Maternity Action is the UK’s leading charity committed to ending inequality and improving the health and well-being of pregnant women, partners and young children – from conception through to the child’s early years.
When Jasmin had her first child and took maternity leave she didn’t expect there to be any problems when she returned to work. However during her maternity leave her firm suddenly told her they no longer had a job for her to return to.
It’s an all too common problem for women across the UK. A recent report has shown that the number of women forced out of their jobs because they are either pregnant or on maternity leave has doubled in the past decade, with 60,000 women being pushed out of work each year.
Maternity Action helps some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged mothers, such as pregnant asylum seekers, and is committed to ending inequality and improving the health and well-being of pregnant women, partners and young children. They also campaign against pregnancy discrimination in the work place.
While the charity had seen a real increase in demand for their advice services, director Ros Bragg says they didn’t have a clear strategy for growth.
“We knew there was a tremendous demand for our services and that we could grow, but we needed to do it from a sound base, taking a closer look at the structure of the organisation and at finding financial stability."
Key issue – how to work with business to achieve the organisation’s aims?
During their time with the Pilotlight team, it became clear that Maternity Action needed to generate its own income, since it depended heavily on grants which were becoming increasingly difficult to win. Ros wanted to implement a sustainable funding model without compromising the organisation’s charitable objectives. Key to this was the question of whether Maternity Action could charge for some of its services while maintaining its charitable values.
“The Pilotlighters quickly identified the strengths of the organisation and focused on building on those strengths”, explains Ros. “They asked hard questions about our services and our approach to raising funds. They helped us identify what services we could charge for in order to fund vital services we need to continue providing for free. These were ideas we would not have considered otherwise”.
With the wealth of knowledge Maternity Action had around pregnancy and family issues in the workplace, the team of Pilotlighters, including corporate members from Lloyds Banking Group and First Data, saw the real potential for the charity to provide a valuable service to the corporate sector. Anna Bessant from Lloyds says they encouraged Ros and the board to see that the charity could preserve its charitable position and generate income at the same time.
“Maternity Action is a fantastic organisation dealing with very complex issues and at first it felt like they were all over the place. Ros and her team needed the time and space to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Mapping out the Service User Journey, was a real turning point as we were able to see how everything fitted together and start to build a strategy for growth, including new services. Personally, I learnt an awful lot and it was a truly unique experience”.
As a result of the Pilotlight engagement Maternity Action has a new business plan that includes fundraising activities with a social enterprise approach. Six months after their time with Pilotlight the charity has been offered funding to develop their products and services for companies and are piloting online resources for practitioners. Although the trustees were initially concerned about charging for some of Maternity Action’s services, the work with the Pilotlight team convinced them it was the right direction for the charity.
Ros says there has been a real a shift in all levels of the organisation from ‘should we do it?’ to ‘how should we do it?’
Photo credit: Philippe Put