Launch Reflections (February 25)
In February we launched our Stargazing Strategy which we co-produced throughout 2024 with our families, volunteers, board and staff. The Strategy itself is concise, easy to read and actionable. It will guide the organisation, and the newly imagined values will guide our approach.
We have identified short-term goals such as being the best employer possible, strengthening our approach to volunteering and reimagining our leadership approach. In the long term, we will be more ambitious in our fundraising architecture, developing key quality indicators and embedding lived experience in the organisation.
Additionally, we confirmed our commitment to systems change to tackle the deep-rooted systemic challenges affecting lone parents and families in need. Through an upstream mindset, we have identified five manifesto commitments: Multi-Year Funding, Lone Parent Positive Workplaces, Transforming Child Maintenance, Housing Security and Cost of the School Day.
The week of the launch was really exciting, and we were thrilled with the engagement:
- The Gathering: Kerry and Louise hosted a stand at The Gathering, with a gorgeous board centred around our manifesto commitments and a fun activity about our values with lollipops. This led to lots of great conversations, follow-up meetings and engagement with organisations and people from all over Scotland. Laura also hosted a workshop as part of her role as Chair of the Third Sector Employability Forum Executive Group, focused on the role of the third sector in the employability eco-system.
- Press: We had some local press coverage, and we were delighted to welcome STV news to our Allotment to hear from parents their view of our Strategy.
- Social Media: We had daily posts centred around our newly imagined values (Courage – Flourish – Connected – Genuine) and had lots of likes and shares.
Additionally, we had some exciting recruitment with two internal promotions for our new Business Development Manager (Linsey) and Project Manager for our new Lone Parent Positive Workplaces project (Dawn). These are important roles to enable our Strategy, and we can’t wait to see how these evolve this year!
Following the launch we have started to engage with elected members, and senior leadership in key anchor organisations to progress forward with our mission. Attended the launch of Shelter – Scotland research around the experience of children and young people in temporary accommodation.
And we had an exciting first meeting for our new project: Lone Parent Positive Workplaces – Scotland. Bringing together Fife Gingerbread, OPFS and Strathclyde Business School to start planning activity and bringing together this exciting new project.
Our ambition at Fife Gingerbread is not to grow our service delivery footprint, we will always be a Fife based family support charity, but we do want to grow our impact. Through the ‘working in the open’ programme we realised that sharing our journey would be a good tool for sharing our journey, reflections and accountability. Watch this space for regular updates!