Our strategy: How will we approach partnerships in future?
We're currently refreshing our strategy to ensure we learn the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and are ready and able to meet the challenges of the next five years. We've undertaken this together with people affected by blood cancer, who have been alongside us as we moved rapidly through the process. Today we have an update on how we'll approach partnerships.
Our revitalised vision has already been agreed. However, to meet this aspiration of ensuring we bring forward the day when nobody dies of blood cancer or their treatment, we absolutely believe that only working with others will we make this a reality.
Our key partners will always be people affected by blood cancer and we will always be driven by what they want now and in the future. The legion of health care professionals, including doctors, nurses and the many allied professions, are also essential to ensuring we make the right decisions.
But we also need to work with others outside the immediate Blood Cancer UK family. That’s why, as part of our strategy refresh process, we specifically looked at how we could and should work in partnership with other organisations, particularly other charities. We know we cannot beat blood cancer alone and many others share our aspirations.
Most importantly, people affected by blood cancer and health care professionals told us we must not only look for partners to work with us to help meet the Vision but also, we should specifically seek opportunities where we can support other organisations where their vision matches ours.
We already work successfully in coalitions, not least the Blood Cancer Alliance, and have forged new and powerful relationships with non-cancer charities supporting people who are immunocompromised during the pandemic. So, we have a foundation, but we know we could go further.
We have agreed a simple statement of intent:
We will not be able to achieve our vision for people living with blood cancer on our own. Therefore, it is essential that we work in partnership with other organisations, from within the UK and internationally, which share our passion for beating blood cancer and our wider values. In considering future opportunities, we will consider a number of factors but primary amongst these is that any partnership must be in the best interests of people living with blood cancer.
In practice, this will mean our staff and volunteers asking a simple question when developing new and existing projects and initiatives: Could we better deliver for people affected by blood cancer if we worked with someone else? We will then consider who might want to work with us, ensuring they share our values and culture, and then look to build a way forward.
We will be open to invitations and suggestions and go into all conversations with an open mind. We know in the competitive world of charities, that partnership working isn’t easy. We have all heard about examples, where a partnership hasn’t worked out or the effort to form one was seen as ‘too difficult’ or there was a perception it might inhibit a brand. We aren’t naïve about this, and there’ll be times where it won’t work out. However, we genuinely want to try harder because we know it can deliver better results for people affected by blood cancer.