You may have seen in Joe Saxton’s blog last week that we are now the proud owners of nfpSynergy. We are lucky enough to have worked with our incredible colleagues at nfpSynergy for the best part of twenty years between us. There is a reason why we have both stayed so long – a fantastic culture, fantastic colleagues (past and present) and the opportunity to work with fantastic charities of all shapes and sizes, helping them to solve their challenges and make better decisions.

So much of nfpSynergy’s success is down to Joe. His commitment to the sector is well documented, but from an nfpSynergy perspective he has always sought to put staff wellbeing first. He has helped to foster a very positive working environment, where the team are passionate about delivering excellent research to charities. We want to build on Joe’s work and also develop our own vision for nfpSynergy for the next decade.

Over the coming weeks we will be continuing to consult with the team at nfpSynergy about the direction of the company. But some of the things we want to prioritise are:

• Social Investment: Giving our time and research skills for the benefit of the sector has always been something we are proud of at nfpSynergy and we fully intend to continue our commitment to the sector. From next year we will introduce an annual fund of £10,000 ringfenced to provide free research for smaller organisations, who might ordinarily be unable to afford our services. Smaller non-profits will be invited to bid for research and successful applicants will work with the team to develop a programme of work to solve their research questions. This will be in addition to our ongoing series of free reports on topics of interest to the sector.

• Using technology better: We already use online dashboards across many of our products to give our clients direct access to their data in a fast and easy-to-use format. In 2022 we are going to step up our efforts to make our vast historic collection of data on charity brands and parliamentary performance available in dashboard format for all of our clients. We want to give clients more control and ownership - the ability to drill down directly into their results when needed, while still having their nfpSynergy account manager to hand to put their results into context.

• Commitment to under-represented audiences in research: We are very conscious that research often overlooks minorities, particularly when we are working with nationally representative samples. In recent years we have focussed on research with LGBT+ and minority ethnic audiences, and this year conducted a review in our EDI Working Group of how we ask research participants for their demographic information. This work will continue to be a strategic priority.

• Building on our expertise in benchmarking: One of the things that makes nfpSynergy different is our ability to put results into a wider context. When you do a supporter survey with us, you don’t just get context-free percentages, you get a direct comparison to the wider sector. Likewise, all of our tracking research builds in the vital element of benchmarking against your peers. We want to build on this strength and identify new and better ways to add value to research through benchmarking.

There will be lots more to come in the next few months, but for now we want to say how excited we are to have the opportunity to take nfpSynergy through the next stages of its journey and work with some amazing people (both internally and externally). We are delighted Joe will continue to be part of the team, adding his expertise and experience to projects with clients. We won’t be trying to take Joe’s place (there can only be one ‘Driver of Ideas’), but we hope we can continue to make nfpSynergy a great place to work and a great partner to do business with.