Celebrating One Year On

 

In 2017, Alpha launched pro bono consulting as a new element to our existing Charity of the Year partnership programme. Through this programme, we choose to focus our support on one charity, which is nominated and chosen by the whole company across our global offices. Focusing on one charity in this manner is designed to maximise our collective impact.

Having focused solely on fund and awareness-raising previously, this was a brand-new challenge for Alpha and we were grateful to have such an inspiring and positive partner in The Lucy Faithfull Foundation (LFF). LFF is a child protection charity that focuses on the prevention of child sex abuse. You can read more about them here: https://www.lucyfaithfull.org.uk/

It has been over a year since the partnership formally concluded in January 2018 and we have been thrilled to look back and consider all that has been achieved in that time.

During our partnership, Alpha focused our pro bono efforts with LFF on two key projects, alongside a few smaller tasks:

 

  • Supporting the Helpline. LFF run the ‘Stop It Now!’ helpline which is a confidential and freephone service available to anyone with concerns about child sexual abuse. Alpha selected and implemented a CRM system to replace the current manual and paper-based processes for logging information for helpline calls, and other associated services.

 

  • Bringing the Team Together. LFF asked Alpha to share their lessons-learned from maintaining a strong team culture with staff dispersed geographically and fulfilling potentially stressful roles. The use of Slack as a tool for fostering positive internal communications was identified as a tool from which the Foundation could benefit. The project provided LFF with a vendor comparison and led the subsequent implementation of Slack as an internal communications tool.

Read on to find out more about the impact of each project in The Lucy Faithfull Foundation’s own words.

Supporting the Helpline – One Year On

In September 2018, LFF received additional financial support from the central government. This doubled the capacity for their Stop It Now! Helpline to take calls from those that need their assistance.

“Development of the helpline database as part of our wonderful Charity of the Year Partnership could not have come at a better time for us. As we take more calls, and process more information from those calls, the database will be more valuable than ever us to us.” Donald Findlater, Director of Stop It Now! Helpline

Bringing the Team Together

“We’re still reaping the rewards of being Alpha FMC’s charity of the year 2017, as our introduction to Slack continues to be massively helpful and we’ve seen great improvements in all our internal communications. With staff based across the UK, using Slack to bridge that physical gap has meant that everyone stays in the loop. All our staff were encouraged to use Slack upon its launch, and everyone quickly began making the most of the different channels.  We’ve been so grateful to be able to learn from Alpha FMC’s experiences as a dispersed organisation. The introduction of SLACK has made The Lucy Faithfull Foundation a more inclusive organisation for the benefit of everyone who works for us.” Deborah Denis, Director of Fundraising and External Relations

Within Alpha

Embarking on these pro bono initiatives with LFF was an adventure for us as an Alpha team but staff across our global offices picked up the challenge – and hugely appreciated the opportunity to apply their skills in a completely different scenario:

  • Having the opportunity to help the team manage the beneficiary data more efficiently was incredibly humbling. The work they do is extremely important and any steps for them to have less manual admin provides more opportunities to focus on outreach to people in need of support (Alejandra Bacon, Alpha USA)
  • We thoroughly enjoyed working with The Lucy Faithfull Foundation. It was hugely rewarding for all the Alpha team involved, LFF was fantastic to work with and it was great to see the impact we were able to have (Simon Wang, Alpha UK)

More than 490 hours of Alpha time were donated to The Lucy Faithfull foundation through the pro bono initiative with over 17 staff involved. Pro bono remains a core part of Alpha’s Charity of the Year Partnership and featured again in 2018 when we partnered with the MSF Foundation. It really helps to make a tangible difference to the charity and something that the whole Global team is incredibly proud of, and looking forward to supporting with other charitable causes in the future.