When donors decide to contribute to a cause, they often seek specific benefits that go beyond mere financial support. Understanding these motivations can help impact organizations tailor their approaches to meet donor expectations effectively. Not all donors and grantmakers are the same, but there is common ground shared by all types of funders, and understanding and addressing these motivations is key.
Insights for the social investment and development sectors: 2024 – 2025
Global polycrisis requires transformative philanthropyHardly a day goes by that we don’t read or hear about an existing or new crisis, catastrophe or calamity, critical challenges or being at a crossroads. All these c-words also have another side, the one of cocreation and collaboration. Download the report
Managing and Measuring Impact
How to go about managing and measuring your impact is a question we get asked a lot. Our philosophy is that impact is intentional and needs to be designed.
In this presentation we provide guidance on the aspects and consideration for setting up an impact management and measurement system and strategy. Please let us know if you find this a useful guide!
How to develop a theory of change
A good theory of change gives you choices and helps you make better decisions, in addition – it is a tool that can be used by so many stakeholders, both internally and externally to an organisation as it explains clearly and succinctly what you are aiming to achieve. In essence, it is a summary of your strategic intent and objectives. Or stated differently – it is a complete strategy on a single page.
Impact Investing for Philanthropists
Grantmakers, donors, philanthropists and corporate social investors in South Africa are ready to enter the field of impact investing. Impact investing not only provide an opportunity for the social sector to have access to new capital, but also to leverage, scale and build on existing impact strategies and investments. Similarly, it provides a link between existing funding initiatives and an opportunity to scale the work already underway with social enterprises across industry sectors such as agriculture, education and health. Truly an existing time for the sector.
8 Lessons Learned: Why development projects fail
The real value of impact assessment, not to prove – but to improve and inform: When asked to conduct impact assessments, most of the time the focus is on understanding which programmes achieved the most impact, however, the opportunity lies in understanding why some development programmes fail. This presentation shares some of our insights into project failure.
Scaling impact, or impact at scale?
One of the biggest challenges in the development, humanitarian and social sectors is scaling the work undertaken by a large range of stakeholders to bring about greater impact on multidimensional levels.
In this presentation below we aim to provide guidance for achieving greater impact at scale. We do this as we recognize that to have more meaningful and sustainable impact at greater scale, we may have to change the way we think about development and do development.
We trust this resource will add value to the work of practitioners, funders, grantmakers, donors, philanthropists and social investors as well as the social purpose organisations whose main objective and mission is to bring about large-scale impact and sustainable development.
Strategic Review Processes
Social and impact investors have an obligation to share their impact results. But, most investors focus only on the reach aspect – that is the number of people impacted. Yet, qualitative data provide so much more depth, nuance and insight to impact results, for this reason we focus on various dimensions of impact. This presentation share some of our thoughts …
2023 Trends and Insights for the Humanitarian Sector
Insight: A Polycrises: A sector outpaced by global challenges, which are growing faster than we are applying solutions. Even where governments and business are starting to step up and do more, the nature of these challenges, which are exponential in the case of the climate crises – seem to escalate constantly. Download the report
5 Ways to increase your impact
Many investors, grantmakers, donors and philanthropists depend on their implementing partners to achieve their impact goals and objectives. Having a clear impact strategy, impact thesis and impact objectives will make achieving impact easier.Download the report