Organisational development for grassroots community leaders, and for a more collaborative social sector

Through our conversations, interviews and workshops we’ve often heard about the different roles each party in the system has to play. As part of exploring the way we develop principles for effective organisational development, we asked a charity, a funder and a consultant to provide their perspectives. In the first of this series, Luke Billingham from Hackney Quest and Reach Children’s Hub shares his thoughts.

Who and what is organisational development for?

Charities often excel at ethical reflection on their work, and their approach to organisational development should be no exception. Organisational development (OD) is a broad term, referring to ‘the approaches that charities — and those supporting charities — use to adapt and improve’ (Emily Bazalgette’s initial definition on the Open OD blog). I think it’s important to avoid the assumption that organisational development is an inherent good. The ways that charities choose to adapt and improve can bring more harm than benefit.

In Against Charity, Julie Wark and Daniel Raventos critique charitable activity “which both shores up and, inadvertently or actively, participates in and benefits from the unjust systems that make charity necessary” (p. 6). At worst, the approach charities take to organisational development can amount to participation in unjust practices or systems. It can involve legitimising and exacerbating the most damaging features of our society: exploitation, inequality, extractive-ness, and manipulation.

Our charity sector is in a condition of hyper-competitive scarcity which can incentivise unethical activities, including many which could be deemed to ‘improve’ or develop an organisation: exploitative underpayment of staff or brutal performance management (improving efficiency and productivity); extractive evaluation practices (improving proof of impact); manipulative targeting of potential donors (increasing regular donations); superficial and misleading marketing narratives (improving awareness and income); rapacious and aggressive expansion (improving reach, expanding impact).

Who and what are such practices or ‘improvements’ for? Too often, they are to assuage the anxieties of funders or to pursue ‘market share’ more than they are to benefit the lives of those the charity is meant to support.

Forgetting the mission in pursuit of organisational development

Some of these practices could indirectly help those the organisation exists to serve, of course. But the relationship between such practices and their effect on beneficiaries can become so indirect and diluted as to become negligible. In such cases, the people who are supposed to be benefitting from the organisation fade into the background, as it obsessively examines itself in the mirror, trying to ensure its image matches what funders might want, and that it measures up favourably against so-called competitors.

No project focused on organisational development in the social sector can or should evade these fundamental questions. They should recognise who and what a charity’s development is for and about how conditions in the sector can act as disincentives towards more equitable practices.

That’s the grumpy bit out of the way; now the hopeful bit! There’s two kinds of more equitable organisational development that I want to discuss here: grassroots OD and collaborative OD.

Grassroots OD

Those who could most benefit from support with their organisation’s development are often those that are least able to access it. I’ve met so many inspirational grassroots leaders who drown in organisational rigmarole that they don’t really care about, partly because it feels like distractions from the real work: theory of change workshops, accountancy difficulties, funding battles, how the hell you get a decent website without it taking all your time and money, and so on.

I’m thinking of the person who is working with young people on their estate, because their brother was killed and they want to prevent more hurt in the community; the people who set up organisations to find cures or better treatments for the particular illnesses that have affected their loved ones; the young people who have a passion for supporting those facing complex difficulties in their neighbourhood.

Where organisational support is really needed — in these small, grassroots groups — is often where it is most lacking. Meanwhile, there are much larger organisations that can shell out thousands on sophisticated consultancies to support their development.

Organisational development practice would also benefit from more of the grassroots leader mindset, because it is laser-focused on bringing positive change. Organisations need to develop in order to deliver the most effective forms of activity and — closely related — to provide the best possible working conditions for staff. But a grassroots mindset can help us remember that, ultimately, both organisational development and charitable organisations themselves are just means to ends, not inherent goods: if they don’t advance a mission for positive change, they’re pointless (or worse).

Collaborative OD

I’d also love to see more collaborative organisational development: organisations mutually supporting one another by providing them with insight into new approaches, developing their understanding of particular problems, allowing staff to learn from one another, and so on.

I’m involved in a couple of projects which I hope could achieve this.

At my youth centre in Hackney we’ve started collaborating with a local senior social worker to run ‘case conversations’ with other local youth organisations. We each bring problems to the group and then work together to draft action plans, expertly guided by the social worker. We all care deeply about local young people and we know that they stand the best chance of benefiting from all our work if we support one another. We want the organisation a mile away to be brilliant at supporting the young people and families that they work with, just as much as we want that for our own organisations.

At the charity I work for in Feltham, we’re developing a convening project, based on the Strive Together model. We’re convening services, institutions, organisations and community members who have significant influence on the lives of local young people, and then working collectively over the next seven years to achieve specific goals that will improve their life chances in a lasting, sustainable way. We’re inspired by other convening projects of this kind in different parts of Britain, including Black Thrive’s work in Lambeth and Right to Succeed’s work in North Birkenhead. At best, these kind of projects allow all the organisations and services involved to support one another’s development.

In these examples of collaborative development, the objective is not to improve individual organisational structures. Rather, it’s to adopt practices of mutual support that are directly focused on ensuring that each organisation individually and all of the organisations collectively are addressing a communities’ difficulties and improving life for their people as much as possible.

I think that’s who and what organisational development should be for.

Luke is a Youth & Community Worker at Hackney Quest, a long-running youth charity, and is Head of Strategy at Reach Children’s Hub, a new charity providing cradle-to-career for local children and young people based in Reach Academy, Feltham. He’s also a trustee of Haven Distribution, the books-to-prisoners charity, and a volunteer mentor for the Longford Trust and New Bridge Foundation.