Charity research for Sky
A focused research project to support and develop Sky’s employee volunteering strategy.
The Bigger Picture is Sky’s way of making a positive contribution to the societies where they work and where their customers live. It focuses on three main areas where Sky can make a real difference – sports, arts and the environment.
To enable employees to join in with The Bigger Picture, Sky was interested in finding new charity partners that would benefit from employee volunteers, in both London and Scotland. Three Hands was asked to look for charities whose impact was in the area of sports, arts or environment, both north and south of the border. At the same time we also started to work with Sky to devise a monitoring and evaluation framework to assess the impact of the volunteering on both the community and the business.
After an extensive process of research and engagement, drawing on both our existing and new contacts, we identified a number of organisations that had a fit with Sky’s priority areas and had needs that could be addressed by Sky volunteers. These included: Cricket for Change and Street League, charities that address disadvantage through sport; Contact the Elderly, a charity that takes elderly people on art gallery visits; Art in the Park, a community organisation promoting art for public places; environmental charity Trees for Cities; and Greenhouse Schools, an organisation that engages young people in inner city schools through sports and arts. The variety of charities and volunteering activities have provided an exciting range of opportunities for Sky employees, who have found themselves helping at disabled cricket days, working with young people to put on arts events, creating artwork at a local hospital, working alongside school children on environmental projects and much more!
“Three Hands have really played an important part in helping Sky shape our employee volunteering strategy. Supporting us all the way from concept to implementation, their knowledge of the voluntary sector was invaluable in helping us build strong and lasting partnerships with charities aligned to our Bigger Picture vision. If you are looking to build a community investment strategy that is innovative yet sustainable then you should definitely seek their advice!”
Genevieve Boast, The Bigger Picture Project Manager, Sky