Helping charities
find their spark
We are a purpose-driven market research and insight agency. We partner with incredible organisations helping to discover the unique human spark that will inspire people to fall for them, their cause and their brand
Human insight that tackles social issues, inspires positive change, and fights inequality:
A spark
can change
everything
We help charities, social movements and purpose-driven brands change the world by creating deeper and more meaningful relationships with their audiences.
Create chemistry
with your audience
By putting your audience first, we discover the spark that will make them fall for your cause.
We ask the right questions.
And we listen very carefully to the answers.
We combine the latest research and insight techniques with our experience helping the UK’s best loved charities to innovate, fundraise and build their brands.
And by uncovering the genuine, ground-breaking human-centred insight that underpins your cause, we’ll give you the tools to make change happen.
We learn what your audience cares about, and why they care about you. Then we use this emotional insight to redefine the role you play in their lives – and create enduring connections.
Tom's our go-to expert for qualitative insight and planning. His insight work always gets right to the guts of a challenge and audience, with tensions galore that provide real magic.
He really gets the charity sector, and brings all his experience to any brief. And with all that experience comes a real empathy for the organisations we work with, meaning that when challenges arise he adapts his approach without compromising the quality of insight.
Tom's also an amazing sounding board for when we're putting together proposals too. Plus, to top it off, a really nice guy.
Amy Nield,
Senior Strategist,
Consider Creative
The team at Chemistry went above and beyond and having worked both charity and agency side, their sector knowledge and the depth and breadth of their expertise as research practitioners really shines. They can grapple with complex strategic questions to deliver something practical and actionable, engaging stakeholders across teams in the process.
We’ve gone on to commission other new product development projects and to have engaged them in early-stage development of a new supporter segmentation for RNIB. They’re smart, sensitive, unafraid to challenge (nicely) and a delight to work with – highly recommended!
Caroline Beard
Innovation Director
RNIB
We’re experts in the art of human chemistry
We offer a unique, people-centric approach, for a unique sector. As charity sector specialists, we have a deep understanding of the unique challenges the sector is facing.
Radical shifts in demography and generational values. Concerns around data privacy. Consumer brands claiming the ‘doing good’ space as their own. These are challenging times for the sector. And when every penny counts, innovation can seem an expensive luxury.
But over 18 years working with the UK’s best-loved charities, we’ve learned that, when charities put their audiences first, they can connect in a profound and meaningful way.
That’s because charities aren’t like consumer brands. They don’t have an obvious tangible product. Instead, they are in the business of empathy: they exist to make people to care.
By helping you understand your audience, and how to really put them at the heart of what you do, we can help you tap into this unique value proposition. That’s the secret to unlocking deeper, longer-lasting relationships.
Our work
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Inter-generational fundraising NPD to inspire growth
Creating a set of insight driven inter-generational grandparenting innovation platforms for NPD – to unlock diverse fundraising opportunities that the Children’s Society can own, including a launched subscription product
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A unifying brand insight to give inspiration, clarity and purpose
Uncovering a unifying insight that gives the brand clarity, purpose and inspires a fresh approach to fundraising – using digital communities, cultural semiotics and immersive ethnography
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Unique human insight that has transformed mass fundraising
Refugees are human beings: uncovering a unifying brand insight to spark a deeper connection and bring new audiences into the movement – that has yielded impressive fundraising results
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Audience-centric insight to creatively re-imagine mass fundraising at Election time
Creating a focused fundraising narrative for the local election campaign in 2021 to engage a new audience - powered by deep audience understanding and behavioural change insight
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Immersive human insight to crystallise the strategic opportunity for a radically changing humanitarian aid world
Delivering ‘live appeal insights’ through digital communities to iteratively shape the Ukraine fundraising humanitarian appeal – by unlocking the core human insight that will unlock key audience opportunities for years to come
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Transformational brand and cultural insight to inspire organisational purpose and drive
Unearthing the spark and moment of human magic that makes people fall in love with the MND cause – to give purpose, vigour and drive to reimagine the brand and bring a much wider audience onboard
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Values-based audience persona insight to power real change for the volunteer movement
Understanding volunteers’ needs and values to fuel genuine human-centered experience design that has delivered cultural change and helped the organisation really feel who their audience is
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Deploying organisational ethnography to evaluate the impact of a critical learning programme
Evaluating a series of high-profile learning programmes about diversity and culture for the Home Office through in-depth organisational ethnography
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Creative territory development to inspire a mass audience about a unique grass-roots social movement
Unlocking a collection of creative territories for a grass roots cancer movement that have become the basis to deliver strategic change and scale growth by being audience-conceived that have become the basis for strategic change– with their target audience at the very heart of the unique movement
We work with many of the UK’s most-loved charities on a host of strategic insight challenges. Using the latest qualitative insight techniques we discover the spark that will make your audience fall for you. We put them first and then use this emotional insight to redefine the role they play in your lives - to help you communicate, innovate and grow.
“It’s been excellent working with Chemistry over the last 6 months and we would highly recommend them. The coherent, detailed profiles and range of insights they’ve identified will be invaluable in helping us find new supporters and shape new messaging to connect to them. Their flexibility and willingness to adapt to our needs made this project incredibly easy for us and has given us an even better end result than we expected.”
Amy Neale,
Supporter Acquisition Manager,
The Refugee Council
Chemistry provided us with a huge wealth of information about those who are closest to our cause, really getting to the heart of who they are, and why we matter to them. Their in-depth sector knowledge helped guide us throughout the process and meant they fully understood our challenge. The outputs they delivered have been invaluable in helping us to shape our brand for the better. We look forward to working with Tom again in the future.
Lisa Belloni,
Senior Brand & Strategic
Marketing Manager,
Action for Children
Our services
We use the latest qualitative, immersive and strategic planning insight techniques to uncover what your target audience think, feel and do
Each insight project is fully bespoke.
Drawing on qualitative research tools including:
Focus Groups, In-depth Interviews, Digital Communities, Co-creation, Ethnography, Stakeholder Workshops, Cultural Semiotics, Asset Analysis and many other strategic planning methodologies.
Tom is a trusted 'go to' insight specialist for my team at the British Red Cross. He is quickly able to get a good understanding of our organisation and strategic priorities as well as providing a tailored approach to delivering actionable insight. He is both great to work with as a supplier, but we also trust that he will communicate kindly and with empathy with our supporters when delivering research.
His research outputs always go above and beyond what we expect and have been instrumental in making strong insight led decisions for our supporters and our organisation
Lesley Pinder,
Fundraising Strategy
& Innovation Director,
British Red Cross
Tom has been a pleasure to work with over the last year. He goes above and beyond with every aspect of the work he does. It is fantastic to see Tom’s passion for the work he does, it really rubs off on others around him. He unlocked some really interesting insights and information during the work that Tom did with MOVE Charity and we are looking forward to using this as the charity moves to the next phase of development and growth.
We would highly recommend Tom and his work to help you take huge strides forward with valuable insights behind you. Thank you Tom for all your hard work and input.
Gemma Hillier-Moses
MOVE Charity
Founder & CEO
Our 6 specialisms
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Audience immersion
Experiential techniques to get you out of your ‘charity bubble’ to live, feel and breathe your target audience! Whether it’s experiencing a mass participation event with your audience, attending a demonstration with them or volunteering with them – it’s immersive and authentically powerful.
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Insight training
Insight training, mentoring and inspirational programmes to help you become genuinely insight-led - everyday. Through our human-centered approach we inspire, empower and equip anyone to be ‘insight-led’ so that all of their decisions and strategic developments have your audience at the very heart!
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Innovation insight
From exploring innovation opportunities, crystalizing market insight, to uncovering unmet needs and audience opportunities to fuel your fundraising aspirations. We utilise ethnography, participant observation and digital techniques to ensure evidence drives development.
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Audience strategy
Insight consultancy to understand who your audience is, why you matter to them, where they are, and how to reach them – to identify new opportunities, possibilities or crystalize developments. This might be in-depth audience persona development, a market segmentation of your potential supporters, or even a defined audience strategy.
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Brand insight
We use a finessed explorative insight technique to deeply understand your brand – utilising ethnography, digital communities and cultural semiotics. This is all about honing in on why you matter to people, what place you have - and how you can create a discriminating proposition in the sector
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Insight enrichment
Specific insight techniques to leverage the insight you already know – to harvest and develop it, join the dots then co-create it with you to give you the best ROI. Either through desk research of current assets you may know, to stakeholder workshops, story safaris and knowledge amnesty sessions with your team – ensuring everything goes further!
About us
Hey, I’m Tom
I’ve been a strategic insight planner for 18 years. Honing my craft in the commercial world, working with global brands like Samsung, Diageo, Vodafone and Tropicana. I always had this itch to help causes and movements that I truly believed in – and I knew I had something unique to offer them.
I live in West Norwood with my wife Amy, my three-year-old daughter and son who is almost a year old! I’m a proud Labour Party campaigner, a Norwood FoodBank volunteer, and miserable Spurs fan…
I became an inhouse insight specialist: first at Breast Cancer Now and then at Save the Children, where I helped embed an insight-first culture, and led many strategic insight projects to understand our supporters.
Then I realised that the agencies we were working with didn’t understand the business of fundraising. They didn’t get the intricate challenges our sector faces: the unique value proposition, declining returns of traditional channels, the impact of shifting generational values… never mind the difficulties of getting insight through the organisation to deliver change.
Why we can help you
I set up Chemistry Insight specifically to offer qualitative insight consultancy and strategic planning to charities.
We’re experts in the business of empathy.
We’re imaginative but pragmatic. And we combine commercial savvy with a human outlook.
I’ve been privileged to help some amazing causes and social movements find their spark - like the British Red Cross, DEC, RNIB, The Labour Party and the Refugee Council. I’d love to do the same for you.
If your organisation is
looking to find its spark,
we’d love to help!
Contact
Come and
say hi!
Email:
tom@chemistry-insight.com
Address
443 Norwood Road,
West Norwood,
SE27 9DQ
Phone
+44(0)7788421003