What difference do we make?
There’s a nice easy question for a Monday morning.
There’s a nice easy question for a Monday morning.
It’s something we’ve been thinking about a fair bit at work over the last couple of months, as we’ve been exploring our Theory of Change.
Without going into all the detail, there are a few different ways to do this.
We had to decide whether to first explore the Theory of Change for our social enterprise as a whole — or whether to focus on one project at a time.
What is SBB aiming to achieve? How about Empty Homes Doctor? Zero Waste Leeds? Leeds School Uniform Exchange?
They are big, important questions, and not easy ones to answer.
We decided to look at our projects first — before considering the Theory of Change for the organisation as a whole.
In part because we felt that it would be easier for us to get our heads around the Theory of Change process that way — one project at a time rather than everything at once.
There were also a couple of opportunities to secure funding for a couple of projects — and we knew that thinking about our Theory of Change for those projects would help us to develop better funding bids.
Those project-based pieces of work are still ongoing, but we feel it’s now time to look at the social enterprise as a whole.
There’s part of me that’s really looking forward to doing this. And part of me that’s dreading it.
I’m looking forward to it because I want us to be here for the long term — and achieve even more than we do already.
I think we do a lot of good work, but I know we can do better. And we need to do better — because the various social problems we get involved with aren’t going away.
We are living through a period on ongoing, inter-connected crises — and as a society we have to work out how to respond to these crises better than we are doing right now. And we want to play our part in that.
So what should our role be in all of this?
This is why part of me is dreading this process.
We’ve always struggled with working out exactly where we fit in. Where to focus our resources, our skills and expertise.
How much should we focus on day-to-day impact, right here, right now? The difference we can make in Leeds, today, working alongside local people?
And how much should we focus on changing the system? Trying to influence things at a more strategic level?
As I say, nice easy questions for a Monday morning.
What do people think about what we do?
We’ll get started with this Theory of Change process in the next few days.
And in one way or another, we’re keen to hear what people think about the work that we do.
How do you think we make a difference?
What do we do well — and what would be missed if we weren’t here?
Are there things we do that you think we probably should give up doing?
Do you have thoughts on where we should focus our efforts and resources?
These are big questions. And there are probably other deeper questions we need to be asking ourselves (and other people) — and that will probably become clearer as we get stuck into the Theory of Change.
But to get things moving, I’d really appreciate people’s thoughts on our work. So if you‘re aware of what we do — whether that’s through having worked with us in some way or other, or just following what we do on social media etc — then we’d be really interested to hear your honest reflections.
If you’d like to, feel free to reply to this post on Twitter, or this one on LinkedIn, or send me a message if you’d prefer not to reply publicly. Alternatively please send me an email via our website.
We’re really keen to hear your thoughts — and I imagine these initial pieces of feedback will inform how we ask for more in-depth reflections and thoughts from people as part of our Theory of Change process.