Introduction 

Lisa: Welcome and thank you for joining us today in our little CEO session with Andrew Hufford. My name is Lisa day and I’m the executive assistant at Penny Brohn UK cancer charity. Thank you for sending in questions and any that we won’t cover today will be covered individually, we will respond later on.  

Welcome Andrew, can you tell us a little bit about your career please? 

Andrew: Hi Lisa, yeah of course, originally I was born in Cambridge in Peterborough and I went off to University to Cardiff University in fact studying English, English literature, English linguistics, and like many students never went home so then embarked on a career with Marks and Spencer’s store management originally. So I ran stores in Swansea, Salisbury, Bath, and Yeovil around the Southwest part of the country and M&S were brilliant actually for instilling you a sense of discipline and rigor and analysis in terms of how you run any business really, so the skills I learned at M&S I’ve certainly taken into the rest of my careers as I’ve gone forward. 

But I always felt there was something missing really in terms of working in the corporate world and wanted to I guess do something more challenging and therefore went into the charity sector. Around about 30 years ago now, I started work for the PDSA animal charity and I guess what I learned within the charity sector is you have a fair bit of autonomy and you’re able to put your own personal stamp on the work that you do as well because clearly unlike big corporates charities don’t have the resources around them to put people in all the roles that are necessary, so you develop a skill and an ability I guess to work along many different disciplines and it’s a tough world to work in in terms of fundraising and the charity sector itself. 

I left PDSA and worked for British Heart Foundation and then most significantly I worked for St Peter’s Hospice, the local Hospice in Bristol and then I went to work for Tenovus, the Welsh Council charity before coming to Penny Brohn, so actually within the cancer part of the charity sector, I’ve probably spent 25 years or so across palliative care, cancer research and the specific and bespoke and unique element of cancer care and support that Penny Brohn offers as well. That integrated cancer care, that holistic cancer care, offering clients more than medicine so quite a lot of experience in that sector and about a number of roles at Penny Brohn.  

In fact, I joined Penny Brohn back in 2014 and this, the role of CEO, is actually my sixth role at Penny Brohn. I came in to do business development but they thought I wasn’t busy enough in the afternoon, so I then became the general manager of the National Centre and head of income generation. During Covid, I was interim CEO as well and then commercial director after that and now very fortunate to be made the CEO of Penny Brohn on a permanent basis which is obviously fantastic and the role is exciting, but it brings a great sense of responsibility as well as privilege as well because as I say Penny Brohn is a unique offering within the cancer sector. It’s very special, it’s something that people feel passionate about and it’s obviously a duty that I feel within this role to make sure that we maintain that going forward, Penny Brohn is now 42 years old, and it’s important I ensure it has another 42 years of longevity in the future. 

I continue to offer it’s unique services both digitally and physically going forward and also to make sure it’s financially self-sustaining as well.  

Lisa: Thank you. So you’ve had quite a varied career in the charity sector so far. 

So what would you say is your biggest lesson that you’ve learned along the way? 

Andrew: I think both in the charity sector and in business generally is that happy staff motivated staff make a successful organisation and I like to see teams of their work with being motivated to have a can-do attitude, and to instil that in the culture as well because I think particularly when you’re in organisations that are limited on resources it’s important we maximize the individual potential of everybody working within them whether they’re staff, whether they’re volunteers, because that passion will cascade onto cancer clients ultimately as well. 

So I thought for them to pick up on that spirit and that motivation it makes an organisation energetic as well and in fact at the Penny Brohn headquarters in North Somerset we have a great example of that in action. We have five acres of very special therapeutic gardens that were created and are maintained by 20 volunteers who work for us on a Friday and you could not buy that love and passion and care that goes into the creation of that, I think that’s a that’s a great example of what I’ve described in action. 

Lisa: That’s really interesting thank you. 

So you’ve had a 30-year career so far, mainly in the charity sector, what would you say has been your biggest achievement so far? 

Andrew: Within the charity sector I would say, because outside the church sector one of my ambitions originally was to be a professional footballer and for a period I was signed on with Peterborough United but I never got big enough, fit enough, or skilful enough, to make that career successful, so I’ve found my success has come within the charity sector within these last 30 years. 

I guess looking back at the things I’m most proud of, I put 50 shops in 50 St Peter’s Hospice shops onto the streets of Greater Bristol primarily to generate a regular, reliable income stream for that charity but also to raise the profile of palliative unique services at St Peter’s offer within the city. So there’s a St Peter’s shop on every key high street in Greater Bristol, raising its profile, attracting more donations, attracting more volunteers and over time creating the multi-million pound business that is still there today so I’m particularly proud of that. 

When I worked for Tenovus, the Welsh cancer charity, we embarked on a partnership with Movember the Australian men’s health charity, now Movember were looking for a cancer charity partner within every country in the world and I don’t think they’d ever heard of Wales because obviously Tenovus was in Wales, but we went to them and said, as men in particular aren’t great at engaging with Healthcare and with Cancer Care, wouldn’t it be great if we took the care to them via a man van. So our concept or model was that this man van would have a male nurse on board and it would be a black pink van that would be attractive to make, as man are terrible at engaging with Healthcare, and that van would drive around Wales and engage in hard to reach parts of Wales, and many weren’t naturally engaging with healthcare, and promote the importance of self-care, engaging with health professionals regularly in order to look after yourself as well. So Movember bought into that concept and granted Tenovus £600,000 to do that. 

I think services aside at Penny Brohn, two particular projects spring to mind in terms of what I’m proud of. Putting Penny Brohn services and its name on the high street in Greater Bristol and we tried to do it during covid as well which was particularly difficult. So our whole concept, which is a retail Trojan horse in essence, we have the Penny Brohn shop front on Queens Road, a busy part of Clifton in Bristol so it raises the profile of Penny Brohn funders. It appealed to funders because it was Penny Brohn coming back into Bristol after going into North Somerset and it’s a unique model that funders were attracted to as well because there’s services within that premises as well so that model will ultimately be scalable, be replicable around the country and it gives us an opportunity to expand our name of services if we wish to in the future.  

At the national headquarters we had a five acre as I said gardens, therapeutic gardens, very special gardens that have now been doubled to over 11 acres now as well so I’d like to think that I played a key part in enabling that to happen to strengthen both the presence of the headquarters and the impact of the headquarters here but also obviously to strengthen the balance sheet and the finances at Penny Brohn as well. 

Lisa: that’s really good, thank you very much. 

So you’ve been at Penny Brohn eight years, what is it about Penny Brohn and why are you passionate about working for our charity? 

Andrew: Well originally I came to Penny Brohn because one of my great friends used the service here and what he found beneficial when he came to Penny Brohn, and I think to a degree this describes the uniqueness of the offering that is here, because it’s about we’re all different, we’re all unique as individuals and we all deal with a health crisis in a very different way and it’s about finding a package of care that works for you as an individual. So my friend, what he valued was through his cancer diagnosis and treatment and he was having, a mainstream treatment, what he valued when he came to Penny Brohn was that you need time, he could spend it with Penny Brohn doctors, he didn’t feel rushed or pressured like he did in the mainstream system. 

He was a bit of an intellectual so he liked to access the resources that were in our library and to read about what was happening in his particular set of circumstances he particularly liked some of the one-to-one therapies and that access those. Particularly shiatsu actually and again he loved to relax in the garden here at Penny Brohn because he felt they had a profound impact on his general well-being as well and I could see the impact all of that range of services had on him as an individual and the underlying philosophy within Penny Brohn which is that we’re all made up of, four key Parts mind, body, spirit and emotions. Makes perfect sense to me as well because we all need to take a holistic approach to any crisis but also health crisis as well and also to take those learnings into how we look after ourselves in a general well-being sense as well, eat the right food, do the right exercise, look after your mental and spiritual health, I think that resonates with people whether they’re well or whether they’re poorly and whether it’s being used in the context of having a cancer diagnosis or just in a preventative way as well. 

So my passion and motivation comes from there but obviously as I see this, the role of CEO, is to take the impact that that’s had on me and make sure that we can take those services to more people and make more people to access Penny Brohn so accessibility and reach is crucial to create financial sustainability behind that as well because Penny Brohn gets no Government funding, gets no statutory funding, we have to self-start every single year so that is always going to be a challenge but if we want to be around for the long term, as we do, I think for me to create that portfolio of income that consistently and constantly into the future supports the services we give that’s also a main motivation for me. I am motivated and challenged by difficult financial circumstances as well so I bring that into the job hopefully as well. 

Lisa: Thank you. So you’ve referred a little bit earlier about Covid and opening the Hub in the Covid pandemic and also financial challenges, so like many Charities at the moment the income that we’ve previously seen before is not quite there so much anymore. 

So what impact did the pandemic have on the charity overall? 

Andrew: Although the Covid had a profound impact on Penny Brohn we were already seeing the decline in some of our funding pre-covid and during Covid we completely lost one of our major funders which meant we had to not only resize the charity but also rethink how we were going to deliver services and fundraise during that period as well. 

So they often say don’t they that necessity is the mother of invention and we found that through our services with Covid, pre-covid all our services have been in person and have been physical services but obviously cancer clients were shielding during that period. Everyone self-isolated but we still wanted to ensure that our services were accessible. So our service team, within six days actually, it was a fantastic operational feat and put all our services online and enabled cancer clients to continue to access our unique support and care.  

So actually there was a spin-off benefit through Covid, it probably forced us to do something at pace we wouldn’t have done under normal circumstances. I think as well it’s challenges you to look at how you’re fundraising as well. We had a very successful direct marketing campaign during Covid called double your money, a local major benefactor said I will match any donations you get during this period and that really energised and motivated donors to help us during the very challenging period as well.  

It also forced us I think to look at some of our assets and we’re very fortunate to have this 40,000 square foot building in North Somerset as our headquarters but it wasn’t always being filled to capacity and there was an opportunity there for us to both generate funds and bring in synergistic partners into the building to work alongside us and shore up and bolster some of our finances so through the evolution of that particular strategy we have a number of tenants now under the same roof as us and for synergistic tenants the National Centre for Integrative Medicine have now come to live with us and have very similar values and similar health goals. Vita Health who do outsourced NHS counselling, they are now living with us here in the National Centre, and the National Academy who specialize in nature Retreats and Eco therapy also again existing alongside us as well. So that’s being forced to look at how we maximise our assets I think was also a spin-off benefit from Covid as well ironically and we take those lessons into the future. 

Lisa: Excellent. So you’ve referred to Services being provided at the National Centre and our shift in the pandemic to provide them online so looking forward to the future again beyond 2023, January 2023.  

What’s in store for the charity going forwards? 

Andrew: Yes I mean as I said earlier like everybody else we are affected by the macro economic climate, running costs of organisations are going up, funding is harder to come by, and obviously those two key things we need to overcome. But what’s crucial to me is we have created that very special digital online offering for our cancer clients that we want to obviously maintain but also improve and craft further as we go forward so it becomes one of the best in class. 

I’m keen that we bring back more in-person services as we go forward and this coming year there’ll be a number of well-being days, a number of drop-in centres at the National Centre as well, and as we start to improve our finances and generate more money one of my key goals is to decipher more money into direct service delivery as well, so hopefully we can evolve that even further. We’re talking to partnerships, we have a very special partnership with GenesisCare UK who offer private radiotherapy through 14 centres around the UK and Penny Brohn has a well-being coordinator in each of those centres to offer the unique care and support that Penny Brohn has and to me that’s the perfect example of integrative Cancer Care, mainstream care under the same roof along with holistic Cancer Care as well through Penny Brohn.  

So it’s very important that we maintain, develop, and nurture that partnership going forward because being a small charity, partnership is one of our key opportunities to strengthen ourselves when we can’t have everything in-house that we need as well, and financially the goal for me is to create that mixed economy of income streams that diversify our income in order not to have all their eggs in one basket, make sure we maximize our opportunity and our potential and take the pressure off services, put more money into services, and develop that going forward through having all that ticking along smoothly in the background as well so I see that’s one of my key goals as CEO. 

Lisa: Thank you. Well thank you very much for joining us Andrew, is there anything else that you’d like to say? 

Andrew: Well really I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank all donors, supporters, volunteers, Partners, funders who have helped us in the last 40 years to continue to do that as we continue to face head on the challenges that will come along to us in the next 40 years. Hopefully everyone feels they’re as motivated by the cause and the service, that unique cause and service, that we offer as I am, as the staff here at Penny Brohn are, and we continue to ask that you stay with us, support us, and watch us evolve and be even more successful in the future. 

Lisa: Thank you very much.