British Heart Foundation Technology Advisory Group Volunteer

BHF is at an exciting point in its 62-year journey.  Since we were founded, our research has helped to reduce deaths from heart and circulatory diseases by more than half.  This year, we aim to award over £150m of grants to fund research into cardio-vascular disease – our biggest year ever.  At any one time, we have over £500m of funding in progress.  After the challenging COVID years, we are moving back to recovery, with 690 retail shops and stores generating over £30m profit and income from our fundraising and support returning to growth.  But there is so much more to do, and so much more that Technology can do to deliver our vision of a world without the fear of heart and circulatory disease.

Our teams are supported and advised by three expert groups: our Retail Committee; our Marketing Advisory Group and the Technology Advisory Group (TAG).  BHF’s TAG was set up in 2020 with the purpose of challenging our thinking and bringing best practice and innovation from other sectors.  Today, its objective is two-fold: support the CTO and Senior Leadership Team in delivering the new Technology Strategy and challenge BHF to ensure we achieve the digital transformation needed.

TAG meetings are quarterly.  Each meeting is structured around topics relating to: delivery of one of our major change programmes; a forward look at technology, often with an external speaker and the BHF cause.

Over the last twelve months, TAG has contributed to the BHF’s first Data Strategy, the development and extension of our innovative RevivR CPR app, advised on development of our MYBHF membership programme and to our Technology reorganisation and new operating model.

TAG has also welcomed external speakers such Ofcom’s People Director who discussed their approach to talent strategy, and the chief scientist at Zoe Health who talked through their approach to citizen science and rapid development and deployment of their tools.  Bringing these external perspectives has allowed the BHF to broaden their thinking and improve their plans.

The input from TAG has helped the Technology team to become more creative and nimbler, and helped us to improve the quality of our thoughts.  This has led to improvements in the Technology People Plan and enabled new ways of thinking that have enhanced the creation of a new operating model and directly shaped some of our biggest programmes.

Opportunities for BHF’s Technology team and areas TAG can support

Late 2022, we launched our Technology strategy which links to the overall BHF strategy to 2030 (see below).  Since then, we have started working on an a BHF Technology roadmap to deliver the strategy, we have launched our high-level data strategy and we have defined a new operating model which we are in the process of operationalising.  In parallel, we have 2 large programmes of work that are addressing our marketing and retail systems.  With consultancy from PwC, we have also identified we need to define and implement a data and technical architecture to underpin future growth.

Our TAG members are excited about the journey that we are on to lay the architectural and people foundations to support BHF deliver its strategy and fund growth in our life-saving research.  We are looking for members with experience working with technology that supports large organisations, ideally with some Retail or Fundraising knowledge.   Two areas are of particular focus:

1. How do we organise and leverage our data, including AI, to capitalise on our ambitions? Our data is currently siloed and we know that we have a large piece of work in front of us to determine an enterprise data model and architecture.  However, we also want to stay abreast of the latest advances in AI.  We are looking for people with experience of this journey and help us move fast whilst also having a clear view of what work needs to be done from an enterprise perspective.
2. We have a multi-year roadmap of transformation in front of us which will involve upgrading our core systems across Marketing, Finance and Retail. We are looking for people with experience of delivering these types of transformation who can help us set ourselves up to be successful and avoid pitfalls.

Our team and culture powers everything we do and how we retain our great team is also a focus area for us.

Practicalities:

TAG meets 4x per year (every quarter) with most meetings being ~3 hours with at least 1 full day offsite.  One meeting per year will be outside London at one of our stores or research centres.

TAG members: Sachin Jogia (Chair, Ofcom); Richard Ellis (Microsoft); Gaynor Edwards (Barclays); Nigel Moulton (ex-Dell); Sarah Calcott (BBC) and Daryl Fielding (BHF Trustee).   BHF’s Commercial Director, CFO and Strategy Director also join plus the Technology SLT and CTO.

Papers are sent out 1 week before the meeting.  Minutes and actions are recorded.

Expectations of TAG members (roughly 4-5 days commitment per year):

• Attendance at each scheduled meeting (ideally in person), with active contribution to the key topics
• Pre-reading of papers and materials prior to each meeting
• At least one shop/store visit per year (accompanied by a Tech SLT member)
• Join our mentoring programme to mentor one (or more) of the Technology management team
• Leverage your network to connect us to people who can support our plans and future thinking, and introduce guest speakers
• Help us think about our current and future plans – are we thinking about things in the right way? Could we move faster?  What else should we be thinking about?

In Return

• Opportunities to learn about our life saving research and how technology underpins this
• Opportunity to shape a technology and data roadmap which makes a genuine difference to lives in the UK
• Expand network of Technology and Charity Leaders
• Exposure to Charity Governance at the highest level and develop towards formal advisory leadership positions
• Introduce team members as guest speakers, helping develop them into advisory leaders
• Contributing to the growing success of the BHF and towards achieving our vision of a world without the fear of heart and circulatory disease
• Exposure to a broader network of technology leaders working across ‘tech for good’ initiatives

BHF’s Strategy to 2030 can be found here:  ld010strategyexternalbrochuredigital2805.pdf (bhf.org.uk)

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