Consultancy Support
As the new CEO, David was committed to introducing a theory of change as the cornerstone of the organisation’s 5-year strategy in order to inform ambitions, outcome measures, and resource allocation. As a result, we took an innovative approach developing a theory of change based upon a logic chain model, to explore some of the wider issues relating to the services that NOAH provides, why it provides them and what outcomes and impact result from these services.
The team from Eastside People worked alongside David, the Board and Paul Prosser, NOAH’s Head of Welfare Services, who managed the project on a day-to-day basis, undertaking:
- Research into the need for NOAH’s services and proposed strategic initiatives
- A survey of NOAH’s stakeholders
- A series of one-to-one interviews with trustees, senior management team and other key individuals
- Development of impact projections and priorities for measurement
- Production of a strategic plan which was informed by the theory of change and how best to provide a “Staircase of Opportunity” based upon individual’s needs.
You can read more about the NOAH theory of change on pages 23 to 25 of their 5-year strategy.
Consultancy Outcomes
“NOAH’s theory of change developed with Eastside People was instrumental within the development of our 5-year strategy. It has also been the cornerstone of our ongoing social impact analysis through which we hold ourselves accountable for making a genuine, quantifiable, and lasting difference.” said David.
Workforce Support
Eastside People’s recruitment team were also engaged to run a recruitment programme that would support the strategy and sustain the robustness of the frontline services as well as ensuring that the Board had the right skills to provide strategic oversight and guidance to the Senior Management Team (SMT).
The organisation’s finance and fundraising functions had previously been outsourced, and the first priority was to develop full-time, in-house capacity. Eastside People was tasked with recruiting for two key senior roles:
The organisation was also keen to attract trustees with HR and Fundraising skills and a strong interest in or knowledge of its cause, who shared NOAH’s organisational values (regardless of religious background) and could increase the diversity of their Board in the broadest sense of the word. This led to a search for two new trustees.
Recruitment Outcomes
Eastside People used open and inclusive recruitment techniques to support NOAH to recruit a full-time Head of Finance, making this central function and their accounting systems more sustainable, and a Head of Fundraising enabling pursuit of a capital fundraising strategy which included raising £5m to refurbish their main centre in Luton.
The Board search focussed on skills and diversity first, and then on locality and knowledge of homelessness and social deprivation. Our team researched the local business, charity and public sector communities, first in Bedfordshire and then expanding into London. For each role, they contacted over 100 people individually and shared the role with online fundraising and HR networks. The role was advertised widely and openly on LinkedIn and various other Board recruitment platforms.
The charity’s roots in a Christian social justice tradition called for an emphasis on finding people who held a compatible ethos and a deep interest in the issues affecting the lives of NOAH’s beneficiaries. It was also important that the new trustees were able to offer informed challenge to the senior management team, while maintaining a clear line between operations and governance. We put forward 9 high-quality candidates for the HR role and 3 for the Fundraising role, from which a number were shortlisted, and two were invited to join the Board.
Following on from this initial project, Eastside People has managed recruitment programmes for additional roles at NOAH including a Chair, a Treasurer and an Interim and then permanent Head of Training and Employment.
Benefits
Working together over an extended time enabled Eastside People to develop a deep understanding of the charity’s ethos, plans, processes and needs. This, in turn, drove rapid and effective execution and gained the charity a number of advantages including:
- Enhancing NOAH’s decision-making with access to the knowledge and skills of experienced consultants
- Generating economies of scale by working with a single organisation who could provide both consultancy and recruitment services
- Developing senior-level talent within the charity by learning from the Eastside People experts and recruiting new senior managers.
“Working together with the Eastside People team has enabled us to create a theory of change, strategy and recruit the team we need to ensure the charity’s sustainability and growth in challenging times.
We have been very impressed by the quality and breadth of the Eastside People consultants. Combining consultancy and recruitment is powerful, enabling them to support charities like ours with both theory and practice.” David Morris, Chief Executive, NOAH Enterprise.
