CAST Weeknotes (15–19 March) — Looking in, looking out

Last week’s weeknotes dwelled on ‘endings’ — of the programmes we’re running, of our own team’s configuration, and of how to consolidate our learning for the sort of legacy we’d like to enable. This week was partly an extension of that exploration, looking inwards and outwards…and onwards.

‘What you measure you manage’ (kind of)

You could agree or disagree with this often mentioned quote, but it’s safe to say that any learning cannot happen if we’re not at least paying attention to the things that matter (or that we think matter). So this week we went back to our team’s strategic objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), to see how far we had travelled.

Screenshot of Capacity team’s KPI retro Miro board

Expertly guided by Molly (who prepared a brilliant Miro board for the purpose), we reflected on the KPIs defined some eight months ago — here are some of the questions we asked ourselves:

• How have we progressed against each of our indicators?
• What do we think of these KPIs in hindsight? Were these the right benchmarks?
• Where are the gaps?

This retro (retrospective) session was part of a wider exercise which we started last week, led by Debby (and her equally fantastic Miro board! We do like Miro), where we looked at our team’s wider work. For this we used a SWOT analysis framework. The aim was to better assess and communicate the work we’ve been doing, and to demonstrate the value and learning derived from it. We also thought it would help inform the next stage of Catalyst planning — as all the work feeds into Catalyst’s theory of change (it has evolved since).

The team’s strategic objectives we’re trying to meet, as defined for now are:

1. Grow and diversify the number of collaborators in the network available to civil society organisations
2. Collect and curate digital, data and design resources available to civil society organisations
3. Connect the best placed collaborators to work with civil society organisations through the most appropriate services offered by Catalyst
4. Connect the best resources (knowledge and services) to enable civil society organisations’ own digital capability-building and ongoing learning
5. Create the conditions for greater collective capacity across the Catalyst network (available to support civil society organisations)

Our reflections from the KPI retro were largely informed by our work leading the design and delivery of programmes for the Covid-19 Digital Response Fund. Some of those reflections are outlined below.

#1 Growing and diversifying the network and #3 Connecting collaborators (digital partners) and civil society organisations (CSOs)

• All of the charity briefs found a match through our Open Projects page
• And it’s clear that charities who completed Explore or a Discovery programme are better placed for Development — how might we better evaluate this?
• New digital partners have engaged and delivered successfully
• Many agencies signed up to Dovetail — collaborators in the directory rose from 53 to 85 from Q1 to Q2 of the funding period
• Currently engagement is mainly driven by the briefs available — so assessing all of this network engagement needs more joining up between Catalyst initiatives and between initiative leads
• For now we have various places where data is stored and captured (SM Apply, Ochre, Airtable, Dovetail…) — how might we better track and extract it?

#2 Collecting and curating digital, design and data resources, and #4 Connecting them to enable CSOs’ capacity building

• Creating and signposting to useful resources is part of our ongoing work, and part of a bigger piece which includes website redesign, service recipes, service layers and updating our resources page — work in progress!
• Still, how can we get better at finding out what is valuable to social sector organisations?
• And maybe further explore how we might organise resources to meet organisations’ specific digital maturity areas
• … and make sure we engage with all collaborators who showed interest or submitted a brief (not just the successful ones)

#3 Creating the conditions for a thriving Catalyst network

• We reflected on how we’ve tried to be agile and adaptive in responding to the context, adjusting and iterating Catalyst’s funding programmes (at relatively short notice!) based on the emerging evidence
• We identified a gap in terms of having clear next steps to consolidate the initial engagement of the network into an active and collaborative network
• Also, how can we better define and measure the diversity of the network, and be more effective at being inclusive?
• And actually… what do we mean by ‘our network of collaborators’? depending on who you ask the answer might be different!

Network development is something we’re really thinking about at the moment. Based on insights from user research carried out last year, we’re piloting our first ‘Catalyst Network Meetup’ with our existing Development partners. We hope this can be the start of many enlightening and collaborative sessions, where the Catalyst network can engage, exchange and grow. This piece of work is not for us to own or shape. We see our role as making space for those conversations and experiments, so that the network can build on that and assume its collective shape. More on that in due course.

For now, we’re all really looking forward to the wrap up event for our Development cohort on the 25th — and to hear all the amazing work they’ve done over the past 10 weeks!