By building understanding we’re helping to build trust and collaboration among people.

Impact measured against UN Sustainable Development Goals

04 quality education S 05 gender equality S 08 decent work and economic growth S 10 reduced inequalities S
View impact report

Intention

There are thousands of organisations that partner with the third sector. Despite the benefits of collaboration being well known within charities, it is not the standard model of working between different agencies, freelancers or consultants.

Agencies for Good wants to ensure a higher quality of work is delivered more efficiently for the most important organisations in our society by tackling this situation. William Joseph has been a part of the working group to make this happen.

By creating more opportunities for people at these companies to understand each other, we hope to grow trust between them. This in turn should increase the likelihood of shared briefs, join responses and reuse of existing tools.

We also hope to improve the accessibility of these organisations, in turn improving the diversity of those working on social sector outcomes by providing a space to learn from and support each other.

Agenciesforgood.org

Results

609

members of the community - up from 350 last year

34%

of members are active weekly - down from 40% last year

17,330

messages sent in 2022

As part of wider work with the Catalyst organisation, the metrics which will define Agencies for Good’s success have been set as:

  • Extent to which members found the conversations valuable

  • Topics covered/discussed between members in the network

  • No. of members that have interacted with other members on the network (e.g. through DM, public conversations, events, peer to peer pairing up)

  • Topics/content/events are relevant to the challenges faced by members

  • No. of members who have learnt something that they have applied to their day to day work

  • Extent to which learning has been relevant/useful to members

  • No. of referrals (for new work/clients) between members e.g. tagging an agency on a post for work they think might be relevant to them

  • No. of referrals that lead to projects/work for members

  • No. of members that reach out to other members to collaborate

  • No. of members that work on a project together

Improving standards of job postings
We are also using Agencies for Good as a way to drive standards, in particular around job postings. We have now implemented guidelines for anyone posting a role in the community. These elements are now required:
Salary

Our community is based on openness, inclusion and transparency. By hiding the salary from your job ads, then you aren’t giving people a fair chance to know if it’s right for them. You’re also likely relying on negotiation - which heavily prejudices against people from certain groups. Read more here: https://showthesalary.wordpres…;

Location and details of what travelling will be required

If you’re remote first, then say that. If you’ve got a London office that you expect people to be in for 3 days a week, then let them know. By not including this detail in job ads you’re wasting people’s time looking at jobs that aren’t right for them.

Remote working flexibility

As the world of work adjusts after the pandemic, many people have looked at their lives and made significant changes. Your job roles should let them know which of these can be accommodated by your organisation and which can’t.

You can see the full guidelines below - which are a good reference for how to conduct a fair and equitable recruitment process. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XQP9BD0BocyhkVe14b7vKNGy8DwzEivO9DkRwioNYF4/edit?usp=sharing

New community manager & improved working group perspectives

After an extensive and equitable recruitment process, we found a fantastic new community manager - Tamara Schon. She brings a wealth of experience from her time at Ada’s List. She is already having an impact despite only being in the role for a few weeks.

Some of the wins she’s implemented include:

  • Better feedback processes from members for what they want from the community

  • An improved onboarding process for new members

  • Better reporting on the impact we’re having with existing members

  • Reaching out to other organisations to improve the DEI of the community

We have also added a couple of members to the working group to better represent the freelancers in our community - Erica & Janinah.

What’s next?

We’re focussing on improving the diversity of the community: proactively recruiting people from backgrounds different to the majority of agencies and contractors.

Creating specific ways for people to connect with each other: such as in-person and remote events.

Investigating how peers can do more to support each other in smaller numbers - potentially creating action learning groups.