Case Studies: Podiatry Ireland

“It was wonderful to have an independent and fresh perspective on our mission and our purpose as an organisation and how we could build and serve our membership and engage more proactively with our funders and partners. Mantra exceeded our expectations, and we now have a robust strategy and an execution plan which we know will set us up for years to come”.

Jennifer Maxwell, Council Member

How a membership organisation can attract, engage and retain members with stakeholder engagement at its heart.

The Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists Ireland (SCPI) is a long-established membership body for Podiatrists in Ireland and its membership includes healthcare providers and is focused primarily on lobbying, training and development. SCPI wanted a partner to develop an overall organisational strategy and a set of key recommendations for the coming years.

The Challenge

Mantra Strategy provided SCPI with a strategic approach to improving its membership services and relations and developed a new model of membership built around providing excellent membership support and services, and building engagement and retention.

Five-Step Approach

1. Define - Defining the core focus, scope, programme of work

2. Discovery - A deep delve phase of stakeholder engagement, interview, focus groups, engagement of the council, national and international comparator analysis, PESTEL and SWOT.

3. Dream - Which is about envisioning possibilities for the future organisation

4. Design - This phase develops the more detailed plan which included resourcing requirements and dependencies.

5. Deliver - Providing the communications and final strategy documents and implementation roadmap.

At Mantra, we strongly believe in the vital importance of stakeholder engagement when developing any strategy. For SCPI, we wanted to ensure that an extensive approach was taken to get buy-in and ensure the greatest impact.

Therefore, for this phase, a wide and diverse number of people both internal and external to SCPI were consulted including members, non-members, funders, academics, and those involved in the HSE and the School of Podiatric Medicine, National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) and included a full survey of the membership, several one-to-one interviews and workshops with the Council. We gained deep insight into what is important to SCPI members and those involved in the profession and the passion the members have for the profession was palpable, so this was kept at the core of the strategy, and vision development. We developed a new five-year strategy for the organisation centred around four key pillars. Under each of the pillars there are several organisational goals with an associated timeframe and resourcing plan phased over the five-year period. Central to our recommendations was putting the needs of the members throughout their career at the heart of the plan. New membership tiers to help attract new members and build a more sustainable revenue model for the organisation were developed as part of the design phase.

The Outcome

SCPI now have a new strategy and brand oriented around the goal of enhanced public profile and presence, so that more people know about the benefits of the profession to overall health, and the value of membership. Engagement of graduates right through to business owners was factored into the strategy and it is underpinned by a detailed set of phased resourcing and budgeting recommendations and KPIs over the 2023- 2028 period. In addition, the extensive stakeholder engagement resulted in improved relationships with key partners and provided a template for ongoing dialogue.