Introducing the Team: Kirsten Wolff

I joined Hyphen8 in July as a Service Design Consultant, after 15 years of working for the National Lottery Community Fund. During that time I’d had several roles, starting as a Funding officer, then developing funding processes as a Business Improvement Partner and finally as a Service Designer working on designing the Community Fund’s funding products and Salesforce system.

I’d previously worked with Hyphen8 and found it great to partner up with a consultancy that had excellent knowledge of grant-making and a refreshingly informal approach that meant we all felt part of one big team. So when a Service Design role came up at Hyphen8 I decided it was time for a change.

The first few weeks were a bit of a culture shock. Moving from working in-house in a large non-departmental public body to the fast-paced environment of a much smaller consultancy was an eye-opener! Luckily due to my previous experience I had some familiarity with Salesforce and a lot of familiarity with grant-making, but I wasn’t used to working with multiple organisations at once and picking up lots of different projects at different stages.

However, the team were really warm and welcoming, and it’s been enlightening to learn about all the different methods of grant-making our clients use and the worthwhile causes they support. It’s certainly a great privilege to have the opportunity to gain huge amounts of learning about what works and what doesn’t and to share best practice with our clients and the wider grant-making community.

There’s lots to get excited about in future. Hyphen8 is continuing to grow its service design practice and there are so many opportunities to support funders to think about how well their service is working for them and their users. Making sure that the processes used to make grants don’t hinder access to funding and dilute its impact is part of what I’m here to do. There’s such a variety of work; whether we’re supporting a client to consider how to improve their grant-making process before moving it to Salesforce, re-designing a form or helping clients to think about innovative new ways to deliver funding.

Grant-making as a service is something I’m passionate about and I hope I can make a difference through my career with Hyphen8.