National Federation of Women’s Institutes

About The NFWI (National Federation of Women’s Institutes)

The NFWI (National Federation of Women’s Institutes) is a federated charity with approximately 210,000 members, split into 69 regional federations consisting of 6,300 individual WI groups. To respond to their strategic objective to better engage, increase recruitment and retention of members, they set up a new dedicated membership department, however they faced the following challenges:

• The team could not easily identify gaps in recruitment of members and could not track or assess the effectiveness of their recruitment initiatives, making it more difficult to remain relevant to both older and younger generation of members
• Recruitment could feel like a postcode lottery as some regional offices were better equipped in tracking and recruiting members than others which were only open a few days per week
• Joining was complicated; if you showed interest on the national level, you had to go back locally to join and find your relevant group, so many recruitment opportunities were missed

New Approach Needed

The team knew they needed a more joined up approach and a lead tracking solution could help with that, however they were a small team without experience in technology solutions, knowledge of the technology market or understanding of how the solution they wanted could work in practice. Funding was tight and any spend had to be carefully justified.

Cost and Options for Technology

Hart Square were brought on board to advise on the options available to the NFWI, the costs associated with those options, and to help the team define and agree their strategic priorities. This enabled the NFWI to build a solid foundation for their project, to align expectations and therefore to be set for success when the initiative launched.

Gathering Requirements and Partner Selection

With the strategic direction agreed, the NFWI commissioned Hart Square to help them gather their requirements for the technology solution they needed, and to translate their needs into a professional proposal for going to market.

Hart Square ran a series of workshops across teams to ensure that all requirements were collected and collated. These were reviewed holistically, rationalised and prioritised, then brought together in a coherent tender document which described the NFWI’s project objectives as well as the detailed requirements they had of the technology.

The selection process itself was well structured and allowed the NFWI to develop their understanding of what modern technology could offer them. Equally the selection process enabled technology partners to get a good understanding of NFWI’s drivers and where their priorities lay, allowing them to tailor their propositions to great mutual benefit.

Focus on Requirements

Without this clearly articulated requirements’ document the NFWI could have misaligned expectations with the technology partners they invited to bid, and potentially could have been presented with much higher quotes for the work required.

The selection process was very educational and helped the NFWI understand what may be possible with new technology longer term. However, the big value of Hart Square was to keep an eye on the baseline requirements and help them focus on those objectives, rather than their longer-term aspirations of what they may want to achieve further down the line, which was not in scope at that point.

The entire project was delivered during the first lockdown and, given the number of engagements, presentations, meetings and screen sharing sessions the NFWI held with Hart Square and technology partners, remote working did not hold them back and the process felt seamless throughout.

The NFWI selected a partner they were very comfortable with to achieve their requirements for a lead tracking solution and their top tip advice for NFPs going through similar projects would be “bear in mind what you need, understand your longer- and shorter-term ambitions clearly and stick to them”.