Execution support for mission driven organisations

Intervention

Social or environmental challenge

"The challenge is multifaceted.

Exceptional execution is preventing great ideas from solving some of the world's biggest problems.

Smaller organisations can be wary of bringing in support, especially from established consultants. Consultancy is perceived as expensive without guaranteed results. Consultants will have to move onto next project at some point and are generally paid for advice, not to deliver the solution. Resource constrained organisations often do not feel they can take that risk. Payment by results mitigates that risk.

Some progressive impact investors are bringing in external support for organisations, but challenges still exist. Picanto's partners are people that have run charities and social businesses in LIMCs. They have lived through the challenges they are helping to solve.

Impact investors are discussing a lack of diversity in investees and recognise that this sort of support may mitigate some of the risks in stepping away from their normal founder profile."

Description of the intervention

"A group of social entrepreneurs/intrapreneurs were looking back over their past decade in the industry and recognised that many ideas with huge potential for impact failed due to poor execution. Conversations with social entrepreneurs, impact investors, advisors, consultants, philanthropists and academics confirmed that there was substance to this insight.

Offering world class execution support to mission driven organisations can lead to the scaling of great interventions, whose impact may have otherwise been lost. This support is about operationalising strategy, building upon existing traction and good understanding of an issue. For example, helping a doctor with a fantastic solution to develop and execute a marketing plan.

Support is delivered as partnership, with the explicit objective that the work will continue without Picanto, generally with new roles created. The pay by results model means that resource constrained organisations can get access to support they might not otherwise get and also that Picanto is incentivised to ensure a lasting, impactful outcome that continues to add value.

There is also an opportunity to research the type of support that improves the chance of success for mission driven organisations. This research could then be shared with relevant stakeholders."

Last data update

Data for this pipeline project was last updated in August 2024