Foundations Futures, established in 1996, has grown from a small community project into a borough-wide service providing free and low cost furniture and appliances to over 700 households each year. To strengthen its reach and increase donations, the organisation sought marketing support from BIPC North East’s Web, Brand & Marketing Expert, Andy Ditchburn.
The guidance helped Foundations Futures refine its promotional approach, adopt new marketing methods, and communicate its work more effectively. As a result, the charity successfully launched social media channels for its new vintage shop, completed a soft launch, and is already seeing increased sales and community engagement. Read on to find out more.
Tell us a little bit about your business. When did you start-up, how many people do you employ, what products/services do you provide and who are your typical customers?
Foundations was created in 1996 to support households in the Teams area of Gateshead who were struggling to afford furniture. We started as a part-time community project, soon growing into a borough-wide service, supporting households from across Gateshead. Today, we collect furniture and appliances free of charge from in and around Tyne and Wear, and provide them at a low cost, or free when possible, to households affected by financial hardship, and crisis. We support over 700 households each year, and collect over 75 tonnes of household items. We currently employ three full time, and five part time staff, and we have around 6 volunteers who dedicate their time and skills each week. For volunteers who are unemployed, we provide free one to one support with all parts of the job seeking process, as well as free PPE and help with travel costs to and from our charity.
What support did you seek to help your business grow and develop?
We sought support with developing a marketing strategy to help us encourage more donations of household items and reach more people affected by furniture poverty. At the same time, we wanted to successfully launch our new vintage shop to boost our trade income. With increasing competition from other charity shops collecting furniture and appliances in our area, and with funding becoming more difficult to secure, we hoped that growing our reach would help with our sustainability.
What was the nature of the support Andy provided?
Andy supported us in developing a comprehensive marketing strategy that covered both social media and community engagement. He helped us explore the most effective ways to promote each aspect of our charity while ensuring the strategy remained cost and time efficient. Through a series of sessions, he introduced us to new marketing techniques (for example how to improve visibility through Search Engine Optimisation), and provided practical examples to help us put these ideas into practice.
Has the support that you have received from the Citylife Business Support Expert(s) helped you to move your business forward? And how?
Yes! The support has been very insightful, getting us to think about where best to promote the various elements of our work to reach people in the most effective way. It also helped us to implement new approaches that we hadn’t considered before. We have established our new vintage shop’s social media pages and ‘soft launched’ the new venture which is already boosting sales and interest.
Has the Citylife support that you received helped to safeguard the future of your business and any employees?
Yes. By boosting donations and sales, the support is safeguarding the future of all of our staff and volunteers, and making it much easier to build a more financially stable, impactful charity.
How did you find the Citylife Application process?
The process was very accessible, and we received a decision on the outcome of our application very quickly. From there, our work with Andy also started very quickly.
Would you recommend other businesses get in touch with Citylife?
Yes, we would definitely recommend other businesses get in touch with Citylife and have already recommended it to other charities in Gateshead we speak to regularly.
