who grasped quite fast our goals, current status and needs, and started looking for a volunteer that could help us. By March, we were paired with Akash Rungta, a senior consultant in commercial strategy and business operations. In the first meeting we quickly decided it was a perfect match, as Akash had all the skills and expertise we were lacking at Ersilia, was enthusiastic about the project and eager to help. After a couple of introductory calls, where we did our best to explain the project, strategy and revenue and cost planning we had put together so far, we set out to design a 5-year business plan.
Here is where we fully realized to what extent Akash would help us, as he presented a very comprehensive draft, adding items we had not even thought about, and identifying strong points and weaknesses. Over the course of three months, we iterated over the document, having very enriching discussions about costs, revenue and necessary resources, while Akash patiently answered all our questions and brought new ideas to the table. We want to acknowledge the time and effort he put into it, from doing his own research in the field to meeting with us on a weekend to accommodate everyone’s busy schedules. We also want to thank you Ian Williams from the Cranfield Trust for being so responsive and attentive during the whole process.
Finally, working with the Cranfield Trust is not limited to volunteer and mentoring services, as they offer a broad range of online resources and monthly webinars that complement the experience and give really useful tips for charity leaders and newbies in the management sector. Overall we have gained much more from this experience than “simply” writing the business plan.
