With many organisations in the sector wrestling with the idea of 'impact' and 'impact management', we think there is value in pooling our shared knowledge and experience to better understand how these ideas work in the Singapore context. We think this needs to involve both funders and practitioners to set expectations for what 'good' looks like, and that this should happen outside the context of a funding discussion.
With this in mind, over the past 12 months, Just Cause has been working with Conjunct Consulting to build a “Community of Impact” in Singapore, bringing together representatives from local non-profit organisations, government, intermediaries and funders to discuss different approaches to impact management and how to tackle capacity gaps in this area. During this period, we ran three workshop events and developed five case studies, leading to a mini-conference bringing together a wider group of stakeholders from across the non-profit sector.
We’ve been really pleased to see the sustained interest from a core group of representatives from the sector. Meetings have been well-attended and discussions earnest. Participants particularly valued the sessions where non-profits described their experiences with tracking impact – sharing their successes as well as their challenges and lessons learned. Some of these case studies are available here.
There was particularly strong interest throughout the project in developing a shared set of definitions and principles for impact management in Singapore, drawing on the success of similar projects that already exist in the US, UK and elsewhere. We aim to take this work forward as part of a second stage of this project, building a community for impact in Singapore, and would warmly welcome any further support for this phase of work.
Please get in touch if you’re interested to know more.