Unlocking Potential: How Brain Tumour Research’s Fundraising Team Strengthened Collaboration to Meet Ambitious Goals

A strengths-based workshop creating alignment and motivation across regions.

A Collaborative Path to Success

Fundraising is a challenging field, and for Brain Tumour Research’s team, meeting ambitious targets requires more than hard work—it demands collaboration, alignment, and a shared understanding of strengths.

With 22 team members spread across different regions, the organisation’s fundraising team rarely had opportunities to come together and reflect on how they work. To address this, they partnered with Strengthify for a pro bono Discovery Workshop, designed to help the team identify their strengths, align them with their goals, and build stronger connections.

As a proud supporter of Brain Tumour Research, we were honoured to offer our expertise to help this incredible charity continue their vital work. This one-day session laid the groundwork for a more unified and effective team ready to tackle their fundraising targets with renewed purpose.

Overcoming Silos to Drive Fundraising Success

The fundraising team at Brain Tumour Research faced unique challenges stemming from their regional structure. While each member shared similar responsibilities, the nature of their roles meant limited interaction and little time to collaborate or share best practices.

Team members often felt isolated and disconnected from their colleagues, making it difficult to share learning and optimise their collective efforts. There was a need for a shift that would help align individual strengths with team objectives to improve collaboration and efficiency.

Key Challenges:

• A lack of opportunities to connect and align efforts as a team.
• Difficulty understanding how individual strengths could drive collective success.
• Limited collaboration across regions, leading to missed opportunities for shared learning and improvement.

What Participants Said:

• “The timing was perfect as we are facing challenging targets and needed a fresh perspective on how to collaborate and achieve them.”
• “It helped us rethink how to approach our roles and collaborate across regions.”

The Discovery Workshop Experience

To help the fundraising team bridge these gaps, Strengthify delivered a Discovery Workshop. This session brought all 22 team members together for an interactive day of strengths identification, practical exercises, and team-focused discussions.

The workshop was designed to help participants uncover their unique strengths and apply them directly to their roles and goals. By focusing on collaboration and shared purpose, the session provided the team with a framework for more effective teamwork.

Aims of the Workshop:

• Build awareness of individual strengths using the CliftonStrengths assessment.
• Align strengths with the team’s ambitious fundraising targets.
• Develop practical strategies for working together more effectively, leveraging the team’s diverse strengths.

What the Session Covered:

1. Strengths Identification: Helping each team member discover their unique talents.

   • “It felt really relevant to see how strengths-based thinking could directly support our team’s goals and improve how we work together.”

2. Strengths in Action: Applying strengths to key fundraising goals and challenges.

   • “Connecting our strengths to fundraising goals was incredibly valuable—it gave me a clear sense of how to focus my efforts.”

3. Team Collaboration: Exploring how to use the diversity of strengths across regions for maximum impact.

   • “With everyone coming together for the first time in a while, the workshop gave us the tools to understand and use our strengths collectively.”

Unlocking New Ways of Working

The workshop sparked meaningful change, equipping the team with tools to work more collaboratively and effectively toward their shared goals. Participants left with a renewed sense of purpose, clarity about their strengths, and actionable insights into how to apply these to their work.

Key Outcomes from the Workshop:
✅ Stronger Collaboration: Team members gained a better understanding of one another’s strengths and how to combine them for greater impact.

• “I now feel much more confident in identifying how my strengths complement my colleagues’, and it’s clear how we can work together more effectively.”
• “It highlighted areas where we can lean on each other’s strengths rather than feeling like we’re working in silos.”

✅ Alignment with Goals: Practical exercises helped the team connect their strengths to their fundraising objectives, creating focus and motivation.

• “It was eye-opening to realise how my strengths could directly impact our targets.”
• “The session helped us connect our individual strengths to our overarching objectives, which we hadn’t done before.”

✅ Increased Engagement: The session encouraged open discussions, fostering trust and a sense of belonging among team members across regions.

• “Being able to discuss and apply our strengths openly created a stronger connection across our team.”
• “The workshop has really brought us together and given us a shared language to move forward.”

Feedback Highlights

• 55% found the workshop extremely valuable, with 44% rating it very valuable:
  • "It gave me a much clearer understanding of my strengths and how to use them in a practical way to meet our goals."
  • "The team activities were incredibly useful for seeing how our strengths complement each other."
  • "Carley’s delivery made the content engaging and easy to apply, which made the workshop feel very impactful."

• 67% of participants strongly agreed they now better understood how to combine strengths across the team:

  • "The workshop gave us a structured way to look at how we combine our unique talents to achieve team goals."

• “Carley delivered such a brilliant session – I think everything we learnt will have a really positive impact on how we move forwards as a team.” —Team Organiser

Interested in finding out more about team workshops and how we can support your team? Contact us.