Helping Impact Enterprises Pivot in a Covid-19 World

By Guy Redding, Director for International Development

Back in April 2020, when we were all staring down the Covid-19 barrel, a few of my colleagues and I got together to think about what kind of support we could give to social enterprises to weather the storm. We came up with the “Pivot Support Programme”, a programme designed to support social and other impact enterprises to look at their business models and strategic direction, and consider whether and how they could pivot (adapt their business model) to better face the challenges posed by Covid-19, and leverage the opportunities.

We spoke to the Regional Business Partner Network (RBPN), which had just announced significant funding for support to SMEs through its Covid-19 Fund, and ended up registering the Pivot Support Programme with the Fund. This meant that registered businesses could sign up for the Programme and have 100% of the costs covered by RBPN. Unfortunately, as RBPN can only provide support to registered businesses, charities were not able to apply for this support. However, we were able to work with a number of charities and other businesses in the Auckland and Northland regions by drawing on our partnership with Foundation North.

Featuring the Social Lean Canvas

So what is the Pivot Support Programme? Well, we used a tool called the Social Lean Canvas - a business and impact model on a page - to help businesses think about their pre-Covid-19 business model, its strengths and weaknesses, and come up with a plan to address problem areas in the business. In many cases, issues were identified with the business model that pre-dated Covid-19, with the crisis simply putting more of a spotlight on those issues. In other cases, Covid-19 threw up new challenges, arising from lock-down and supply chain disruptions.

The Social Lean Canvas is a great tool for walking businesses through their business model in a systematic manner. As it’s geared towards businesses that are focused on making a positive social and/or environmental impact, the top part of the canvas is dedicated to the “purpose” of the business and its “impact model”. However, the bulk of the canvas looks at different aspects of the business model. These include:

the customer segments a business is targeting;
the customer problems the business needs to understand and solve;
the unique value proposition or set of benefits that the business provides to address the customer’s problem(s)
the solution the business has to solve the problem(s)
the marketing and distribution channels that the business uses to:- make customers aware of their products or services; want to buy them; and able to buy/access them
the revenue model that the business uses to generate income

We asked clients to fill out a canvas before the first coaching session so that we could get a good understanding of their business model and hit the ground running during the coaching. Two Ākina coaches worked with each client for a half day session, running through the canvas, asking lots of questions, clarifying issues and making business model suggestions for moving forward. Given lock-down restrictions, we conducted almost all of these by Zoom. We used a really useful virtual whiteboard called Mural to work on the canvas with the client, which was then available to the client to work on ahead of the next coaching session.

Key Findings from Coaching Sessions

Some key findings from these sessions included:

The importance of clarifying the customer segments that the business is targeting. We did a fair amount of work, helping the clients develop “customer personas” for their customer segments. These are insight based representations of customer segments that help a business empathise and understand their customers better.
The distinction between a customer problem and the social or environmental problem that the business is trying to solve. Social and impact enterprises are often good at describing the social and/or environmental problem they’re targeting but less clear on the paying customers and what problems they want solving. Sometimes the two crossover, but it’s important not to forget that a business still needs to meet the needs of a customer for a particular product or service.
How can a business scale what it’s doing, particularly when the Founder is trying to do everything - including delivering the product or service - and so doesn’t have time to think strategically or recruit the people or partners to grow the business and its impact.
How can a business build its resilience, particularly during Covid-19, including through moving online and e-commerce
How a business generates more predictable and longer term income streams such as through subscription models, as well as develop a variety of packages for a product or service, ranging from free educational content to membership type arrangements.

A significant part of the value of the coaching was in giving the businesses the time and space to get away from the regular day to day and reflect on their business and strategy. The variety of experience among the Ākina coaches also meant that we could inject ideas from a range of different sectors/industries and, in some cases, connect businesses to potential partners.

In total, we supported around 20 New Zealand businesses, ranging from service providers in disability support, family conflict resolution, natural health, cleaning services and youth development to businesses developing native tree nurseries, seaweed fertiliser and low cost spectacles. The feedback has been uniformly positive, with each organisation taking away some valuable ideas and having “a-ha moments”.

Taking the Coaching Into the International Arena

We’ve also taken the coaching internationally. Through our partnership with Palladium in Australia, and with funding support from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) under its Business Partnerships Platform (BPP), we’ve coached a further 25 businesses across 8 countries - Bangladesh, Fiji, Nepal, Philippines Samoa, Sri Lanka, Timor and Tonga. These are businesses that have applied for DFAT grant funding of up to A$500,000 each to fund “inclusive business” initiatives. Most of these do not regard themselves as social enterprises, but they are all businesses that are looking to create a positive social and/or environmental impact. Proposals included:- aquaculture, brick making machines for low cost housing, sea salt production, out-sourcing of accounting services, development of a pathology lab, floriculture and a range of other sectors and industries.

Some of these initiatives have the potential to create impact for thousands of families, through developing skills, providing income generation opportunities, improving access to valuable and affordable products and services and responding to the impacts of Covid-19. The Social Lean Canvas has been fully integrated into the BPP application process, with applicants required to develop a canvas for their proposal and then flesh this out into a 15 page business plan. For many, including long standing businesses, this lean approach to business modelling and planning was new and, again, the feedback from clients on the coaching and application process has been really positive.

What next?

Unfortunately, RBPN’s Covid-19 fund has now been exhausted. However, recognising the value of the pivot coaching beyond the current crisis, we have redesigned the programme and it is now available through RBPN’s Management Capability Fund as “Business Model Coaching”. The process and format of the coaching is quite similar, but, based on feed-back, we have broken down coaching into three 90 minute sessions.

Coaching can be in person, if in Auckland or Wellington, or via Zoom for those in other parts of Aotearoa. RBPN covers 50% of the cost of the programme, with businesses covering the other 50%. Again, for social enterprises that are not registered businesses and are in the Auckland or Northland regions, we may be able to cover this 50% through our partnership with Foundation North.

Social and impact enterprises can also access our Impact Model Coaching through the RBPN platform. This is designed for businesses wanting to develop their impact model and identify impact indicators.

Internationally, we welcome any enquiries from other organisations interested in seeing how our business model coaching approach and the social lean canvas tool could add value to their programmes working with the private sector.

You can read more about out current capability offerings on our Capability Building webpage, and for any enquiries, please contact us!

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