A structural review to build integration and impact

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)

As the largest and most influential membership body for the charity sector, NCVO had enjoyed a period of growth, expanding both its services and staff numbers in recent years.

In 2018, a vacancy in a key senior role gave the Senior Management Team (SMT) the opportunity to take a step back. Conscious that individual roles and team structures had evolved organically, they wanted a view on whether their structure was configured to best meet current and future challenges.

A vital part of the brief to RandallFox was recognising that there were talented and high performing communications and marketing teams already in place. This project was about optimising structure and culture, and minimising unnecessary disruption for the staff involved.

Working closely with NCVO’s human resources department and the SMT, RandallFox led a comprehensive review that was able to shine a light on, and protect, marketing and comms strengths and also gain some internal consensus around key gaps in resource and practice. We presented SMT with a small range of structural options to consider, together with an analysis of the pros, cons and cost implications for each option.

One of our key recommendations focused on team culture rather than structure. With the support of senior marketing and comms members, we encouraged NCVO to build in mechanisms and processes across functional teams that would value and enable greater collaborative and integrative working.

One year on from the 2018 review, NCVO’s senior marketing and communications leads had embedded this new way of working, NCVO had a revamped marketing function under new leadership that was growing in impact, and the communications and marketing teams were working more closely together in support of a new strategic focus for the organisation.