Bold Statement Time: Most Philanthropic Capital is Spent Addressing Failure

Think about the charity campaigns that pull at your heartstrings: they call out for support when young people, old people, vulnerable people have already been failed by the system. This can be quite an attractive, romantic notion of charity, but in reality, you will achieve much more if you treat the root cause and not only the symptom.

You will achieve much more if you treat the root cause and not only the symptom.

As a social impact accelerator, it became clear that supporting projects that were already proven to work meant we weren't learning anything or contributing to change. Not only was there other funding available for these organizations, we were also seeing incremental change rather than the exponential change we wished to see.

We began to search out those big ideas that could create a lasting system change—ideas that address a gap or an opportunity that could change the way things are done. I don't want to frighten you off with phrases like “system change”—the monetary sums involved do not need to be huge. By exploring the positive impact the project you wish to back will have on the whole system—for example a $5,000 investment could result in $25,000 of positive impact and a $25,000 investment could result in a $1 million of positive impact and go on to attract ongoing funding from other interested partners.

Just like a typical business investment, there is nothing wrong with expecting a strong return on investment (ROI) on your purpose investments.

Ask Yourself These Simple Questions

“If this project was a startup business coming to us for seed funding, would we see enough growth potential in their idea to back it?”

“Will our investment bring us the returns we seek?”

“By backing this project is my/our investment going to change something meaningfully?”

Fun little aside: We were all immensely proud when Prince William and Catherine visited some of the projects we had worked to bring to scale in our first year as Big Change. Their visits brought much-needed publicity and awareness to these projects and the issues that we were hoping to address. When we moved to a social impact accelerator model to help us determine those very early stage “big idea” projects to invest in, we relied on what we called the “Will and Kate” test. This test was one based on absolute love and respect (Prince William's cousin is one of our Founders, after all) and was on the principle: Is this project one that William and Catherine would be seen visiting and supporting within the next 12 months? If “yes,” then we knew others would also support them and therefore they didn't really NEED us. The big idea was simply not risky and disruptive enough to benefit from the support and skill set Big Change had to offer. Simply put, if it was worthy of a “Will and Kate” visit, it didn't need our help.

That being said, naturally, there is an open Big Change invitation to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to pop down and visit any of our projects either now or in the future. Yes, we know we've just contradicted ourselves!

: LISTEN AND LEARN

If you don't understand the people that you want to help, you can waste a lot of money by giving big donations to new ideas. Given that our focus was the system around young people in the UK, we spent a lot of time listening to experts in the sector and on the frontline. We reached out to teachers, social workers, youth workers, psychologists, influencers, and young people, as well as policy and research experts, data experts, MPs, and charity experts. We wanted to identify the root causes of the issues. We listened. We learned. We then approached the whole sector from a position of strength in the form of knowledge.

If you are reading this as a businessperson (rather than a charity or a social enterprise), the same advice applies: seek advice and learn from the widest group of people possible.

Learn what worked well (and badly) on their purpose journeys and with their project—in turn, you can use that knowledge to get your projects to their next stage.

Seek advice and learn from the widest group of people possible.

In a nutshell, know enough to make good decisions. Surround yourself with good advisors. It's that simple. Would you simply hand over an investment check to a business working with a product, in a sector, in a country that you know absolutely nothing about? Unlikely. Why should investing in your purpose project be any different?

: TAKE BIG BETS—BE BOLD IN YOUR CONVICTIONS

This learning may not apply to everyone working within the WEconomy—not everyone may be in a position to take big financial bets. Remember, however, that you can agitate your bosses and colleagues—those who hold the purse strings. At Big Change our biggest and most nerve-wracking change came when we decided to BET BIG and BE BOLD. We had been averaging around £20,000 into organizations of £1 million and more turnover. Our major shift was to turn that into an average gift of around £150,000 directed to much, much smaller organizations. I'm not going to lie—we were more than a little nervous.

That is until we met Josh MacAlister. Josh was an inner-city teacher who grew increasingly frustrated that he was simply handing troubled kids over to social workers, who, for a variety of funding, political, and logistical reasons, were not providing the level of care those youngsters deserved. Josh knew that social work in Britain was facing a major challenge. But rather than holding his hands up and saying that's someone else's problem, he decided to try and change the system for the better.

Josh worked hard to get the funding to do research in the social care sector. On the back of that research, he developed a business plan and approached the British government.

He managed to secure support from the government to test a 3-year pilot project called Frontline, but only if the program also attracted independent money. They had a minimal amount of grant funding, but they needed financial support to raise awareness of the organization. In particular, he wanted to promote social work as a rewarding career for outstanding leaders and top graduates. Frontline's mission was to transform the lives of vulnerable children by recruiting and developing outstanding individuals to be the leaders in social work and broader society. (For our North American readers, think of Frontline as the equivalent of the Teach for America of social care.)

“Frontline is an amazing example that if you invest boldly at the right moment you can have extraordinary impact.”

We were blown away by Josh's drive, ambition, and his belief that it was the system (in this case social work) surrounding young people that needed to be changed, in order for those kids to thrive. It was our biggest grant to date and we felt strongly that it could not be just about giving the money. We wanted to get involved. We worked with them on their marketing, videos, and public launch, even pulling in Virgin people as a valuable resource for them. Our collaboration was rewarding on so many levels.

In 2012, we invested ₤215,000 (a massive amount to us at Big Change) to fund their pilot project. In 2016, they secured multi-million-pound investment from the government to roll out their program across the UK. Frontline is an amazing example that if you invest boldly at the right moment, you can have extraordinary impact.

Essie North, current Big Change M.D., sums up exactly how elated we felt when we heard the news:

“Today, the most satisfying feedback we get from our project partners is that by supporting them, when and how we did, we've influenced other organizations to do the same. An example of a similar model, but in the high-tech sector, would be the Y Combinator in Silicon Valley, which takes some of the best tech ideas and incubates them in those early stages with mentors. They can then access funding because they've proved their impact. Taking bold bets does mean you have to roll your sleeves up and get down and dirty sometimes.”

You'll experience some trepidation because you are leading the way and approaching charity from a different angle—but you will encourage others to follow and therefore bring about real change. So why not “Go Big or Go Home!”

: HAVE A CLEAR VISION

By early 2014, we were pretty proud of our work at Big Change—we were focusing our efforts in the system around “life skills” for young people in the UK and making real headway with our incredible partners. We had found our niche and approach. We were building our knowledge and confidence through supporting and learning from great projects. Virgin Unite had agreed to incubate us (just as we incubated our partners). We pitched our strategy, focus, and long-term plans. In turn, they agreed to support our overheads for 3 years, which provided us with the resources to be more proactive and continue to grow.

Our next opportunity (a.k.a. challenge) was to build a wider community outside our core group, not only to fundraise, but, just as important, to promote the change, we were fostering.

Around this time, a simultaneous brainwave of my brother Sam and cousin Noah provided the solution to not only our fundraising challenges, but also to helping to build a community around Big Change: the STRIVE CHALLENGE.

Strive is a multidisciplined, series of mass participation endurance events that pushed a group of Big Changers (yours truly included) to the limit both mentally and physically. Over the two major events so far we Strivers have: run 150km, cycled 3100km, hiked 350km, and swam 6km against some of the strongest currents in the world. A grand total of 3,606km—not for the faint-hearted.

To experience Strive and the incredible poetic talent that is Karl Lokko: Click for video

To promote the Strive Challenge to a wide audience, we had to be really clear on our messaging. After all, we were asking our participants to fundraise. But while drafting the website, it became apparent that what Big Change did could be confusing to others. Explaining the thread that tied together our Projects (each with its own brand), Big Change, and now Strive had become increasingly difficult. I'm sure many of you have experienced this issue whether you work for a charity, social enterprise, or business. Big Change needed to more clearly define its purpose.

“Strive is a ‘moment in time’ that brings together a community of change-makers, who are passionate about breaking the negative cycle so prevalent around young people today. Strive epitomizes the Big Change philosophy: ‘growth happens when you step out of your comfort zone to achieve bold ambitions. Magic happens when you do it with others.’ ”

—Sam Branson

Strive is 60 seconds: Click for video

The exercise was both necessary and rewarding. We followed all the tips you learned about in “Purpose 101” (we weren't joking when we said you would need to revisit your purpose several times as you grow and evolve!) and developed Big Change's purpose statement: “To help young people thrive in life, not just exams.”

When you get to a certain point—and you realize you are no longer embracing your core values the way you once did—take the time to revisit what you stand for. Your purpose statement will continue to evolve as your business does, but at its heart, it should be enduring. To quote myself: it is important to revisit your statement often to ensure you are still living up to it.

: SCALE YOUR IMPACT

Easier said than done, right?

By our fifth year, helped by funds secured through Strive and support from Virgin Unite, we had nailed our approach, areas of focus, and our messaging. Finally, we were ready to SCALE-UP.

To aid our growth and gain invaluable advice from people smarter than ourselves, we formed our “Advisory Board”: made up of amazing people from our key audience (entrepreneurs, venture capital, progressive philanthropists) who had experience scaling businesses, charities, and impact. They brought perspectives from different sectors that really helped to push our thinking in terms of how we set ourselves up now and how to scale in the future.

I may sound like a broken record, but reaching out and asking your networks, your partners, and your people how they think you are doing (as an individual, a business, or a charity) can have the biggest impact on what you go on to achieve. In our case, feedback helped to make us a more focused and effective partner, which directly impacted the amount of outside funding we have attracted.

On the eve of our fifth birthday, we had the confidence and belief that we knew what we were doing. We knew our focus. We had nailed our purpose. We had built an incredible community through Strive and our project partners. We were scaling and bringing on more people, and facing a whole new set of challenges.

We have always been keen to remain a small team punching above its weight, being smart about how we leverage the power of our network, rather than growing too big. A lot of our initial work and growth was organic and the result of a few passionate people who were living our values to their core. This worked well to a point, but created a bottleneck as we started to grow. As we scaled, we needed to enable others to think and act like Big Changers. We had to grow up and get the knowledge out of our heads and into systems (eek!).

Words such as process, templates, impact measurement tools, Scorecards, Theory of Change, and CRM/Salesforce tracking of our community became the norm in our office. You'll read more about Theory of Change later, and I talk about Scorecards and project finding and managing in “It's Time to Get Your Pitch On”—in essence, we set processes and structures in place that capture our ways of working so anyone could make changes “the Big Change way.”

RED FLAG alert: this is the point at which you can lose your culture. Make sure your process has your culture at the heart of it. Yes, learn from others, ask to use/copy their tools and systems, and even borrow an operations person for a day or two from a local company (remember it doesn't always have to be a cash donation that you ask for). But make sure they capture your own way of doing things, and leave room for creativity and adapting to context. Just don't forget to involve your team in designing these systems. Your people are your culture, after all. What is the point in introducing templates that do not reflect the language they use or their personalities? Always remember these tools are useful aids to achieving scale and growth: they should enhance your magic, not dampen it.

Having more structure in our day-to-day work by introducing these templates and tools has meant our larger team no longer needs to rely on one or two individuals to get the job done. They get on and do it brilliantly and with Big Change flair (even if they are new members). This, in turn, has freed up our Founders so they can explore the next layer of opportunity to create really big change in the future. For us, that next frontier is starting to unite brilliant people and organizations to work together around Reimagining Education. No rest for the wicked.

The learning journey should never stop as an individual, a business, a charity, or a social enterprise. After all, the Strive Challenge purpose statement sums it up rather nicely at this point:

“Growth happens when you step out of your comfort zone, magic happens when you do it with others.”

Growth happens when you step out of your comfort zone, magic happens when you do it with others.