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The 10 pieces of the growth puzzle (and how Thrive can help you put them together)
The 10 pieces of the growth puzzle (and how Thrive can help you put them together)
Written by
UnLtd employee
UnLtd position
For a social venture growth doesn’t just mean “making more money”. Social entrepreneurs focus on growing impact on society, so for them growth is always much more complex than income. There are many pieces of a complex puzzle that need to be in place to be able to grow impact.
Over the last two years of Thrive, our social business accelerator, we have supported 36 social ventures on the Access to Employment programme with their own pieces of the growth puzzle, looking at the business as a whole.
Read on for 10 tips to get your venture ready for growth. If you would benefit from more support in these areas, you can find out more about Thrive here. Applications for Thrive: Access to Employment 2020 are open until 31st January 2020.
1. Strengthen your leadership
It’s impossible to grow without strong leadership within an organisation. For many entrepreneurs, growth comes with an important leadership transition from founder to CEO. Through leadership coaching we helped Jacob Hill from Offploy move from an operational to strategic role in the organisation, and to take a step up as a strong manager for the team.
2. Build a skilled and dedicated team
A leader cannot grow their impact without a strong team behind them. Entrepreneurs face team building challenges throughout the growth journey, whether that’s making the first hire, or growing the team to different locations. Chris McNamara at Pathway CTM started Thrive with a small, young, ambitious team. We supported him to engage the team, ensure they had clear roles and responsibilities and developed a 3-year plan to make room for progression within the organisation.
3. Have strong governance in place
As a leader of an organisation, you need a board that you are accountable to, whether this is a board of directors, trustees or advisory board. This year we helped Gemma Hallett from MiFuture on her journey to recruit her first advisory board by helping her plan the structure of the board and then the recruitment process.
4. Measure your social impact
To grow your impact, you need to be able to measure it. With bespoke support from our internal impact specialist, Proper Job Theatre were able to clearly define their social impact, work out their social value and put impact measurement systems in place. They told us this support was integral to them winning new contracts.
5. Have a robust sales strategy
For most organisations, growth in impact is directly linked to growth in sales. It is vital to have a sales strategy in place so you can plan the resources needed to grow. Jane Hatton wanted to significantly grow the number of customers for Evenbreak but was unsure how to do this. We developed a sales strategy by looking at which actions lead to past sales successes, and how these could be developed further. She now has a much more refined sales process, is successfully tracking her pipeline and has engaged the whole team with the new strategy.
6. Make sure you’re legally compliant
At Unltd we are able to broker a lot of pro bono legal support through our in-house Connect team and have supported many of the Thrive participants with areas such as contracts, terms and conditions, company articles, legal structures, IP, licencing and employment law.
7. Formalise your operations and processes
As your team grows, processes that tend to be in the founders’ heads, need to be formalised and documented. We helped Joel, Emma and Ben from Spiral Skills bring together all their processes and timelines across programmes, sales and operations into one comprehensive year plan, bringing the whole team together to make sure they are all aligned. They told us that it has completely transformed their way of working.
8. Have a thought through growth plan in place
From day one, you will think of (and everyone you meet will suggest) all kinds of ways you can grow. The key to a successful growth plan is to have a focused approach to the opportunities that you take. Jane Hatton, from Evenbreak, started on Thrive with a long list of growth options, but no way of deciding which ones to pursue. We systematically went through each option, decided which should be developed, which should be parked and which ones needed to be tested. She now has a thorough 3-year growth plan and a clear direction for the team.
9. Have a robust financial model
Probably the most important piece of the puzzle is having a financial plan that shows that the growth of your business is viable. At the time of joining Thrive, SAMEE was highly reliant on grant income and wanted to develop more sustainable income streams. We helped Sam Everard (CEO) create a financial model that demonstrated how, over time, she could grow her income from workshops in schools to subsidise other programmes and reduce their overall proportion of grant income. This has enabled them to grow their impact outside of Dorset and they now work across in 5 boroughs.
10. Plan your funding for growth
You need to invest in order to grow – whether this is in staff, capital or stock. We have helped many people on Thrive work through how they will invest in their growth. For some, this is through using internal surplus, for others this is external investment. Will Mansell secured investment for Furniture Bank through our Thrive Fund to lease two new vans to collect more second-hand furniture to sell in their store. Since their investment they have significantly increased their furniture collection, and a year on they have nearly doubled their monthly turnover, which has enabled them to hire 6 more local people with several barriers to work.
If you are improving access to employment for those who face significant struggles, such as disabled people, ex-offenders or homeless people, and need support to piece the puzzle together, applications for Thrive 2020 are open until 31st January 2020.
Submit an expression of interest, or send an email to [email protected] if you would like to speak to a Venture Manager, to find out more about the criteria and what we can offer you.