Graham Andrews explains how, within the space of a year, his local charity moved from being on the verge of collapse to preparing for national expansion
In June last year, having handed my software business to my son, I was twiddling my thumbs, wondering what to do next. Within a few short weeks, I was embarking on another career altogether – running a small charity called Skidz.
Based in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, Skidz works with disadvantaged and disaffected young people, in order to re-engage, inspire and educate them, via the medium of motor vehicle studies delivered in a unique adult environment.
I was asked by the trustees to assist the charity in purchasing a building to house the charity's workshops – thanks to a pledge from a benefactor. However, before they wrote out the cheque, they quite rightly wanted to see a business plan. In producing one, to my horror I soon discovered the charity was sitting on a financial sinkhole, and was about to fall into it.
It is still touch-and-go, but not only have we regained our financial footing as a local charity – we now have ambitions to extend our reach nationally.
Asset management
We’ve been operating for 15 years as a local charity, supported by local organisations and beneficiaries, but expanding nationally is a totally different ballgame. First, the ship needed steadying. With no cash reserves, I had to look around to see what assets the charity had. The only assets the charity really had were its patrons – and we have fantastic ones, including Formula One’s Ross Brawn, TV personality Johnny Ball and rally driving legend Paddy Hopkirk.
Paddy is highly sought after by motor racing enthusiasts to speak at events, sign books/autographs and meet fans. Having won the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally in a Mini Cooper, he is quite a celebrity, even at 80 years of age and with his last rally win in 1990. I’m involved with his public appearances, since all proceeds from these appearances come directly to Skidz. I marvel at his stamina and enthusiasm for the good of Skidz.
Paddy is also (inter alia) a patron of the annual motoring event, the Kop Hill climb. We therefore attend each year, as we also benefit from the proceeds and funds raised. It’s a great opportunity for us to broadcast our need to everybody. This year, we got the support of a local car restoration company, which exhibited high-value performance cars in our marquee, which really drew in the crowds and gave us great publicity.
Over the same weekend, Paddy was asked to be guest of honour at the Rally Day in Castle Combe, Wiltshire. This enabled us to exploit any fundraising, and use it as a significant business development opportunity. Wiltshire might be a long way from home, but as we want to expand nationally we could use the event to say who we are and what we’re about; this is one of the building blocks that we need to put in place in order to evolve and expand the Skidz operation.
An ideal fit
Events such as the Rally Day are perfect for us, for two reasons. Firstly, with event organising being a speciality in its own right, there is no way we could organise our own due to the sheer demand on resources. Holding onto someone else's shirt tails, as it were, is the best way forward – sweat someone else's assets, if you can!
Secondly, the event is closely aligned with our cause, and sending Paddy along for all the motor enthusiasts gives us the perfect conduit for getting our message out there. I don’t kid myself for one moment to suggest that anyone went to Rally Day to hear about Skidz, but we made sure that the attendees, having achieved what they wanted to achieve in terms of seeing and hearing Paddy, also saw and heard about Skidz.
I can’t emphasise enough the importance of having the right spokesperson for your cause. You can win or lose an audience based on who is representing you. If you’ve not got the right sort of person there, and they are not able to convey the right message, then the opportunity will be wasted. If you’re going to say a few words yourself, then make sure you rehearse beforehand. Everything needs to be as professional as possible, and it requires effort and rehearsal; you can’t just rock up and expect things to happen.
It is important, when promoting your charity at someone else’s event, that you make sure you’re clear not only about what you’re there to do, but also what that promoter is expecting of you. It’s all too easy for wires to get crossed, and you might suddenly find that your ideas about what you think you’re going to do are completely different from theirs. So you’ve got to make sure you're on the same page, and liaise closely with those organising the event so that you do things in a coordinated manner.
One of the challenges of the Rally Day event was getting our own people to buy into it. Within charities, it’s quite a task to get people who already work on it five days a week to then spend their time over a weekend raising the profile of the charity in another part of the country. So you try to keep them enthused and encourage them. I identified those of our people who were enthusiastic about the events and selected those available. Just a few weeks earlier, a Mini Cooper had been donated, and we had eager employees who spruced it up, so they took it along and it was nicely parked up in among the collection of rally mini cars at the event.
The right market
If you’re thinking about where to promote your charity, first and foremost you should ask yourself who your cause is going to appeal to. This isn’t limited to events; it applies even more when seeking support from corporates, industry bodies and the like. Skidz is all about disadvantaged young kids who have not got on well at school, so we want to give them confidence and life skills via motor vehicle studies. With that as the backdrop, who is the cause going to appeal to? For us, it’s the motor industry. There’s no point in us going to the entertainment or ICT industry, for example, because they don't have an association with our cause. You need to identify the market and say right, that’s where we need to be.
For us, the process is well underway; we’ve become members of the Institute of the Motor Industry and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. We have established a partnership with Amersham College, and the charity is now a registered training organisation, teaching Level 1 Motor Vehicle Studies to 16-year-olds upwards. We are placing ourselves firmly in the motor sector, and our aim now is to expand from there. We’re talking with major companies within the sector and thanks to recent press coverage, we’ve had motor industry companies approach us to ask how they might help. This could provide a huge sponsorship opportunity. The message here is: if you've got the right focus, you can get the right support.
Falling into place
We've done many things to put ourselves in a position to be able to properly roll out the Skidz operation. We’ve made ourselves highly visible and got a lot of credentials behind us. We are also making sure all our internal mechanisms and processes are in place first before taking it nationwide, because we’ve got to make sure that what we put out there is robust. We’ve probably got another year to go before we’ve finished putting our offering into place and are ready to roll out the operation nationwide. Of course, it’s one step at a time, but we’re keeping up the momentum and making progress every day.
One thing that has been crucial to our strategy is finding a way of becoming self-supporting and self-sustaining. We can’t expect to expand (or even continue) our operations by simply relying on the benevolence of individuals or trusts. Nor can we rely completely on fundraising; we need to find an independent means of finance. I looked around to find a commercial activity that we can associate ourselves with and enjoy the fruits of – and found a company that has agreed to partner with us in the manufacture and supply of vehicle registration plates.
For me, this is the perfect no-brainer: we will be able to approach all the major motor manufactures, all the garages, the dealers, and say to them: “If you buy your number plates from Skidz, you'll be helping us to take young people through a pipeline of studying and into an apprenticeship in the motor industry”. Furthermore, it enables the companies to tick all the boxes of CSR, without it costing them a penny. Paddy will come in useful here too: we’ll be approaching a lot of his contacts in the motor industry.
Strong foundations
Undoubtedly, identifying Paddy as an asset and using him to help move us forwards has played a significant part in getting us to where we are now. In addition, by aligning our cause carefully with the motor industry, we’ve positioned ourselves firmly in that market with a very attractive offering. And by ensuring we’ve got robust systems in place, a clear message about who we are and what we’re aiming to achieve, and a sound offering, we’ll soon be in a position to expand nationally and help disaffected children all over the country to improve their skills and confidence.
Graham Andrews is CEO of Skidz
