What does it take to build an impact-driven organisation? In this blog, I get back to basics to hear from leaders working on the ground to respond to local needs and challenges. Speaking to leaders of established small and medium sized charities, social enterprises, and community-based organisations in Sussex, we explored the individual as a leader, including what drives them and their organisations on the journey to achieve their purpose. These smaller organisations, less fixed in their structures and systems, reveal insights about their successes and failures, what differentiates their organisations, how they learn and improve, and how they account externally for their impact, in order to work towards the possibility of positive impact in the world.
As societal challenges grow, and government resources decline, there is increasing focus on the role of non-government and private sector organisations to tackle a wide range of social and environmental issues. With around 170,000 UK charities and 100,000 social enterprises, combining with a greater concern with social and environmental impact from businesses, there is the opportunity for organisations to define themselves in terms of purpose and their ability to create positive impact in the world.
At the same time there is a growing concern with ‘green-washing’ and ‘impact-washing’ organisations seeking to gain commercial advantage through promoting their supposed ethical credentials. The charity sector is also under scrutiny in relation to the quality of its work and the value of services provided through donations.
Organisations need to differentiate themselves by delivering on their good intentions. The central question is what does it take to build organisations that are effective in creating the positive change in the world that society demands?
1. Personal drive and sense of purpose
The 9 leaders come from a range of organisations dealing with social and environmental issues. In all cases their aim is to make a difference, and their work is an expression of this. For most there is a personal back-story which explains their journey to where they are today, linked to their values and in some cases lived experience, for example of addiction, mental health challenges, or of failures in education, which have lead to a vision for how things could be different. They feel engaged and believe what they are doing is valuable. They are proud of what they have achieved, whilst recognising that there is a long way to go to achieve their vision.
Their starting point is what they want to achieve and they then seek to develop a way to do this – both in terms of what the organisation does, but also how it does this – from its business model to staff and how it positions itself in the community.
This purpose explicitly drives the decisions the organisation makes, such as how to ensure outreach to people who can most benefit from the services offered. Some organisations take the road less travelled, focusing on people who are hard to reach or problems that others have not been able to solve. For example, Team Domenica targets young people who are ‘furthest from employment’ because they need a level of support that would exclude them from being employed by others.
2. Humility, experimentation and learning
Most of the leaders did not feel that they had the answers. Their humility and desire to learn stood out. Whilst they expressed a clear idea of the challenges they are trying to address, their strategies for doing so are adaptive, and the solutions and ways of working evolve. They emphasised the need to connect to the people affected, to try things out and to learn about what works (and what does not). Mary (MaryGold) explained this in terms of starting with an idea and then building a solution through the input of people with experience and then trying things out. Reyna (The Old Boat Community Centre) described how she came into her role without clear ideas of what was needed and focused on hearing first from the community through an annual survey. She also emphasised how important it is to allow people to change their minds.
Whilst they broadly feel that they are making a difference, this comes from having made mistakes, and that they will continue to do so, but also to iterate along the way.
“A lot of the last 5 years has been learning. My preconceived ideas of how to do things were not right. We have to be adaptive.” (Chris, Not Saints)
Keith highlighted the practical challenges of fostering an organisational culture that fosters change through an openness to a level of risk. Adam (AudioActive) similarly emphasised the need to have staff that are not afraid to fail.
3. Person-centred approach
Core to these organisations is the need to connect to and learn from the people being served is as part of the adaptive/learning process. This ‘person-centred’ focus solves with rather than solving for communities. The leaders I spoke to are connected to the people they serve. Some of them come from a similar background, but all are interested and focused on understanding more about the problems and concerns of the communities they serve. Chris (Not Saints), for example, talked about creating the space to develop relationships that go beyond music with the musicians they work with.
Perhaps as a result of being smaller organisations there is a sense of being deeply rooted in the communities and with the issues they are working with. Whilst there is a process of engaging with the people they serve to understand what is wanted/needed, systems for ensuring ‘voice’ and ‘feedback’ – especially for the most marginalised, are mostly not formalised. Many organisations are thinking about how to strengthen this aspect. Team Domenica and GraceEyre are further along their journey than others. They are concerned with questions about who makes decisions about and drives organisational focus and strategy. This is now evolving into a conversation about power.
4. Formalising processes and approach
The systems of these organisation has taken shape over time, driven by experience. Rather than trying to put everything in place from the start, working practices and systems have developed alongside learning about needs and what works.
There is a desire to be more systematic by some. Increasing clarity on how the organisation works, and ensuring the quality of delivery of activities enables a clearer focus on outputs, with a knowledge that these outputs are what drives outcomes.
This process of formalisation is recognised as important as organisations grow. To expand the pool of people who can deliver the organisation’s services there is a need to document what matters, how the organisation works and what quality looks like. This is particularly important for organisations that seek to scale their model into new locations. Team Domenica recently made a decision not to expand into a new city due to lack of capacity to be able to manage the quality of the work. With the larger organisations there is a sense that whilst the need to learn and adapt is still a strong force, there is more of a focus on being clear about their ‘model’. This defines the approach and what the organisations identifies as important in what they do, rather than necessarily having a standardised set of activities.
Organisations may continue to evolve, but being able to define what is important can help in managing quality which can enable scaling the organisation as it moves away from staff who are deeply embedded in the organisation and how it works, to bringing on board new people. A sense that the ‘details matter’ was echoed.
AudioActive feel that flexibility to respond to the individual is at the core of their approach, for example in their project using music mentoring to tackle serious youth violence. A structured curriculum would not work. Yet, they have many mentors who each take their individual approach, so there is a need to build a common understanding and some core principles for how they work.
Clarity of purpose and identifying what is core to an organisation’s work in order to deliver impact is also important in shaping strategic decisions. Worthing Table Tennis club has faced a tension between whether to focus on core club activities or to focus more efforts on targeted outreach to groups who will benefit from participating in table tennis.
Organisations spend years developing and evolving their approach – the people-centred learning process leads to a clarity and identification of key activities that are seen to be important in achieving impact.
5. Differentiating based on impact
There is frustration by a lack of recognition by others, including funders and partner organisations, of the value of their work. Reyna talked of their café being treated as a for-profit business even though it is part of a social purpose charity.
Being clear about what is ‘the model’ and the rationale, outcomes and costs associated with this (whilst including flexibility and adaptability) is an important element of differentiating what an organisation does. This demonstrates value to external stakeholders in a context where many impact-driven organisations are in competition with others for resources or contracts.
TeamDominica, for example, offers mentored apprenticeships to help people with learning disabilities transition into work, but what differentiates them from other apprenticeship models is that they have identified the need for a pre-stage of training and support prior to the mentorship as well as post-mentorship support. Their model takes longer, is more costly, but achieves high rates of success in terms of transition into employment following the apprenticeship and long-term retention of this job.
A key limitation for organisations is the constraints created by the need to raise money. This is particularly the case with charities that depend on commissioned work, where the parameters of what they do are defined to a large extent by what is commissioned. Here again the ability of charities to communicate both their impact, and how they achieve it, can support strategic decision-making in relation to opportunities and activities. It can also provide a credible basis for engaging with commissioners and others in order to shape the funding environment.
GraceEyre have developed a Charter together with people with learning disabilities and autism that sets out the ambitions of the charity to improve the lives of the people it supports. It is a powerful tool for communicating needs to commissioners and others.
6. Managing and reporting on impact
The leaders all believe that what they are doing is valuable and this is important to them. Many are also concerned with what more they could do to maximise their impact.
For some there are external constraints such as funding, recruiting skilled staff, increased need/demand following government cuts. Eva (GraceEyre) feels that as organisation they have built a staff team that knows what is needed to be effective, but they are frustrated by the demands of funders and the external reporting.
Some desire better information about their own outcomes so as to improve their impact. However, many of the leaders interviewed do not feel this as an internal need. Perhaps for small organisations the closeness to the people they serve, combined with a focus on learning and adapting, means that staff can see the results of their work every day. They do not need to formally measure to see this.
There is a perceived external need to be able to provide credible evidence for impact to external stakeholders, and a sense that this is likely to increase as opportunities to be data driven expand. Reporting on impact is challenging for most and an area where many of the leaders lack confidence.
7. Conclusion: creating positive impact in an uncertain world
The context in which impact-driven organisations are working is getting tougher, with cuts in government services combining with challenges in recruiting trained staff. Resilience and adaptability is therefore key. Keith stressed the changes that Sustainable Sussex have had to make to their business model in response to such changing circumstances. Adam (AudioActive) is most proud of "surviving for 15 years since the economic downturn and expanding the organisation given cuts in youth services and music education”.
At the core of any organisation is its leadership and staff, and how they build organisations that are deeply connected to the people and communities they work with. Relationships are core – with the communities served and as a staff team. This involves listening and learning, adapting and creating impactful ways of working. It involves working with ‘data’ – whether informally or formally collected - to target and improve their practices, as well as to differentiate themselves and attract resources to support their work. It also includes good employment practices (e.g. living wage, flexibility of employment or dealing with issues staff face) and staff being part of defining how the organisation works and learns.
One after thought is the vision for the role of impact-driven organisations in the world. The leaders were focused on the specific positive changes that their organisations seek to make. There was little discussion about the wider impact that their organisations can have in the world, for example their environmental practice, governance and accountability, fostering collaboration to engage with broader community issues, or being a role model for others – practices increasingly becoming adopted by a range of businesses (such as those in the B-Corp movement that seek to ‘use business as a force for good (www.bcorporation.uk). Whilst organisations target a specific challenge or problem, it is important to also be good ‘citizens’ in an inter-connected and interdependent world.
The leaders interviewed
Reyna Kothari, Centre Manager, The Old Boat Corner Community Centre;
Keith Colin, Project Leader, Sustainable Sussex;
Eva Erikkson, Chief Executive, GraceEyre;
Pedro Santos, Director, Worthing Table Tennis Club;
Adam Joolia, CEO, AudioActive;
Chris de Banks, Managing Director Not Saints;
Dave Greenfield, TechTakeback;
Mary Murphy, Founder, MaryGold Grows;
Lisa Campbell-Squires, Programme and Strategy Director, TeamDomenica.
Thanks also to Community Works Brighton/Adur & Worthing for facilitating access to these individuals.
Anton Simanowitz is facilitating an Impact Community of Practice and 6-montn action-learning cohorts of impact-driven organisations in Sussex. Email antons@socialperformance.net for details.