TSIC works with ambitious organisations and changemakers. Those that want to break silos, embrace the unknown and are keen to create systemic change in their markets. We work in a collaborative and dynamic way, helping our clients to think differently, and perform to their greatest potential. In order to create the deepest social investment, we enable our clients to hear the voices and consider the opinions of those that can shape the impact and investment that they make.
Social impact measurement and management
We help foundations, corporates with CSR programmes, charities, social enterprises and impact investors to not just capture data but also design, implement and refine an impact assessment process tailored to the stakeholders’ needs.
For funders and foundations
- Needs and impact investment
We understand the importance of making the right investment choices for funders, foundations and corporates with CSR programmes. We specialise in needs and impact investment to identify where your funds will have the most impact. - An integrated model of impact measurement
To maximise the impact of your investment, we design an integrated model of impact measurement that offers a holistic view at the programme level as well as organisational level.
For charities and social enterprises
- Social Impact Measurement Framework
Our expertise lies in designing and implementing a social impact measurement framework that helps teams to gauge impact throughout the organisation. - Training
We offer a sustainable solution and ensure that the internal stakeholders become well-trained in data planning and driving social impact at different levels in the organisation. We train your staff in data mining and help you to define meaningful metrics that truly convey your social impact to existing and potential investors, and board members. - Impact Evaluation
Our experts design data-backed evaluations to help internal stakeholders with process and performance improvement and strategy.
For impact investors
- Social Investment Strategy
Our consultants help you to identify high impact opportunities by designing a process to measure ROI in terms of financial returns as well as social impact. We articulate a social investment strategy best-suited for your fund, by prioritising the outcomes you want to achieve. - Insights and Impact Report
Our data experts and strategists generate reports using rigorous quantitative and qualitative research methods to assess the impact of your investments. These insights include an end-to-end impact evaluation report outlining the creation and evidence of the impact of your current and potential investments throughout the investment lifecycle.
A research conducted by a Stanford lecturer Kathreen Kelly Janus found that 75% of nonprofits collect data on an ongoing basis but very few use it well. We offer a full range of services to help you measure and manage the social impact of your processes, projects and investments.
Corporate social impact
We partner with corporate clients enabling them to create authentic social impact. By integrating social impact into the clients’ business strategies, we ensure that the clients adopt sustainable practices delivering double bottom-line value – both financial and social. In case the corporate client has existing social impact strategies in place, we evaluate them and leverage our expertise to identify how those strategies could be improved.
- Identification of Social Domain
When we start working with a client, we begin by helping identify the social domain in which the company is most ideally suited to deliver maximum impact. We do so by considering the existing capabilities and assets of the organisation that could be leveraged to create value within a social context.
- Data-driven Process
Through our qualitative and quantitative research process, we also uncover the domains within which the management is most driven to deliver impact. We combine all the data from the identification phase to build an integrated vision that outlines exactly what the aspirational social impact goal would be. Finally, we create an implementation plan that would lead the management team to deliver on the vision while channelising the organisation’s resources towards bringing the plan into fruition.
- Financial Assessment
Success of the end-to-end social impact journey rests on a solid financial foundation – and we partner with our clients to build this foundation by creating data-backed financial assessment plans. These plans contain high-level capital allocation details that drive decisions around financial reserving, investment and performance tracking of the capital deployed towards the social cause.
- Training
Our focus is not only on delivering strategic corporate social impact but also on building such a culture in our clients’ organisations through training and workshops. In short, we ensure that the internal stakeholders become knowledgeable and self-sufficient in driving authentic social impact through their operational domains on an ongoing basis.
Corporate organisations have a responsibility to fulfil towards society. A well-defined social impact plan would not only lead to greater good but would, in turn, also drive customer loyalty, employee engagement and positive branding. We leverage our experience and expertise to help organisations fulfil these responsibilities and in turn, positively impact their business health.
Revenue generation
Through our pioneering asset-based approach, Charities Unlocked, we help foundations, charities, social enterprises and corporations to align their revenue generation strategy with their overall business strategy.
Strategic Review & Revenue Model
Our expertise lies in recognizing the core assets of our clients, and we follow it up by in-depth evaluation that leads to maximum monetization of those assets. This helps our clients to unlock commercial value and generate top-line growth.
- Revenue Generation Models – We not only partner with our clients to build sustainable revenue generation models from scratch, but we also assist them with strategic analyses of their existing revenue streams thus identifying improvement opportunities through fundamental gap assessment tactics. Next, we dive deep with laser eye focus on identified domains to overhaul the revenue models, optimizing them for maximum return on investment.
- Tailored Frameworks for Sustainable Impact – Our tailored frameworks are a testament to our commitment towards creating long-term, sustainable impact for our clients. This is further demonstrated through our unwavering dedication towards laying a strong intellectual foundation for organisations, that enables them to make well-informed ongoing decisions around revenue and profitability.
- Performance Tracking Systems – To ensure performance monitoring of the revenue-generating strategies, we build tracking systems with comprehensive fact-based feedback for assessing the impact to inform future strategies.
Investment Readiness & Fundraising
A research conducted by a Stanford lecturer Kathreen Kelly Janus found that the biggest challenge faced by the majority of the nonprofit leaders is access to capital.
We understand that social organisations face a myriad of challenges in the fundraising domain. We work with our clients to navigate this demanding landscape stifled with tough competition and regulatory changes.
- Capabilities for Fundraising– We equip our clients with the necessary tools and operational capabilities that enable them to be adequately prepared for successful fundraising. This includes clearly defining the purpose, identifying and quantifying funding requirements, and planning for allocating the capital wisely.
- Data-backed Investment Plans – Our consultants are experts in financial modelling, planning, statistical analysis and market research, and we deploy these skills to build data-backed investment plans.
- Integrated Organisational Models – We ensure long-term readiness by helping build an integrated organisational model that is well equipped to raise, manage and channelize the funds.
Diversity, equity and inclusion
TSIC’s dedication to facilitating meaningful social change is integrated with the commitment to enforcing diversity, equity and inclusion within the social impact domain. We partner with our clients to incorporate these values into their social impact strategies and at each stage of the operational processes.
Our engagements commence with DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) audits whereby we assess the stages in which the clients fall short on DEI metrics as compared to the benchmarks. These audits are accompanied by the collection of quantitative and qualitative data via client interviews, facilitated conversations, surveys and database extraction, and these audits help uncover the aspects where improvement is needed. Based on the results, we assist clients in creating a holistic action plan on how to improve the identified processes and integrate the DEI values into their organisational ethos.
We not only help in planning for DEI integration but also in ground-level implementation. Our consultants are experts at project management, and we ensure that we collaborate on the heavy lifting with the organisation’s management to create a culture that promotes and supports these values.
TSIC is a global influencer in the values of diversity, equity and inclusion across the social change space, and our deep involvement in this cause enables us to learn about the best practices across the globe. As we engage with our clients, we draw from these best practices to help our clients enhance DEI values across all stages – grant making, programming, research and evaluation, core engagement, etc.
As global change-makers and collaborators, we strive to embed the DEI values into our clients’ business strategy such that it becomes an important pillar on which the organisation’s future plans rest. We also actively contribute to a more enabling data infrastructure, particularly around collection of equalities data.
Read/watch more about our work:
- Our report for London Community Response, which distributed £59m for Covid response, on how to embed equity in grantmaking.
- Created the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Data Standards with 360giving in the UK, adopted by philanthropic funders.
- Between 12-19 May 21, London Funders hosted a Festival of Learning (#LdnLearnFest) to highlight the brilliant work of civil society over the past year, to share best practice on what works (and what doesn’t) and to ensure that change ‘sticks’ to make the capital a better place for every Londoner. We supported and contributed to these events. (See below).
- We conducted research on how the @HeritageFundUK can be more inclusive of under-represented groups, speaking to hundreds of their grantees. The research provided important findings. See the Report.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
All of our services are aligned to enable our clients across the world to accelerate progress towards all the SDGs, ultimately enhancing the global partnership for sustainable development.
Training
Introduction to SDGs
0.5 day – 2 days
Introduce the whole framework of SDGs, covering all 17 goals and 169 targets in brief.
Thematic workshop
1 day – 2 days
Introduce a specific theme or some goals with in-depth explanations and activities.
Customised training
Based on your needs to design a one-off event, a single workshop or a training programme.
Consultation
Strategy formulation
Develop strategies for your organisation to create impacts based on SDGs
Policy and workflow review
Review existing policies and workflows in your organisation to align the targets of the SDGs
Social impact management
Theory of change development
Create your theory of change align with the SDGs
Impact measurement
Build a holistic impact measurement framework to track your impact in response to the SDGs
SoPact Impact Cloud®
Help you to measure your social impacts on the SDGs with our SoPact Impact Cloud® solution
Research and convening
Convening
In order to advance our mission of a thriving social sector, we also convene various initiatives especially those that further the cause of building an inclusive and diverse social sector. We proactively bring together various influencers, partners and leaders on forums, conferences and networks to help propel this space towards a better future. Through these engagements, we not only further cement our relationships with the key players in the industry but we also develop further expertise in cutting-edge, future-oriented topics that, in turn, help during our client work as well. Moreover, as responsible stewards who drive social impact change across organisations, we believe it is our duty to actively convene high-impact initiatives that would ensure creation of a just organisational ecosystem in which true social impact is seamlessly integrated.
TSIC is proud to embrace diversity in terms of age, race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender, sexuality and disability, and we work to ensure that these systems of discrimination are not perpetuated among capital and wealth holders. We are proud to have incubated and launched Diversity Forum, which gathers over 50 social investment firms and 100 individuals across the social investment sector in the UK, to drive inclusive social investment.
We have previously convened Women in Social Finance, a network of 120 senior female professionals working in social finance, dedicated to increasing visibility of female leadership, providing peer support and training for career advancement, and influencing the agenda on gender lens investing. We continue to support this initiative.
Currently we are convening a network called People of Colour Evaluators and Researchers, an informal network for those who identify as people of colour working in research and evaluation. If you are interested to join, please contact us.
Research
TSIC envisions a future with a thriving social sector – where funds would be directed efficiently towards causes where they would have impact for those who need help the most. To achieve this, we conduct in-house research on topics and issues that are important to the sector. Our research is backed by our team’s rich practical experience and its professional/academic expertise.
We begin by defining the scope of the research initiative, followed by rigorous deployment of qualitative and quantitative techniques including market research, surveys, interviews, data collection, data analysis, etc. to gather and analyze information. Next, we engage various public and private sector organisations at the relevant stages of the research while also collaborating with independent experts. Finally, we deliver insights and recommendations that would help achieve the desired results while simultaneously developing action plans for the involved organisations.
Some examples of research reports that we have produced include:
- The City of London Corporation to scope potential new sources of capital for the UK social investment market. Read more here.
- Minority Supplier Development UK to identify ways to promote inclusive procurement, launched in the House of Lords in October 2014 and received nationwide coverage. Read more here.
- SPRING Accelerator to produce a comprehensive report on investing with a focus on girls and young women in emerging markets, and on specific needs, challenges and opportunities in five sectors. Read more here.
Innovation
Our firm is at the forefront of driving innovation to create meaningful social impact across multiple domains. We are dedicated to creating changes in social systems by working with our clients, independently engaging in social sector initiatives and incubating our own projects. We strive to hone a mindset of open-mindedness with readiness to challenge the status quo.
While working with our clients, we adopt an approach where we break down all existing limiting beliefs and systems that refrain the organisations from driving meaningful social impact. Next, we replace these limiting systems with new, modern organisational systems while leveraging cutting-edge technological and management techniques. Finally, we ensure that these new, innovative systems operate independently and efficiently with minimum intervention. For clients that are looking to build the next generation of social impact frameworks, we combine creative methodologies from diverse domains to develop tailored, forward looking processes that disrupt redundant, age-old systems.
Our firm’s independent engagements in cutting-edge social initiatives are a testament to our commitment to driving innovation within this space. We partner with leading public and private sector enterprises to envision the future of social impact, and we leverage our expertise to help take steps towards achieving that vision. Our contributions range from developing innovative business models to creating new operating procedures around data capture and analysis, from identifying diverse partnerships and networks to creating radical social impact strategies, and from building fundraising plans to engaging and training various operating stakeholders.
In our quest to create a future for social impact that is centred around innovation, we incubate radical projects that are in their infancy and we channelize our resources to help them succeed. If we come across a new project with an innovative idea, methodology, system, product or service, we provide a nurturing environment for the team that helps them test their innovation while receiving access to our expertise. With our rich experience across social consulting, we help the project teams with problem-solving and social impact frameworks, monetisation models, personnel training, financial impact assessment, fundraising and much more. We are currently incubating the following two projects:
They are working to build technology products to model complex humanitarian engagement in conflict zones, and simplify the process of collecting large-scale community feedback. TSIC is incubating the project through: building its business plan and fundraising, engaging with humanitarian stakeholders including local responders, funders and international agencies, and building the methodology and data model. Humanity Data launched in April 2019 and is funded by Humanitarian Grand Challenge.
If you are interested to find out more please contact [email protected]
Business4Purpose
B4Purpose is a B2B marketplace to exchange products or services to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by providing an environment dedicated to sustainable innovation. B4Purpose is an innovative platform which helps companies specialised in providing B2B products or services achieving one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, to connect with potential customers. This, in turn, increases the impact of such sustainable businesses at a local or global level.
If you are interested to find out more please contact [email protected]
Impact investing and ESG
Advisor to Impact Investors
- Develop ESG strategy, E&S management systems (ESMS), and governance capabilities
- Conduct portfolio-level analyses to decide on investment strategies to align and accelerate investment pipeline
- Provide KPI measurement framework
- Contribute to robust ESG due diligence and enable measurement verification and reporting
- Build capacity of staff members
Consultant to Investee Firms or Corporates and Social Enterprises:
- Develop and/or support them in implementing the E&S Management Systems and reporting
- Facilitate linkages with investors
- Develop their Theory of Change/Impact Framework
- Build ESG capacity of staff members
- Align CSR investments to SDG Goals
Advocate to and for Beneficiaries:
- Directly engage with diverse groups of product or service end-users and beneficiaries to understand their E&S needs and identify emerging investment opportunities
- Collect user voices and advocate for them in investors forums and publications
- Promote civil society’s interests and influence impact investors and ESMS ecosystem
Highlights of our work
- Investment Climate Reform (ICR) facility: We supported ICR Facility to convene Webinars and author policy papers, which are available in English and French, focused on impact investing in Africa, Pacific and Caribbean countries. Links here:
- Investing in adolescent girls and young women: We were commissioned by SPRING Accelerator, a programme funded by FCDO, USAID and Australia Aid, to create an interactive toolkit:
- Equality Impact Investing Project (EIIP): We supported EIIP to launch their inaugural training programme for over 80 impact investors and author their digital toolkit:
- Our Managing Director co-authored “The nexus between climate finance and gender-smart investing” with the Chair of 2X Challenge, an initiative of Development Finance Institutions (DFI) to mobilise capital. The article was included in a compendium published by the ODI, titled ‘The catalytic effects of DFI investment: gender equality, climate action, and the harmonisation of impact standards: an essay series’.
- This report is based on in-depth conversations with a range of stakeholders— funders, asset managers, intermediaries, and social purpose organisations — unearthing their approaches, best practices and challenges in hearing and integrating end-community voices in the design, deployment, and measurement of their work.
Organisational development
TSIC supports charities, social enterprises, civil society organisations with organisational development, so that they can be more resilient and impactful. We have developed a specialism in supporting funders to support their grantees with organisational strengthening. This service area often combines one or more of the other of our service areas, especially social impact measurement and revenue generation.
Our uniqueness is that while we have experience in organisational strengthening and exposure to different actors in the ecosystem including funders, we have always been embedded in the realities of civil society organisations – being a small company ourselves also.
When it comes to organisational development, we are not beholden to one particular tool – we use tools depending on the needs of our clients. Most importantly, we believe that at the heart of social change is the people behind the organisations delivering the impact. So, we spend a lot of time working with our clients – acting more as coaches and mentors rather than ‘know-it-all consultants. We work based on clients’ pace and on their own terms, so that the learnings and our support can be fully embedded in the organisation.
Strategic planning
Many charities and social enterprises need external support to review their strategies, to ensure that they are staying on track and maximising their impact. TSIC is committed to an assets-based approach, building on their strengths and helping them reflect and realise their ultimate vision, by putting in place processes and frameworks. Strategic planning processes require internal and external stakeholder engagement, which yields actionable recommendations for them to take forward and planning of scenarios. We look at all aspects of a strategy, from internal change management to scaling and KPIs development. We also have a specialism working with Founder-led organisations or organisations going through major leadership transitions.