Creating new income streams

RSPCA Success Story

Summary

The RSPCA is Europe’s largest and best respected animal welfare charity, based in the UK , but with significant influence internationally. Heavily reliant on gifts from supporters and donors the agency mostly provides its services free to animals and those who care for them.

Demand for their services continues to grow as concern for animal welfare becomes an increasingly important issue on the social agenda. This applies not simply to companion animals, such as cats and dogs, but also animals in business: farm animals and those used in entertainment settings such as films or theatre.

This success story explores how =mc consulting worked with the RSPCA to explore the potential for three new earned income streams.

The Challenge

The RSPCA believed that there were opportunities to address this ‘animals in business’ issue and, at the same time, raise income by providing specialist services to paying commercial customers. However they wanted an objective analysis on whether there genuinely were opportunities and if so how big the opportunity was.

They wanted advice in three areas:

Providing a premium service to farmers who needed advice on animal welfare issues
Offering reassurance for consumers by developing a food welfare standard for pet food
Offering guidance to entertainment companies using animals in performances

Importantly these customers would be B2B rather than B2C, meaning that the RSPCA would have to develop new core competences.

How we helped

=mc consulting deployed a significant team to explore these three very different business areas. The team undertook a number of analyses and comparisons across all three to ensure they could provide a comprehensive and robust answer to senior RSPCA managers.

This included:

Market: to establish if there was a market in each of areas , how big it was, and what the potential was for profit. The RSPCA was prepared to invest provided there was potential to grow over the long term and profitable opportunities could be identified
Acceptability: to clarify if key customers were willing to meet the additional cost of any service to achieve the benefits. For example, would pet food manufacturers be prepared to pay extra for certification, believing that consumers would meet the premium involved
Competitor analysis: to identify who else might be in this space or might be looking to enter the space – for example, American Humane Society was the dominant provider in the film industry of certification for humane treatment of animals. Could a UK provider get in?
Competence: to establish if existing staff and managers were able to provide these services currently within their workload or skillset. Or if additional staff, or training would be needed

The Impact

The project took place over three months and the result was a detailed set of business cases, identifying that one of the areas had significant promise, one had potential but involved some risk, and one had very limited potential due to the lack of perceived customer demand.

The strategy was developed with senior managers to clarify the overarching direction and where to focus attention to secure more business more profitably.

Free guide

If you’d like to know more about the business model canvas and value proposition development you might be interested in this helpful step-by-step guide to using these frameworks here.

Who else have we helped?

=mc consulting has worked with a number of charities and public bodies to develop earned income and improve commercial awareness. In the UK these include The National Theatre, the National Union of Students, Bristol Museums Service, Nottingham Housing Association, South Downs National Park, Affinity Trust, Age Exchange, Crossroads Care Kent, NSPCC, London Borough of Brent and NHS South East Commissioning Group.

Internationally they include the International Step by Step Association, Foroige, Frontline AIDS, Solidaridad, Health Action International and MEF Museum in Argentina.

Next Steps?

Have a similar challenge or want to explore a project?
Contact Bernard Ross, Director.

+44 7976 280314