Spread Social Accelerator program
As in any other type of organization, NGOs also need active and effective management. The Spread Program – Social Impact Accelerator aims to train employees of NGOs in a structured, motivating way and, above all, with sustainable results.
1. Identified problem
According to the study “Diagnosis of NGOs in Portugal” published in 2015, the following common points of NGOs in Portugal are generally recognized:
- Strategy/operations articulation: The articulation established between strategic and annual plans seems to be questionable, in which the latter are often prepared without incorporating the organization’s broad and long-term guidelines.
- Accountability: Lack of adequate accountability mechanisms to society, associates and employees. Particularly towards donors, the accountability must include economic information explaining how the donations were applied in the organization or activities, results and impacts.
- Strategic management level skills: The declared need to develop competencies in terms of strategic management, in addition to denouncing that many organizations are still far from what they would like in this area, it may be a sign that the realization of the strategic plans may still be at an embryonic stage in some NGOs.
- Volunteer management skills: There is a need for NGOs to develop volunteer management skills. It is unclear whether the bad experiences that some organizations report having with volunteering, could not be the result of these management deficiencies.
2. Implemented solution
With the intent to support NGOs in becoming sustainable and with their processes simplified to achieve greater social and environmental impacts, the Spread Program was born. It is a 6 months training program in which a participating NGO will have the opportunity to learn to identify problems, test new approaches and methods and improve their day to day.
The main objective is to positively transform non-profit associations. This transformation will be possible through training the NGO’s management teams, improving service delivery processes that enables them to fulfill their mission as a social institution.
The Program aims to support:
- The improvement of internal processes
- The improvement of the user/beneficiary experience;
- The improvement of the employee/volunteer experience;
- Team and interdepartmental work;
3. Who supported Spread in this intervention?
This solution had the technical supported by Honsha.
4. What was the purpose of the solution implemented?
The Spread Program is based on the 8 Steps of Problem Solving of Toyota. This Management approach is world renown and the goal of this project was to pilot it in a NGO Portuguese setting and adapt to ensure the Program could service other NGOs in the country.
The Program is now available where other NGOs can participate and became one of Spread main services to support companies to have a structured program they can use to apply their corporate social responsability by sponsoring the training of an NGO of their choosing. Learn more here about the Program.
5. What was the social impact created in this pilot – Comunidade Vida e Paz?
- 55 People trained – 300 already underwent an internal training program that derived from the Spread Program
- +100 homeless people identified on top of the yearly indicators, after the training was conducted
- 29 continuous improvement initiatives identified
- A taskforce was created and 5 of the identified initiatives were already implemented