In June this year CoachBright was lucky enough to be selected as one of 6 charity partners to participate in UCL’s pilot Charity Consultancy Challenge. Here at CoachBright, we view social mobility as a fundamental concept within the wider context of education in this country, and including university student voices as a key aspect to this. We were so excited to be a part of this inaugural programme at UCL and be joined by motivated students engaged in contributing to the charity sector and making a difference in young people’s lives.
During the Challenge Week a team of seven UCL student volunteers were tasked with helping to redesign CoachBright’s recruitment and retention strategy. At the end of the week, the team presented back their findings to us and to a panel of judges.
The greatest benefit in having university students consultants is that they act as one of our key stakeholders: our volunteer coaches. The consultants’ insights into our recruitment and retention strategy has been invaluable, in understanding key pressure points of how best to attract volunteers and upkeep engagement.
Throughout the week with us they worked collaboratively and proactively and acted as fresh sets of eyes to identify the pressure points where we lose coaches in recruitment and retention and prototype solutions. They were solution-focussed and innovative in their approach and came up with many pioneering and exciting solutions.
They structured the week by running focus groups with members of staff , coaches and various other stakeholders as well and surveying our existing procedures. They then gathered the results and evaluated them to complete the findings and make recommendations for their final report and presentation. The seven consultants presented back to the panel on the final day after a week of impressive work. Their main conclusions were improved use of the website including using the website as a community space to reflect the originality of CoachBright's approach.
Since the challenge week, the CoachBright team has been at work affecting the changes the consultants have suggested. We have discussed them regionally and recently rolled out a Website Hackathon day where many of the suggestions put forward were put into effect. Our website now reflects the updates of one of our key stakeholders: university students - our volunteer coaches! It’s been so exciting to see the change in only a few months of these dedicated students' work.
We are incredibly grateful to both students and staff at UCL for the time and engagement they afforded us throughout our week with them. We have been able to learn so much about stakeholder engagement as well as impart direct changes already and are keen to take more of our learnings from the week on!
Link to youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Z8bh-87EU