16th January 2025
Dougie Pomfret is manager of Fit4Life, a not-for-profit social enterprise with locations in Maryport, Workington and Whitehaven. They offer specialist exercise and gym coaching for over 50s, particularly for those most at risk of serious conditions such as coronary heart disease, pulmonary disease, stroke, asthma and diabetes.
Following the Covid-19 pandemic, Dougie was keen to modernise Fit4Life and reach more people.
“We knew we needed to update our website as it was out of date and difficult to navigate,” says Dougie. “We rely on health professionals referring into us – a lot of them will look at our website to find out what we do.”
Dougie worked with Kevin Beynon from Charity Technology, who Cumbria Community Foundation have partnered with to deliver expert digital advice, and together they identified a number of areas where funding from Bedrock Digital could help.
“The biggest need we identified was to move away from paper; we had filing cabinets full of registers and other records. Whenever we needed to collate data, such as for funding bids, we would have to go through them manually and create spreadsheets which was very time consuming.
“Thanks to Bedrock Digital, we now have a digital CRM [Customer Relationship Management] system which means we can share data across our centres. This improves the service for customers as well as making processes much easier for staff, for example managing payment records, monitoring attendance, and being alerted when a client stops attending so that we can offer support.
“We were also able to purchase three tablets – one for each centre – which can be taken onto the gym floor. This means we are able to access individual records and exercise programmes much easier, rather than them needing to pause their workout to find a member of staff and ask questions. We’ve also been able to invest in a new laptop which means we can work remotely when required and join networking meetings.
“Having access to free expert advice as well as the grant funding has been great; it has taken the burden off and enabled us to focus on achieving our mission of helping people rather than spending lots of time on admin. I would recommend the Bedrock Digital scheme to any groups looking to modernise or who need additional digital resources to fulfill their ambitions.”
Bedrock Digital is part of Transforming West Cumbria (TWC) which is funded through Sellafield Ltd’s Social impact multiplied (SiX) programme.
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