Impact management and cancer breakthroughs

One of the biggest medical stories of the year so far was last week’s announcement that a new gene test can be used through which “70% of women with the most common form of early stage breast cancer can be spared the agony of chemotherapy". The method applied in the new cancer research is a perfect case study for anyone interested in impact management.

Much like complex medicines, the majority of change-oriented human services are not single-hit remedies but rather combined intervention packages that combine to create an effect over time. An employability scheme may involve life-skills training, mock interviews and work experience. A drug rehab scheme may bring together medication with one-to-one counselling and group therapy. You’ll be able to think of many more examples.  

An impact management approach always strives to ask not simply “what is our success rate” but to go deeper asking “what can we discover about who our intervention is and isn’t successful for, and why”. That’s the question that drove the breast cancer research team to make their breakthrough. They discovered that for the majority of women treated the chemotherapy element of the intervention proved to be wholly ineffective and unnecessary. So is this a question that your organisation is giving due consideration to?  

At Goodlabs we believe that a disciplined approach to service delivery, supported by appropriate data collection and the opportunity for the delivery team to regularly reflect together on results is essential to generating these sort of breakthrough insights.

Finally, a related ethical question worth considering is, “If you discovered tomorrow that an element of your service provision is ineffective for a certain client group – what would you do?” What if that service is part of a commissioning package for which you are well paid? How likely would you be to implement changes to your model, and how quickly? Would you begin to screen out certain clients from your service – after all, why waste their time and yours? Could you re-design aspects of your service to better meet the needs of those for whom it is found to be ineffective?

All vital questions that today’s social leaders need to be wrestling with! Do leave a comment to let me know if any of this resonates with you. 

The Art of Impact

I’m looking forward to presenting at the annual YMCA Chief Executives Network conference later this week. My focus will be on the recent Impact Management project I’ve been doing for YMCA Humber and YMCA North Tyneside.

Kicking off the session I want to face the fact that for those in the business of restoring damaged lives ‘Impact’ is a pretty bizarre choice of word. It is defined as “forcible contact or collision; the act of striking against”. As anyone who’s had a prang in their car knows that impact leaves a noticeable impression. The force can produce an unwanted change in shape. So how can this be a positive thing?

This is why we need to place the idea of Impact within the wider discipline of Impact Management. The positive potential of Impact is unleashed when it is carefully controlled and directed. Think about the way a sculptor skilfully rests the chisel against the rock before striking with just the right amount of force. Deploying a lucid imagination, a trained eye and the repetition of artfully applied blows beauty is slowly revealed. 

When considered this way Impact Management suddenly feels like a perfectly appropriate way to describe a process of personal transformation.

Of course every metaphor has its limitations and I won’t be wanting to give the CEO’s gathered the impression that their organisation’s clients are lifeless boulders. What I do want to do however is to help people to see that Impact Management is not an obscure branch of science to be sub-contracted to spreadsheet-happy ex-accountants; rather it is an artisan process, concerned with deeply human subject matter.

I believe that if we can first conceive of Impact Management as an Art rather than a Science, then we will ensure that we keep in mind the necessity and intensity of personal investment required. In doing this we will avoid losing touch with the real people whose stories often remain hidden in the aggregate data. We will foster working environments for our teams that unlock the imagination they need to respond on a daily basis to the raw human material as they journey with clients in their process of restoration and lasting transformation.

Do let me know any thoughts you might have about the distinction between Impact as an Art and Impact as a Science. I’d love to hear from you.

Showing your Impact to Donors

When we give to charity we like to know that our donation is going to make an impact. Much of this is based on trust. We receive communication from the charity about the nature and extent of the work they're delivering and draw our conclusions from it. If we want to be particularly diligent, perhaps because we’re thinking about making a large donation, we might take a look at their last available annual report. Typically this will include a chart that seeks to offer a degree of transparency about how much it costs to run the charity (i.e. its administrative overheads) in relation to the amount spent on delivering its core mission, what we might call its interventions. 

On this basis all charities tend to look very similar. Trustee boards and executive teams know that donors don't like to see too much money being spent on overheads, expecting as much of their giving as possible to be directed to the ‘front line’. This is where understanding Impact makes all the difference.

The Charity annual report, increasingly referred to as an ‘Impact report’, will describe the nature and variety of work being undertaken, along with statistics about how much of it is happening and who is benefitting from it i.e. elderly people, children, donkeys etc. For an Annual Report to truly become an Impact Report it needs to give a clear picture of what is changing for the better as a result of its interventions.

An awkward, but legitimate question that a donors might ask, is:

• how often does the charity make an intervention without any change resulting?

We can explain this using the diagrams below.

Charity A and Charity B are involved in identical work, both with annual turnovers of £1 million. On the surface seem to be identically efficient – with 10% of their income going to overheads and the rest to interventions.

However, if we could see more deeply into the impact of the two charities we would see that Charity A has an 80% success rate and Charity B has a 50% success rate.

If a donor has £100 to give it would now be clear to which charity that donation would be most effectively directed. 

Finally, if the donor really wants to be assured that their giving will make the maximum impact then it would also be good to know what the expected success rate is within that particular sector. For example, charities working to rehabilitate ex-prisoners may be delighted if half of those they work with to go straight. If the focus of the charity is helping unemployed school leavers to get jobs then the expected rate of impact might be more like 80%.

Goodlabs believes that if charities will be more transparent with their donors about these issues, then greater trust will result, which is essential to a long-term donor engagement strategy.  

If you run a charity and would like help in demonstrating your Impact to potential donors then drop us a line at impact@goodlabs.uk

Empowering Places

Goodlabs is delighted to have joined the Approved Provider pool for the Empowering Places programme from Power to Change. We will be offering consultancy support in the areas of Impact Management, Stakeholder Engagement and Advocacy. 

A Big Lottery-funded programme, Empowering Places has been developed in order to offer local organisations strategic support and resources that will empower local groups to grow community businesses, working towards a vision of transformed places.

Power to Change works to build ‘better places through community business.’ Through their partnership working around Britain they demonstrate that community businesses revive local assets, protect the services people rely on, and address local needs. The strategic delivery partners working with Power to Change to deliver the Empowering Places programme are Co-operatives UK, the New Economics Foundation and CLES (Centre for Local Economic Strategies).

YMCA Impact Management

If Impact can be measured then it can also be managed. That is the core conviction of the Impact Management Programme, the latest offering from Access - the foundation for social investment. Goodlabs founder Matt Wilson was alerted to the opportunity via membership of Social Value UK, the innovative organisation championing best practice in social impact reporting. 

Goodlabs joined forces with another North East based social impact consultancy - Helmepark - to put together a successful £50,000 bid to the Impact Management Fund on behalf of two regional YMCA centres. YMCA North Tyneside has been serving the industrial communities along the river Tyne for over a century, supporting successive generations through cycles of social and economic change. It has continuously evolved as an organisation in order to best serve the changing needs of its communities, and in order to maintain its own financial sustainability. YMCA Humber has a very similar heritage and through its three supported accommodation locations in Grimsby provides over 100 bed-spaces every night of the year.  

The journey we're involved in together is helping the teams at the YMCA centres to manage their impact more effectively through bespoke new impact management tools embedded within an increasingly well-informed impact culture. 

Strategic CSR review for Muckle LLP

Click to download reflection paper "The ABC of CSR".

Goodlabs were recently engaged by leading North East commercial law firm Muckle LLP to undertake a strategic review of their Corporate Social Responsibility. The company, headquartered in Newcastle, is already widely recognised for its achievements in CSR and it so speaks of the ambitions of the senior partners that they are determined to make an even bigger social impact in the years ahead. 

The strategic review considered the full breadth of activity being undertaken by the firm  - from operating its own philanthropic foundation, through to pro-bono legal support to grassroots charities, its strong environmental agenda, a commitment to the flourishing of local schools and releasing staff for 'community days'.  

In its final 12,000 word report Goodlabs commended the firm's Ambition, Breadth and Consistency. A wide range of recommendations were made to the partners all designed to answer the question: 

"How can more people’s lives change for the better because Muckle is a law firm that leads the way in CSR?”

Upon receiving the final report senior partner Hugh Welch commented:  

"The depth of analysis and thought in the overall report were really quite exceptional. It has been of immeasurable benefit to us and I am hugely grateful to Goodlabs for a remarkable piece of work.”

A short reflection paper summarising the learning from the review can be downloaded by clicking here.

Strategic Impact Review - Carers' Service

North Tyneside Carers' Centre works to the motto "If someone depends on you, you can depend on us". They estimate that there 22,000 people in their borough providing unpaid support for a family member, friend, partner or neighbour - people who simply could not manage without that support due to the effects of their illness, disability, substance misuse or mental health. 

Goodlabs were asked to undertake a strategic review of the social impact of the charity, as a foundational building block in the process of producing of a new five-year strategic plan 2018-2023. In the five years since the publication of their 2012-2017 strategic plan the funding landscape has changed dramatically. Social care funding within the local authority has been subject to major cuts due to the climate of Austerity. In this context organisations like NTCC that provide commissioned services are being required to demonstrate the outcomes of their work more precisely than ever before. 

We commended the charity for the quality of its leadership and senior management, for being a well-connected organisation (in terms of having good relationships in place with key funders and commissioners), and for its sophisticated services and processes that have been intelligently thought through with good levels of adoption and compliance.

Amongst our strategic recommendations we discussed ways to make improvements to the Theory of Change running through the various services; new methods for quantifying demand reduction on publicly funded services in health and social care; and new partnership possibilities within the Young Carers services - with a special focus on improving school attendance and educational outcomes for young people with caring responsibilities at home. 

Wallsend Children's Community

Project lead Wayne Daley with pupils of Churchill Community College Wallsend promoting the community survey in the local press.

Goodlabs was delighted to be appointed to undertake an important piece of community research on behalf of Wallsend Children's Community - an exciting new partnership with Save the Children. The project belongs to a wider network of Children's Communities around the country inspired by the highly successful 'Harlem Children's Zone' model.  

Still in its early stages the leadership team at Wallsend Children's Community required insights into the 'Attitudes, Behaviours and Capacity' of residents, particularly with respect to volunteering. The target post code of NE28 consists of five electoral wards and around 20,000 households.  

The survey, branded 'Great NE28' received coverage in the local press and revealed valuable findings including: 

• A large proportion of residents are involved in either volunteering, or giving unpaid help to someone (child, older person or someone with a disability).

• A larger than expected group of those surveyed reported that they would consider volunteering locally if asked.

• Almost everyone: Admires those who give some of their time to helping others; Believes that volunteering is good for the person doing the helping, as well as those being helped; Believes that a strong community is a place where everyone helps each other.

• A small minority: Believe that It is important to help your family and friends but it should end there; Don’t see why people volunteer, i.e if it takes time and effort you should get paid. 

The Enterprise Village - Tees Valley

Architect's impression of the new facility.

Low productivity is one of the major economic challenges facing the UK, and raising it is an issue that requires innovative collaborations between the public, private and charity sectors. The Enterprise Village, to be located on south side of Stockton-on-Tees, is gearing up to address the challenge with an exciting new approach.

Goodlabs are supporting the team at Tees Valley Community Projects to build on their prior success in providing accredited training, delivering children's work, youth work, family work and wellbeing services. The Enterprise Village will transform the lives of thousands of Tees Valley residents through developing economic and social potential side by side in a uniquely resourced location.

It will be a collaborative community within which local entrepreneurs grow their businesses parallel to disengaged young adults taking significant steps towards entering the regional workforce. Others who have experienced major interruptions to their career through redundancy and illness will be retrained and upskilled.

The Enterprise Village will be strategically located off the A66 in Eaglescliffe, Stockton-on-Tees, adjacent to The Oakwood Centre – home of Tees Valley Community Church. It will be an attractive energy-efficient campus of workshops, serviced office space, training rooms, event facilities and community wellbeing services. Instead of the hard-edged formality that is a feature of large scale business and educational facilities the Village will emphasise accessibility and an atmosphere  of hope, opportunity and collaboration.

Goodlabs is supporting the development of the detailed research case and business planning required to underpin the £4.5 million fundraising target. We secured £72,000 of investment-readiness funding for the charity in order to support this work. 

Architectural visualisation above provided courtesy of Grace Choi Architecture.   

From the USA to the UK

Life is unpredictable and any of us can be hit by a crisis at any time. When these unexpected events bring with them a serious financial impact they are referred to as ‘income shocks’. Over a quarter of the UK adult population will have suffered an income shock in the last year. Millions have neither ‘rainy day’ savings nor access to family and friends who may offer temporary assistance in such a time of crisis.  

Without an adequate social security safety net many people’s last resort is high-cost borrowing in the form of credit cards, payday loans, overdrafts and pawnbrokers. This toxic combination of an unexpected financial challenge arriving suddenly in the absence of protective factors pushes as many as one million people per year into serious problem debt.

Common Change has been addressing these issues in communities around the USA for over a decade and in late 2016 requested our help to extend their operation to the UK. As well as taking care of the formalities of registering with the Charities Commission and establishing a UK banking operation Goodlabs has been able to provide strategic support with the adaptation of the Common Change model into the British cultural and regulatory context. 

Triple Bottom Line

It's almost impossible to conceive of the recent emergence of the Social Value and Social Impact without giving credit to the idea of ‘Triple Bottom Line’ (aka TBL/3BL), a revolutionary business philosophy pioneered by John Elkington in the mid 1990’s. TBL argues that successful and sustainable organisations create (or destroy) value within three distinct but inter-related arenas – social, economic and environmental.

Economic success: The financial bottom line remains the ultimate barometer of the performance of an organisation, whatever the sector it operates in. It is of no surprise then that there are over 300,000 accountants in the UK. Goodlabs is comfortable working with accountants, but is in no way seeking to duplicate their work.

Environmental success: Increased regulation as well as changes in public mood have led to the emergence of a busy environmental consultancy sector ensuring that organisations meet relevant sustainability standards. It is becoming increasingly common for firms to produce a ‘sustainability report’ alongside the publishing of their annual accounts. Goodlabs is comfortable working with consultants in this sector, but again is not seeking to duplicate their work either.

Social success: The social dimension of TBL remains poorly defined and under-resourced. Organisations that wish to demonstrate that they are having a positive impact within human society, for individuals, families and communities, cannot draw on the same levels of expertise that can be found in the financial and environmental sectors. Where expertise does exist the fees make accessing help cost-prohibitive for all but the largest corporations.

This is precisely the gap that Goodlabs now fills...

The New Convergence

As we progress further into the 21st century we are witnessing increasing convergence between the public, private and voluntary sectors. The public sector is commissioning out more of its work. Private sector and voluntary sector often bid against one another for the contracts. The effect is that charities are needing to become more commercially astute and businesses are needing to become more socially aware. A new common ground is emerging in the process, a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between costs, impacts, outcomes and value creation. The ability to articulate, measure, report and communicate social value, as distinct from financial bottom line, is becoming an essential requirement.