Context
Social entrepreneurs are passionate about the problems they seek to solve, and bring diverse lived and professional experiences. Leading a growing organisation requires them to wear many hats, some of which may be more familiar or comfortable than others.
The School for Social Entrepreneurs offers flexible support in the areas each of their Fellows and their organisations most need it. As a mentor, I support Fellows’ development as leaders, and help them improve how they measure and communicate their organisation’s impact.
How I help
With every new mentee, we’ll begin with an introductory call to make sure we’re a good fit to work together and build a picture of their current circumstances: What are their goals? What’s getting in the way? What gaps needed to be filled? Based on this conversation we’ll agree some goals and a plan.
Typically I’ll then meet with one or more members of the team over 3-6 months for a mix of:
- Workshops – we work through a specific need together, e.g. refining strategy, creating surveys or analysing data.
- Tutorials – I talk through relevant tools or approaches and discuss with the team how they might put them into action.
- Mentoring conversations – exploring one or more areas of the organisation’s development, bouncing ideas around together and sharing advice from my experience.
- Coaching calls – we’ll dive deep into a current leadership challenge and come up with a plan for addressing it.
Between meetings, mentees continue to apply and progress the work, while I support with activities like research, creating templates and sharing feedback on their progress.
My aim is to enable mentees to take on what I share with them and run with it themselves, until long after our work together ends.
Outcomes
Previous mentees have highlighted the following results from our work together:
- Deeper understanding of their organisation’s role and opportunities for future development.
- Clearer strategy with more specific social impact goals.
- New or improved impact measurement framework and tools embedded in their activities.
- Improved understanding of their organisation’s impact, and confidence to report on it to funders.
- Better ability to prioritise how team members focus their time and effort.
- Confidence to continue doing all of the above independently.
Clients and partners
