A team of senior managers on a leadership course at M&G were keen to offer strategic support to a charity, while at the same time developing their own leadership skills.

• Our challenge was to find the right fit for this opportunity and scope out how best the team could offer support to a charity.
• During our discussions with Octavia Foundation, we learnt that they were working towards an ambitious ‘Better Lives 2021’ vision, which depended on leveraging the support of local businesses and stakeholders, but did not have the internal capacity to develop the new engagement strategy that was needed to make it a reality.
• The team from M&G took on this challenge and worked closely with Octavia management over the next three months. By immersing themselves in the charity, its people and programmes, they were able to tailor their outputs to be as useful as possible for Octavia.
• After testing their ideas and refining the strategy the team from M&G delivered something which the charity could practically take forward.

“It has been a pleasure working with the staff from M&G to produce an engagement strategy for the Octavia Foundation. We couldn’t have wished for a more dedicated, knowledgeable, hard-working group of senior managers to support us and I’m looking forward to continuing this strong relationship with them as we implement the strategy over the coming year.”

Liz Shipsey, Employability and Volunteering Programme Manager, Octavia Foundation, 2019