Theodora Children’s Trust is part of the Theodora Foundation founded by Swiss brothers André and Jan Poulie in 1993. It now operates in eight countries and the UK trust was set up in 1994, when the brothers introduced two Giggle Doctors to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
One father said of the Giggle Doctors: "My seven-year-old daughter Robyn was diagnosed with cancer four months ago. She has gone from a very happy, lively child to being a quiet, often unhappy girl who now gets around in a wheelchair.
“On the last two occasions that we have visited the Royal Marsden Hospital, she has met Dr Geehee. She immediately brought a large grin to Robyn’s face and had a natural ability to maintain a child’s attention, make them laugh out loud and just bring a handful of happiness to a family’s dark and emotional times.”
Executive Director Sarika Brown says she turned to Pilotlight for help with the day-to-day side of things like fundraising and marketing. “We came with a view for short-term help but Pilotlight is more about helping with the long-term strategy which was brilliant.”
A key change to come out of the process was reducing the training of Giggle Doctors from 12 to nine months. “This was one of the restricting factors preventing us from growing. Shortening the training means that an extra group of Giggle Doctors can come through in the five-year plan,” says Sarika.
The process also helped Sarika put together a five-year fundraising strategy. “Traditionally we had done this year by year, we had never looked that far ahead and it felt a bit scary to do so. But by planning so far in advance it made us feel that the charity was more sustainable.
“The process helped us to grow up and think slightly differently.”
Sarika and her team now have plans to double the size of the charity – in terms of the numbers of children visited increasing to 115,000 – within five years and the Pilotlighters helped them work out a step-by-step path to do that.
Sarika believes the process helped with her own professional development. “When you work for a small charity there is often no role to be promoted into so there can be less learning for staff which is why I found this process useful as it taught me so much.”
The trust’s Pilotlight team had corporate members from Prudential and Morgan Stanley and individual member Davida Johnson, a non-executive director consultant in the petrochemicals industry. For Davida, being a Pilotlighter for Theodora Children’s Trust was the perfect fit because she lives in Switzerland and spends a lot of time in the UK.
“The foundation has a very high profile in Switzerland and I have donated money to it over the years.”
Shortening training for Giggle Doctors made the trust’s growth projections more realistic and doable, says Davida. “I think we have left them with a concrete legacy; they now have a business plan, and more importantly, they have a model for writing a business plan.
“One of Sarika’s concerns was that she had no second-in-command and there was no knowledge base there for anyone else if she wasn’t around. Now a lot more material is documented.
“Being a Pilotlighter is brilliant, you are taking the skills that you have developed in your business life and using them to help someone else, and then the charity can take them on.
“It’s also a great personal development opportunity. You have the chance to engage with causes that are probably in a very different world to the one you come from so it gives you an insight into other aspects of life. That can only benefit you as an individual.”
