Kidney Research UK: Supporting development

Established over 60 years ago, Kidney Research UK is the country’s leading kidney research charity. It has a crystal-clear mission: to end kidney disease, which affects three million people in the UK.

Our relationship

We first became involved with Kidney Research UK six years ago.

One of our founders was the donor representative for a large fund manager, whose charitable giving programme supported core costs. This led to the joint funding of a full-time member of staff to help Kidney Research UK develop their corporate partnerships, boosting long-term income generation.

As our relationship evolved, we started participating in various planning groups aimed at exploring alternative funding programmes. That initial relationship has continued to this day, with Skylark now supporting Kidney Research UK in a variety of ways. 

What do we do?

Throughout the time we’ve known Kidney Research UK, we’ve built a strong working relationship with Marc Stowell, the Executive Director responsible for communications and income generation.

We support Marc in three ways.

1. The first is informal and entirely conversational. Marc has access to the Skylark team for idea testing and trusted, second opinions on a range of day to day and strategic issues, as and when they arise.

2. The second involves joining specific activities to support Kidney Research UK.

For example, Skylark helped with the recruitment of two senior level roles – Head of Philanthropy and Partnerships and Pharmaceutical and Corporate Partnerships Manager. Skylark guided the development of job descriptions and interview questions, before Katy Brown, Skylark’s MD, sat on the interview panel for both roles. Katy was able to offer a different perspective on the candidates, to inform the charity’s decision about who to take forward.

3. Skylark’s third strand of support is specifically focused on income generation. Skylark’s Director, Jonathan Smith, sits on the charity’s Development Advisory Board, supporting the development of long-term income streams, including commercialisation opportunities presented by some of the charity’s scientific research. Jonathan has brokered a relationship between the charity, the University of Oxford and its students, and has introduced other contacts, particularly those from the financial services arena, in a bid to boost this element of Kidney Research UK’s important work.

What’s the impact?

“Like anyone working in my type of role, there’s a lot that comes across the desk every day,” explains Marc.

“The great thing about the relationship with Skylark is that it is highly elastic. We know we can engage with them on specific matters as we did with our important recruitment exercise and that we have their input into our efforts to develop alternative funding streams.”

“But in some ways, it’s the access we have for informal conversations that is perhaps most valuable of all. The pandemic has brought its own range of challenges and sometimes it’s just such a help to be able to call up someone who I know has our interests at heart but is not too close to the action and so can provide an objective view that just helps to balance the perspective.”

As for what this means in terms of tangible impact, Marc is refreshingly honest on the subject.

“Everyone involved at a senior level within the charity sector knows that measuring impact has become an increasingly important subject,” he explained.

“Specific input – like Skylark’s support with our recruitment or our development board – is easy to evaluate because there are clear outcomes.”

“But it’s interesting to reflect that the informal ad hoc advice and support, which I find so valuable, is often not so easy to translate into a definable impact metric. It just goes to show that value can’t always be measured but we know it when we get it!”

More about Kidney Research UK

You can find out more about Kidney Research UK on their website.

Working with Skylark

We hope that everyone who works with us will have the same experience as Marc – where we deliver work that’s genuinely valued even if it can’t always be measured in units for an impact report!

We’re only a call or email away. We’d really love to hear from anyone who thinks we could help and from anyone who thinks they might like to support us!