A new corporate advisory board has enabled a “rich value exchange” between Save the Children UK’s corporate partnerships team and members of the private sector, the charity’s director of partnerships and philanthropy has said.
Speaking on the Third Sector Podcast, Tamsyn Hanrahan described how the board, which was founded about a year ago and consists of eight senior business executives, “helps us sharpen our pitch and the way that we speak to and engage with businesses”.
She said: “It’s about being critical friends and helping us really think hard about the propositions that work.”
Joining Hanrahan for the interview with Third Sector’s Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale was Beth Knight, social sustainability director at Lloyds Banking Group and the inaugural chair of Save the Children’s corporate advisory board.
Knight described one of the board’s functions as connecting the business and charity worlds’ respective ways of thinking and communicating.
“We all speak English and yet at times at cross-purposes,” said Knight.
“The way that Save the Children would articulate the impact of their work – even the words and the language that they use to explain what they’re trying to achieve – members of the board have had to say: ‘Can you simplify it down – can we get the Save the Children language and the business language closer to one another so that we’re both meaning the same thing and there’s nothing getting lost in translation?’”
Knight also spoke of the board’s utility in navigating changes in how different corporate organisations “are thinking about their philanthropy or their social impact work, and the opportunities for Save the Children to force multiply together with those organisations”.
She said it had taken more time than anticipated to “help those board members that have been in exclusively commercial roles really understand how to bridge that philanthropy environment”.
Despite this, Hanrahan said: “Over the first year, it’s really clear that it has been such a rich value exchange for the members of the board and for us in the corporate partnerships team in terms of strengthening our impact for children.”
Listen to the full interview with Tamsyn Hanrahan and Beth Knight on the Third Sector Podcast.