Team Margot: Understanding impact
We were delighted to recently support a charity which is very close to our hearts.
Team Margot, who campaigns to raise awareness of the need for more blood, organ, stem cell and bone marrow donors, particularly from ethnically diverse communities, has been making a real difference. Our impact project helped them better understand how they are doing and also highlighted ways they could improve.
Margot’s story
In October 2013, aged just 14 months, Margot Martini was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of blood cancer and required a bone marrow transplant (also known as a stem cell transplant) to stand the best chance of survival.
Margot’s mixed family heritage was the key obstacle to finding her a ‘perfect’ tissue-type match, owing to the lack of diversity on stem cell and bone marrow registers. During this time, family, friends and complete strangers all came together as ‘Team Margot’ to help publicise Margot’s urgent need for a donor. Margot eventually found a ‘suitable’ donor match and received her bone marrow transplant in February 2014.
Unfortunately, Margot’s leukaemia was extremely aggressive. She relapsed during that summer and, heartbreakingly, passed away, aged 2 years and 2 months, on 27 October 2014.
Team Margot is Margot's legacy.
Skylark’s approach to impact evaluation
The world of impact measurement can be complex, jargon-heavy and overwhelming. Our approach is grounded in some simple principles:
We evaluate impact to inform and improve how clients can best support beneficiary outcomes, to make sure they stay relevant to beneficiaries’ needs over time
We understand impact by listening to the people being served and whose lives our clients are trying to benefit. Only they can truly know the real impact
We take a right-sized approach to impact. In other words, impact measurement should evolve as a charity grows
What did we do for Team Margot?
Katy Brown, our MD, alongside research assistants Stefanny Guerra and Roosa Lambin from the University of Oxford, worked with Team Margot to complete online surveys, interviews and focus groups with their community from January to March 2021.
The impact report pulled together our findings to show how the charity was doing. It identified gaps and made recommendations as to how Team Margot could improve. We also created an ‘at a glance’ report and a one-page impact infographic.
One of our enterprise partners, Manifesto Studios, a brand and communications accelerator, then used our findings to inform a series of creative concepts for an online awareness campaign which we’re excited to see come to life!
Team Margot is now using our findings to inform their 3-year plan. And they’ll continue to evaluate their impact over time, having regular conversations with their community to listen and learn how to improve.
You can read our impact report here.
Reflecting on the experience
“Safe to say it was a true privilege and joy to support such an incredible charity doing such vital work.” Katy Brown, Skylark MD
“Katy Brown is first class at what she does in mind, thought and deed…the combination of [the team’s] respective strengths makes for a hugely compelling proposition.” Yaser Martini, Margot’s father
“The trustees feel strongly that the value of the input during the process and outputs within the impact report by Skylark Works and Oxford University far exceeded the cost of the study. Exceptional value, which the trustees have since agreed to repeat, regularly.” Yaser Martini, Margot’s father
“Working together with Skylark Works took us out of our comfort zone, challenged us in productive ways and kept us focused.” Nadia Martini, Margot’s auntie
More about Team Margot
You can find out more about Team Margot, including how to register as a blood, organ, stem cell and bone marrow donor, here. Any one of us might need a donation. By ‘doing our bit’, we can all offer hope to those in need.
Working with Skylark
We hope that everyone who works with us will have a Team Margot experience – where we deliver work that’s valuable but also enjoyable and meaningful. We always say that everything begins with a conversation and we’re only a call or email away. We’d really love to hear from anyone who thinks we could help.