St Andrews First Aid has been selling training services to the private sector for half a century, but thanks to Michelle Ferguson it's now in profit!
When Michelle Ferguson became managing director of St Andrews First Aid Training in 2013 the brand-new social enterprise had just recorded a first-year deficit of £130,000 and by the end of 2014 the business had turned around a profit of £190,000. This year, Ferguson expects it to bring in over £300,000.
This is a massive transformation for 133-year-old charity with a fusty reputation for first-aid training in village halls. While the charity continues to train up its familiar uniformed volunteers to provide first aid at events across Scotland, the decision from its chief executive Stuart Callison to create the stand-alone St Andrews First Aid Training social enterprise has given it the opportunity to create a cutting-edge values-driven business.
It’s not been an easy journey. Introducing some of the harder nosed private sector methods Ferguson learned over a two-decade career in media sales, latterly as UK Sales Manager for Setanta, hasn’t always been welcome. Ferguson believes the voluntary sector is suspicious of private sector methods, so staff who had been working locally, on paper and face-to-face for decades weren’t too keen on centralisation, fancy new IT systems and sales targets.
But for Ferguson it was clear that if St Andrews First Aid Training was to succeed and to deliver profits to support the charity to do its life-saving work in communities, profit could no longer be a dirty word.
“We went into the business of being a social enterprise rather than being part of a charity,” she says looking back on our first few months in the job. “I really got underneath the business and looked at the systems, processes and sales tools.”
UK businesses have a legal obligation ensure their staff are safe at work. This means they need to be staff trained to deliver a first aid to colleagues in an emergency, but depending on the type of business, it could also mean a range of different requirements, such as ensuring staff are trained in lifting and handling.
We went into the business of being a social enterprise rather than being part of a charity
The market to provide health and safety training is a strong one offering rich pickings for St Andrews, but that doesn’t mean it’s an easy sell. Its main competitors are the British Red Cross and the newly introduced private sector competitors, who have entered the market following a decision to remove the need for trainers to be verified by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
One of the first things that Ferguson did was create a digital app to help businesses work out exactly what they needed to do to be compliant with the law. The app also demonstrates that working with St Andrews, which is cited as standard setters in first aid by the HSE, guarantees a company is in accordance with the law.
This move towards digital marketing from traditional advertising was key to the modernisation of the business.
“We changed how we spent our money” said Ferguson. “We’d spent a lot of money on marketing, on great campaigns on television, on radio, in the press, but we weren’t making conscious decisions about what we were selling and why we were selling it.
“When I joined, it all became about digital marketing because decisions are made digitally by our buyers. It’s a business to business market and you don’t get that market by advertising around Coronation Street.”
Despite her background, Ferguson isn’t all hard-nosed business. She made a conscious decision after the collapse of Setanta to enter the third sector, despite being discouraged by some who said she’d need to volunteer for a year to gain experience.
However, charity Scottish Sports Futures took a chance on Ferguson and allowed her to mould its fundraising role to suit the ways she believed she could bring in money. As a result she took on the title of director of sponsorship and went out to persuade a range of household name businesses to support youth sports.
“The commercial sector doesn’t really understand fundraising. They think that’s nice, I’ll put £1 in a bucket. Whereas, what I suggested was a different way of looking at it,” explains Ferguson.
“The first sponsorship deal I brought in was with Shell. So, it became the Shell Twilight Basketball programme. Shell invested an awful lot of money in that, but if we’d asked them to become their charity of the year, it would never have happened.”
St Andrews First Aid also became one of the organisation’s supporters, and it was here that Ferguson began to understand the value of the amazing work that the first aid charity does.
And when she took on her current role, it wasn’t about turning a third sector body into a private sector one, but creating an business that taps into the best of both worlds.
“Working for a social enterprise enables me to bring in the good things I learned in the private sector and soften them,” she says. “It’s been an amazing opportunity, I’m so lucky.”
While there have been painful moments, in the end the results speak for themselves. Throughout this massive change process, not a single staff member has been made redundant. In fact, the business has now increased staff by 27%.
Early on, Ferguson gave up her own lavish office to transform it into a sales, customer and admin space in a demonstration of her will to put values and what is good for the whole staff team first.
She then went public with the budget and targets and introduced revenue targets to the team. “That caused a lot of fear,” she admits.
At one point if I’d asked staff to come out for a coffee they would have said no
It was an incredibly disruptive 12 months for the organisation but Ferguson also believes that staff are happier now and have confidence in her vision.
“We organised a staff awards night at the end of my first year. I was really worried because at one point if I’d asked staff to come out for a coffee they would have said no,” she says frankly.
“But our new system means we were able to see what everyone as a person had achieved to help us deliver these amazing profits, whether it was sending out certificates or registering course, so everyone got an award and everyone cheered for everyone! It was amazing.”
And now? The future for St Andrew’s First Aid Training looks promising. Ferguson is determined to keep growing every year and the business is willing to invest in new income streams in order to do so. This may include a return to the charity’s ambulance providing hospital transport services, amongst other possible new ventures.
And could St Andrews First Aid Training take over the world? Ferguson, who is in talks with organisations in Japan and Australia about potential franchises, isn’t ruling it out.
“Scotland is seen as a leader in social enterprise,” she says. “That opens doors worldwide.
“There’s nobody I’ve spoken to who hasn’t been really welcoming and really interested in the models of social enterprise that we’re developing here in Scotland. The global reputation we used to have for banking has come over to the charity and social enterprise sector, and that's a fantastic opportunity for us.”
