Case study:Achates Develops Strategy: The Royal Literary Fund

The Royal Literary Fund (RLF) is a British charity that has been supporting authors since 1790, among them James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Dylan Thomas and Edith Nesbit. RLF provides grants to writers in financial difficulty: novelists, poets, playwrights, screenwriters and translators.

Achates worked with RLF over several years to support the CEO in modernising and refocussing the organisation to optimise its impact. This work included:

• A Governance Review of the board and its processes, making recommendations for how the board can evolve to have greater oversight of the RLF’s work as a whole, while allowing greater delegation to subcommittees and the staff team. This involved a full policies and procedure review, to workshops with the Board, 1:1 reviews, support of the Chair and CEO, and competitor analysis to examine best practice. The final report and presentation included an implementation plan to enable the final outputs to be easily deliverable for the team.

• Options Review And Strategy Development: considering three core options for the RLF to pursue as a future strategy, including major capital development, relocation, and a move to a purely digital offer. This work included widespread research and consultation with staff, trustees, peers, partners and beneficiaries to develop a decision-making framework. Each option was assessed against its ability to deliver the desired impact for target audiences while generating sustainable income, with two options being taken forwards for detailed modelling including the development of contributed income strategies. 

• Programme Review And Evaluation: Achates undertook a review of the main RLF programmes and activities, making recommendations as to their evolution to optimise impact with and for priority audiences and to open them up to contributed income generation. Then, we moved into a full evaluation of the RLF’s Fellowship Scheme (an education programme where writers deploy their talents to work 1:1 with university students and to deliver writing workshops with schools and in the community). As the charity’s largest area of expenditure, it was important to understand the programme’s relevance for audiences, how it delivers impact in line with the new organisational strategy, and how it could be strengthened. This process included interviews and surveys of past and present Fellows and Colleges, and analysis of RLF and peer data. 

– Edward Kemp, CEO