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Nick Auluck was part of a group of students who worked with Together Trust on an MBA consultancy project. Together Trust is one of the North Wests leading disability charities and runs about 40 different services. It helps children, adults and carers, providing care and activities for these groups as well as respite for the parents.
“Being from Manchester, it was a privilege to work with this organisation. I learnt so much about a charity I never knew about and it has encouraged me to want to volunteer in the future. Especially as all of this work was done online, I would love to meet everyone face to face.
Our project was around social value and community environment. Together Trust exhibit social value but don’t have a way of measuring this and proving how much they do with the services they provide. We offered up a framework and proposal on how the Trust can measure social value in the future. The reasons they wanted this research was to get more government grants or contacts. They wanted to increase their turnover and revenue. It was important for them to also make their staff more aware of what social value is and how important it is for everyone in the organisation – no matter what level or department.
The team I worked with were great. After working in the same team in my company for years, it was refreshing to have a new team with people from across the globe, with different backgrounds and cultures. I learnt a lot about interacting with new people on such a focused project. We had to hit the ground running and even though it was virtual we kept the engagement going. To be honest I was a little bit sad at the end, as we had forged such a great team and worked so well together.
Working with a not-for-profit organisation really opened my eyes to this sector. I’ve never been involved in that level of detail with such an organisation. The team at Together Trust are so passionate about the work they do. It made me think that at some point in my career I want to work with an organisation where I can add value, helping people less fortunate than me. This project gave me a real sense of worthwhile.
It was a challenge not being able to work face to face, as some of my colleagues in the group were still residing in their respective countries. We had to adapt quickly and manage the time differences, but in the end we used this to our advantage and were working many more hours of the day.
I learnt a lot from my colleagues. As a team we all shared ideas and discussed everything through. Challenging ideas and having detailed discussions, we always came to decisions together through the result of everyone’s view point. The project made me understand the importance of social value and why a company in the not-for-profit sector need to measure this in order to get additional funding. It made me realise that social value is really important and we should be aware of this in the communities we live in.
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