Our client: British Council, the United Kingdom’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities
Duration: 12 months (2019-2020)
Final beneficiaries: 50 youth (aged between 18-35) from Egypt working in leadership positions at social enterprises, including some in the creative industries

The challenge

Developing Inclusive and Creative Economies (DICE) is a pilot programme that takes a holistic approach to addressing entrenched issues of economic and social exclusion. 

Through the collaboration of one UK organisation and one organisation from one of 6 countries, the intent is to co-design and co-deliver interventions that support the development of creative and social enterprises that specifically aim to:

• empower women and girls; 
• foster youth employment; and/or
• promote the inclusion and economic empowerment of disabled people or other marginalised groups.

Our solution

To support youth from Egypt working in leadership positions at social enterprises, including some in the creative industries, through our collaborative programme with ElRehla of a retreat camp. The youth will be sourced from Cairo, Alexandria, as well as various governorates outside these areas to ensure inclusivity. Following the camp, ElRehla and The Impact Collective designed and ran 3 workshops for 3 target audiences that will support the further group of the ecosystem as a whole on a systemic level. 

Our objective was to lead a nationwide initiative around impact investing in Egypt, so that is why we developed this project focused on social entrepreneurship and investment to support this need. Within this mission of developing an impact investing ecosystem is the need to develop the pipeline of impact entrepreneurs – which was the focus of the first intervention of the retreat. It is a crucial part for the rest of the ecosystem parts to strengthen the whole chain / bigger picture as impact investors often do not find investment-ready social enterprises.

The result

Throughout this year we were able to create a platform for social entrepreneurship and impact investing. We were able to support the pipeline of impact entrepreneurs which was the focus of our Public Camp then followed by three deeper roundtable discussions with entrepreneurs, Investors and corporates to create a tangible platform where these stakeholders can share their perspectives around impact investing in the local and global practices.

The achievements of this project was developing the impact ecosystem in Egypt through the following methods and achievements of each:

“Leading with Purpose” Impact Retreat: Brought together all key players of the impact ecosystem: youth and women lead social and creative enterprises, impact investors, beneficiaries for a connective, reflective and habit changing experience.

We designed the public camp around the idea of creating social change and impactful enterprises, where 84 of participants got the chance to share their experiences and create collaborations with other attendees.

Then we held three workshops with three different types of stakeholders in the area of impact investment.

1. Impact Investment Workshop: Sparked the conversation on what impact investments are, why are they profitable, how to approach the impact investment market; Attended by more than 52 attendees from different investment backgrounds that enriched the conversation about the different practices in Egypt.
2. Impact for Corporate Workshop: Promoted a more active usage of impact businesses in large corporates supply chains, as well as, to exploring how to best leverage on the CSR activities to be more inclusive for creative and social businesses; We found a good response from corporates to participate in this discussion, around 40 attendees from some of the big organizations attended. The round table discussion was followed by a breakout groups where we presented four success stories that succeeded in the usage of impact businesses in corporates.
3. ToT Impact Workshop: Targeted impact businesses and consultancies to explore how to best empower the businesses impact throughout their operations, how to track it best and how to use storytelling to acquire more customers and scale their businesses.

Our big achievement was in the huge interest that we found from different attendees in participating in these workshops and enriching the discussion: We planned to host 25 attendees in each workshop and we ended up hosting about double the number in each workshop.

Our superheroes:

Nadia Laabs

Francesca Pileggi

Get in touch to find out how we can supercharge your impact

Our client: GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH) – a German international development agency
Duration: 24 months (2018-2020)
Our end customer: 20 businesses in Egypt and their employees

The challenge

GIZ aims to support inclusive businesses in Egypt that will create new, high-quality employment for people living at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP).

Among GIZ’s targets is helping to scale up 20 micro, small and medium-sized businesses in the manufacturing industry. This required experts to work with a local delivery partner to design and implement a business accelerator.

Our solution

The Impact Collective put together a team with experience of supporting start-ups, designing and delivering training, developing accelerator programmes, and working with bottom of the pyramid businesses.

The programme was implemented in three phases:

1. Training the local delivery partner: We delivered 10 tailored ‘Training of Trainer’ modules on inclusive businesses and scale-up strategies, with a focus on improving selected ventures’ social and economic impact (Jan 2018 – Feb 2018).
2. Working with the partner to establish and run the accelerator: Under our supervision and guidance, the local partner prepared and set up the first round of the accelerator (May 2018 – Nov 2018). Takamol is a six-month scale-up programme supporting growth-stage, inclusive businesses in the manufacturing industries to grow, scale and increase social impact. The programme provides high-potential businesses with technical expertise, coaching, mentoring, peer-to-peer learning, network building and access to finance.
3. Supporting the partner to run the second cohort/year: In the final phase (from Jan 2019), the delivery partner took the lead on implementation, with the Impact Collective responsible for oversight and available for support as needed. We also focused on impact measurement and helped prepare a final report with assessment of key lessons learned.

The result

In May 2018 we kicked off the Takamol programme to support 10 inclusive businesses in Egypt. The first 10 selected ventures work in chemicals, textiles, food, handicrafts/furniture, and consumer goods – all of them looking to employ and empower workers from low-income communities. These were: BG Group, Brimore, Camicie, FUFA, Gebraa, Hamco, Jammies, Jereed, Lantique, and Mehna w Mostakbal.

In April 2019 we kicked off the second year of the Takamol programme with 10 new inclusive businesses who were selected from 51 applications working in handicrafts, agriculture waste, textiles, dairy, household accessories, natural cosmetics, and furniture. These were: Leaves & Co, Ellie Home Décor, Napata, Azha Studio, Dairy House, Nahla Soliman Designs, Eden Greens Egypt, ART Euphoria, Nesrin Made, and Yashmak.

With our local partner, Outreach Egypt, we helped these businesses to develop scale-up plans and growth strategies, and to implement those plans through 120+ hours of tailored training, mentorship, and ad-hoc expert support for each cohort.

Each year ended with all 10 of each cohort completing the programme successfully and pitching at our closing events in December. Some of the successes of the programme include receiving loans and investment, collaborating with bigger partners, sales deals, and expanding their businesses.

We are very proud of the outcome of this project and what it was able to achieve for the 20 IBs we supported, as well as building up the expertise of our delivery partner to be able to continue to support these businesses and run a program like this again if they wished and were able to do so.

Our superheroes:

Nadia Laabs

Francesca Pileggi

Seigo Robinson

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Our client: The Challenge, a national social integration charity, working with the UK’s Department for Education
Duration: 4 months (April–July 2018)
Our end customer: UK students aged 16-23 following the soon to be introduced technical education courses (“T Levels”)

Creating an ecosystem to build a highly skilled technical workforce in the UK

The Government is reforming technical education to address skills
shortages in UK industry and to help young people enter the jobmarket. Among these reforms is a new 45+ working day industry placement that will be compulsory for all students taking T Levels.  

The Department for Education commissioned The Challenge to create a comprehensive package of expert guidance, tools and templates to help colleges, employers and students to deliver/participate in these new placements. These resources needed to draw on lessons from the pilot placement programme that The Challenge had delivered in 2017/18.

The Challenge required additional capacity to deliver these within a short timeframe as well as specialist skills in facilitation, writing and design.

Targeted and engaging resources to make industry placements simple for everyone

The Impact Collective provided a team with combined expertise in strategy, marketing and communications. Our experts:

• facilitated a series of workshops with the 21 education providers, project managers and business development teams who had completed the pilot to draw out lessons learned and map out what resources were needed to roll out industry placements more widely
• planned and produced over 25 user-centric resources. Formats included: guidance booklets, presentations, template emails and letters, model agreements, timelines, flowcharts, social media campaigns, promotional marketing materials and videos
• consistently checked content and usability with target audiences, including 16-year old students, and managed / integrated multiple rounds of feedback from key stakeholders, government and sector bodies

By 2022, 250,000 young people nationwide will have the opportunity to get real-world work experience in a field related to their area of study

Having completed the project, all resources were approved by the Department for Education and were published online by July 2018, allowing 420 education providers to begin implementing industry placements that autumn.

Our superheroes:

Nadia Laabs

Francesca Pileggi

Anna Patton

Georgina Bremridge

Bex Dawkes (external collaborator)

Get in touch to find out how we can supercharge your impact

The project: “Social Impact through Procurement” – supporting Johnson and Johnson to bring social enterprises into its supply chain

This project supported Johnson and Johnson UK to scope out and initiate a strategic programme of engagement with social enterprise suppliers. Initial stages involved facilitating discussions around long-term goals and securing endorsements from members of Johnson & Johnson’s senior leadership. An all-day launch workshop raised the programme’s visibility among procurement leaders and provided the opportunity to tackle difficult questions head on and plan short-term and long-term programme activities. A Meet The Supplier session introduced procurement leaders to representatives of social enterprise suppliers. Visits to Johnson & Johnson’s major UK sites kept up momentum and encouraged follow-up on ideas raised at the launch workshop.

The impact: a number of quick-win buyer-supplier relationships were implemented and served as case studies and inspiration for deeper, ongoing social enterprise engagement. Since the completion of this early-stage project, Johnson & Johnson has successfully embedded the programme and has become a leader in social value procurement, inspiring other large companies to take similar action.

The project: “Active Moves” – developing a community-based exercise initiative to keep older people fit and healthy while combatting loneliness and isolation

Royal Voluntary Service is a volunteer organisation that enriches the lives of older people and their families across Britain. The Active Moves initiative aims to improve the wellbeing of frail, older people by encouraging active ageing among the elderly.

Leading this project involved collaborating and forging partnerships with multiple stakeholders – including award-winning social enterprise Move It or Lose It! – and getting buy-in from local hubs and communities. It included developing the strategy, designing the business model and operational framework through workshops and dialogues with both internal and external stakeholders, and setting up the pilot in four locations. A measurement framework was developed and key outcomes and metrics identified to determine impact.

The Impact: Six months into the pilot, initial findings show Active Moves having positive impact on older people.  Participants of the pilot show considerable improvement in three of the four measures collected and that there appears to be an association between improvements in physical function and wellbeing/loneliness scores.  Given these results, Royal Voluntary Service are looking to scale up this programme and develop this as part of their core service offer to both older people and health providers – e.g. Trusts, CCGs, and Falls Teams.

The project: “Leadership of the Future” – mobilising Marks and Spencer’s food suppliers to take action on sustainability.

Based in the Foods Plan A team, this project included the design and project management of a strategic future trends event, working closely with senior leaders in the food business. To support content development, a series of sustainability films were produced, covering themes including the future of the food industry and the changing social landscape. A Plan A Awards process recognising sustainability leadership from within the supply base was delivered with over 50 suppliers applying, and the 6 winners announced at the event.

Impact: Over 500 guests attended ‘Leadership of the Future’, representing more than 200 of Marks and Spencer’s most valued food suppliers. Evaluation found that 96% of suppliers came away ‘inspired’ and with a clear understanding of what action they need to take on sustainability. Marks and Spencer is rolling out the event content to its global supply base.

The project: “Change Adoption Project” – Global adoption of a new HR software (Salesforce) for VSO.

After a year of implementation, the new HR software was being sparsely used in VSO’s offices globally and therefore not allowing upper management to have an accurate overview of the company’s performance. The project took into consideration the offices’ previous modes of working and understanding what was causing the resistance to adoption. Working with all levels of stakeholders and liaising between HR and IT, a project plan was developed to get everyone on board. The project included in-country training, 1-on-1 support, creating effective training material online, IT development and upgrades, and getting upper management to support and monitor the progress of adoption.

Impact: Within 6 months, the global adoption of Salesforce led to the creation of reports and dashboards which provided insight for M&E purposes and helped determine more accurate supply/demand information of volunteers and employees in each region. It allowed employees to do their work more efficiently and effectively by using tools that made their jobs easier and be more aligned to the organisation’s mission and goals.

“I love Salesforce too! So much better than we had before and it’s shared with all members of the organisation! Could not ask for more!” – Sophie Paradis, HR, VSO

The Project: Raising start-up capabilities and becoming investment ready

Dream Learners Ltd. is a start-up that produces animated early childhood education videos based on the UK school curriculum that has raised both an Angel round and Seed investment and is currently pitching for a Series-A investment round. Working with this client meant supporting them from early stage development to investment readiness and all which this process entails: Designing their business model, developing their route-to-market strategy, constructing their business plan, building their financial model and pitch deck and their MVP development as well as collecting and analysing early-stage customer feedback.

Impact: This work supported Dream Learner’s second Seed investment raise with the Founders Factory in London and has helped them bring their app to life which is now available for sale on the Apple store. With a clear strategy and plan the team is now free to execute on growing their business and expanding their product offering to increase customer acquisition and work their way to a successful Series-A raise.

The project:  Developing outcomes based commissioning for children and young people’s mental health in Tower Hamlets

The project involved working with a range of stakeholders, including the Clinical Commissioning Group, Local Authority, Public Health, Mental Health Trust and voluntary sector, to change the way in which mental health services are commissioned from a traditional activity based contract to one which is focused on outcomes identified by the local population as important to them.  The support consisted of three phases.  Firstly, an engagement phase to co-produce the outcomes with the children and young people and stakeholders using a logic model approach to structure thinking.  Secondly, a scoping phase to analyse the local provider landscape using a lean methodology approach.  Finally, a development phase to design the measurement framework, contract model and whole system approach to support the outcomes.  This project is now moving into an implementation phase where the outcomes and measurement system will be piloted.

The impact:  Once the contracts go live, this will bring together a range of stakeholders to deliver children and young people’s mental health services in a more integrated way ensuring they all working towards outcomes that matter to their population.  A monitoring and evaluation system will be established to monitor progress towards this.