Achieving Change: Expanding What We Do

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Achieving change: Expanding what we do

Rolling 3 Year Business Strategy

Covering the period

Jan. 2016–Dec. 2018

Publication Version – Approved by Trustees 7th December 2015

Version dated 23/12/2018 07:02

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CONTENTS

• Background and IntroductionPage 3

1.1BackgroundPage 3

1.2Who are we? The Commonweal Project CyclePage 4

1.3Key changes in 2015Page 5

1.4What we do – Our projects to datePage 6

1.5How we did against our 2015 ambitionsPage 7

• Vision, Purpose, Values and Strategic TargetsPage 9
• VisionPage 9

2.2PurposePage 9

2.3ValuesPage 9

2.4AmbitionsPage 9

2.5What do we offer as a charity?Page 9

2.6LimitationsPage 10

2.7SWOT AnalysisPage 10

2.8Strategic approach – how we workPage 11

2.9Project preference areas 2016 onwardsPage 11

2.10The criteria for accepting or rejecting potential projectsPage 12

• Organizational structurePage 13

3.1TrusteesPage 13

3.2Advisory PanelPage 14

3.3MeetingsPage 14

• AssumptionsPage 15

4.1Core fundingPage 15

4.2Resources StrategyPage 15

• Outline Action Plan Priorities 2016 – 2018Page 16

5.12016Page 16

5.22017Page 17

5.32018Page 18

BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

This is now the sixth annual update of Commonweal’s Business Strategy.

2016 Sees Commonweal reach its 10th Anniversary – ten years of seeking to support other partner organisationsto set up and test the new ideas and new models of services and support they believed will help provide ‘housing solutions to social injustice’.

Ten years of encouraging others to be imaginativeand innovative; giving people (project partners and beneficiaries) the space to get some things wrong and importantly ten years of encouraging them to learn from those experiences so the ideas, the projects are understood so that, we know what can be replicated by others; they are sustainableand crucially the people they support emerge stronger and better able to face the trials and tribulations of daily life.

We hope, as we come to the end of our first decade that as an organization, we too are constantly learning from things that didn’t always go the way we planned. As a Trustee Board and staff team we are increasingly reviewing our own learning and tweaking, hopefully improving, how we do things going forward. We know we have much still to learn although we also recognize we have come a long way since 2006 and have achieved a lot – we are valued by partners and recognized as sector leaders.

For our 10th Anniversary year we will rightly take pride in what we have achieved and what we have helped other to achieve – but we know in our hearts that we can and should do more. We hope to avoid the pitfall set out by the American community activist Saul Allinsky who once said:

“One of the most important things in life is …..that ever gnawing inner doubt as to whether you’re right. If you don’t have that, if you think you’ve got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated.”

In 2016 we will expand the portfolio of projects we support:

• We will continue our main activity of providing bespoke housing owned by Commonweal to project partners – we hope our next project in 2016 will be working with Quaker Social Action and others supporting young adult carers.

• We will also go further in supporting projects where we are not necessarily providing or acquiring housing assets. Instead we will where appropriate provide direct revenue support for a small number of projects who already have access to housing but need support to deliver and test a new model or new service. Our first project which will start in 2016 in partnership with Elmbridge Rentstart in Surrey is their Feedom2Work: Buying the Future modelbridging the gap between between homelessness and unemployment and work and stable tenancies.

• We will continue to support new feasibility studies, supporting others to identify new areas of social injustice where access to appropriate housing at a given time can be part of the solution.

• We will build upon our growing reputation as leading lights in the use of social investment funding – reviewing our current offer,learning lessons and growing our funding capacity.

• We will continue to become better at getting our message across on lessons learnt and policychanges needed maximising the impact of our projects.

• In 2016 we have an ambition to launch a new annual competition to identify areas of social injustice where housing is part of the solution. This competition will be inviting entries from innovative thinkers who are not content to say what is wrong but have ideas and solutions to put it right.

This latest strategy document outlines the views of Trustees setting out not just how they see the charity, its role and overall ambitions; a reflection on our performance against targets and ambitions over the last 12 months and specifically outlines the targets and milestones (as seen at December 2015) for the coming 36 months.

1.2Who are we?

Commonweal Housing is an independent action learning charity.

We use our resources to support and develop, in partnership with others (charities and housing associations), new and innovative role model pilot solutions to different forms of social injustice – taking them on our Project Cycle of testing, evaluating, promoting and replicating. This will generally be a 5-10 year cycle.

Trustees have described Commonweal as a patient investor and a patient partner

The Commonweal Project Cycle

1. Idea Sourcing – To date experience has suggested a ratio of up to 30:1 in terms of ideas considered through to more detailed consideration and ultimate adoption. New ideas will come internally as well as from outside approaches and proposals.

1. Detailed feasibility / due diligence stage– Including business plan review and demand analysis up to contract negotiations.

1. Project initiation stage – Signing of contracts and fundraising if necessary.

1. Pilot project implementation stage – Including process learning, constant internal evaluation and review and learning cycle.

1. External Evaluation stage – Actual evaluation arrangements to be established at stages 3 and 4. Expert external evaluation to be a review of the project ‘in full swing’.

1. Internal Evaluation Stage – increasingly Commonweal are formalising this second evaluation ensuring it is capturing the wider lessons learnt for the charity from the project – to shape its own future project development and delivery.

1. Promotion stage – Campaigning and lobbying on the outcomes of the project and evaluation, seeking policy change / expansion.

1. Replication stage – increasing the number of beneficiaries of the model

1. Sustainment stage–supporting new partners to ongoing delivery and development

1. Handover and Exit stage–enabling Commonweal Housing to extract its capital investment to enable investment in new projects and tackling emerging injustices.

Commonweal Housing Limited has a small core staff team of just four people who are overseen by a Board of Trustees.

The charity is extremely grateful to members of its voluntary Advisory Panel. These leading experts from across the fields of housing, charities and social injustice provide support, advice and guidance to our Chief Executive and staff team.We are grateful to these individuals for the generosity in their support of the work of Commonweal Housing.

Above all we remain indebted to the Directors and Staff of Grove End Housing Limited for their ongoing financial support for the charity. Quite simply without their help and foresight in establishing the charity and supporting its activities we would not be here. We are delighted that this close bond is set to continue in to the future.

1.3 Key advances in 2015

• Further growth of our property portfolio with 6 new houses purchased in 2015 for our latest No Recourse to Public Funds project

• Next step development and investment in our increased (and improved) communications and policy activity with the recruitment of a new External Affairs and Communications Coordinator

• Commissioning and publishing of policy reports taking forward key lessons learnt from Chrysalis and Miscarriages of Justice projects – both providing new springboards for securing policy and operational change for women exiting prostitution and victims of miscarriages of Justice respectively.

• Active development of non-property acquisition projects – notably partnership with Elmbridge Rentstart on their project Freedom 2 Work, approved by Trustees in December 2015 for commencement early in 2016.

• Commencement of our new Learning Partnership with the Institute of Voluntary Action Research (IVAR) helping Commonweal embed strategic learning from our projects in how we operate and deliver as a charity.

1.4Our projects to date:

• RESET(2006-2008)– meeting the housing and support needs of young people exiting young offenders institutes

• Re-Unite(2007 – to date) – providing housing with support to mothers who would be homeless upon release from prison. Cutting through the catch 22 of them being homeless and therefore unable to take custody and care of their children and because they don’t have care of their children they are unable to secure suitable family housing. The Re-Unite model is already being replicated this year to benefit other mothers and their children across the country.

Re-Unite is our flagship project in that it that has progressed through the Commonweal projectcycle. In 2014 we outsourced the day to day coordination of the Re-Unite Network to Anawim (our Re-Unite partner in Birmingham) and the national membership body Women’s Breakout); this was part of our handover strategy. Our original partnership agreement and leases with Housing for Women in South London are due to expire within the current Plan period in 2017/18.

• The Chrysalis Project (2009 – to date) – working with women seeking to exit prostitution, especially street sex activity, providing quality transitional accommodation aiding the move on from high support hostels and helping secure the positive steps forward they have taken in their lives. Chrysalis was positively evaluated in 2012 and replication, expansion and use of the learning from the project is increasingly becoming known. In 2015 we commissioned and published an update review of the policy landscape which identified that whilst some progress has been made, prostitution remains undiscussed by many mainstream women’s services and as such women seeking to exit prostitution are often not given the support and advice they need. Commonweal will be working with groups such as NIA and SASE to try to address that ‘blind spot’ and raise awareness of prostitution which we are clear is a form of violence against women and girls up the agenda.

• Peer Landlords (2011 to date) – parallel supportive shared housing models being developed with two specialist delivery partners for young people and former hostel dwellers. The project aims to support growing self-esteem and peer mentoring to aid the transition to securing and maintaining independent housing and employment as well asreducing the risk of downward spiral once high support provision is withdrawn. The Peer Landlord project has already received recognitionwith Thames Reach winning one of the top awards in the prestigious 2014 Andy Ludlow Awards. The model is also attracting media attention with the online magazine Children & Young People Now due to publish a major feature on the Catch 22 Peer Landlord in early 2016. At the same time Commonweal will be publishing the final evaluation of the phase 1 pilot projects from the University of York and working with partners on the next Phase 2, stage – taking foreard the lessons learnt and improving the model, outcomes and impact.

• Miscarriages of Justice - The Libra Project (2013 to 214) - a joint project with a specialist CAB service addressing a key problem of limited housing options for many people who have been wrongly convicted and imprisoned. The implementation on the ground was complicated by the partnership structure, the solution was felt to be over-engineered and finally changes to Government policy around compensation claims for victims of miscarriages of justice meant the project was unable to deliver as originally hoped. However in 2015 Commonweal worked with the LSE to produce a ‘reasoned argument’ report highlighting the actions for central and local government to take to help address the ongoing social injustice. Commonweal continues to lobby Government Ministers using the learning from this project to seek policy change.

• No Recourse to Public Funds(2014 onwards) –a project testing cross subsidised models of providing vital free accommodation for those caught in enforced destitution within the asylum system with no recourse to public funds and no ability to gain employment to support themselves and their families. Seeking to work with leading asylum support agencies to establish a sustainable business model and providing positive engagement with clients within the asylum system. Social investment funding was secured in late 2014 and Commonweal has bsecured the property portfolio in south and east London in 2015. Expert external evaluators are in placeand already providing a vital feedback loop in the development of this project.

1.5 How we did against our 2015 ambitions

• Ongoing watching brief on Re-Unite and planned liaison with coordination partners Anawim & Women’s Breakout (bi-annual steering group meetings)

• Attendance at 6th Annual Re-Unite Replication Network conference

• Progress on delivery of exit strategy from Re-Unite South London (with effect from 2016 onwards) buy-out of properties / return on investment

• Replication of model in place / momentum growing

• Formal, planned and agreed withdrawal of Commonweal from frontline promotion / facilitating activity from Commonweal (report to Trustees by December 2015).

• Start formal discussions with St.MB on clear and sustainable exit strategy from Chrysalis south London (with effect from 2017 onwards) buy-out of properties / return on investment

• Year 3 interim report received by Q2

• Publication of ongoing findings and learning from partners

• Final evaluation report received and published Q4

• Ongoing Promotion and campaigning for replication

• Detailed discussions with existing social investors on replication / expansion opportunities

• Successful reporting back to investors and positive feedback received

• Delivery of agreed capital funding strategy to support new project delivery

• Formal end of property / project agreement with MJSS.

• Commissioning lobbying research to promote / increase housing options and availability for victims of miscarriages of justice – subject of 2015 Heads Up report.

• Evaluation partner in place by end Q1

• Property acquisition programme completed by Q3

• Approval and funding to be in place by Q2 2015

• Commencement of project Q3 2015 (subject to approval and funding)

• Ongoing delivery and evaluation scheme in place

• New Advisory Panel in place Q1.

• Internal project impact evaluation tool in place Q2

• Achieve renewal of PQASSO Level 2 Award (or consideration of level 3?)

• Review of Commonweal’s environmental accreditation

• Successful external audit – February

• Production of Annual Review for sign-off by Trustees – AGM June 2015

• Strategic Away Day – November to include further specific review of Communications and Positioning Strategy and general operating priorities post General Election

2. COMMONWEAL HOUSING’S VISION, PURPOSE, VALUES, AMBITIONS AND STRATEGIC TARGETS – RE-AFFIRMED BY THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES DECEMBER 2015

2.1Vision:

‘Developing innovative housing solutions to social injustices, capturing the learning and achieving replication of proven successesand take up of lessons learnt’

2.2Purpose:

‘A housing charity established to continue a family philanthropic legacy that aims to work in partnership with others as a test bed, innovator, researcher and campaigner for new models and new ways of working to find housing based solutions to different forms of social injustice.’

2.3Values:

▫Innovative, rigorous, learning, campaigning

▫No fear of failure only fear of not knowing why things fail (or work)

▫Openness and integrity

▫A genuine commitment toworking with partners who can deliver work in supporting people who fall through the net because of social injustice

2.4Ambition:

‘Achieving policy and operational change with lessons learnt from supported projects –securing positive and enduring benefits for those experiencing social injustice.’