Maximising Impacts: Listening to Marginalised Voices

Stakeholder involvement is a term that has been used for decades and is recognised as common sense and standard practice when wanting to create a profit-making product or service. Yet, even for those who want to create social impacts, marginalised communities often still lack the power to influence decisions that affect their lives. Impact management practices that seek to maximise impacts have a consistent demand for stakeholder involvement – it is a requirement for standards set by Social Value International, the Impact Management Project and many others – but it remains something that is not seen as a means to influence the design and delivery of products and services. So, how does an organisation effectively listen and take account of the views of their stakeholders (with the resources they have) – particularly those affected by decisions that are often marginalised, so they can improve their impacts? On this topic, we invited:  

• Bonnie Chiu, the Managing Director of The Social Investment Consultancy, a global network of consultants specialised in impact measurement and social investment strategies. She is an avid advocate of participatory research, user voices and downward accountability, having founded an award-winning social enterprise which trains marginalised women and girls photography and storytelling. She also serves at Forbes as a Senior Contributor writing on gender and diversity, and she has co-founded the Diversity Forum for Inclusive Social Investment in the UK.

 

• Joanne Anderson, who holds over 30 years experience as an equality, diversity, and social inclusion practitioner, is the founder and managing director of Innervision. She offers consultancy services to public, private and third sector organisations across the UK to tackle social inequality. In the past, Joanne was a Board member of two of Liverpool’s largest social enterprises, Furniture Resource Centre, Bulky Bobs, Blackburne House and Women’s Tech.

This webinar surely provided us with practical insights on how you can listen, gain insights, and improve the impacts of our work!

We kindly thank Joanne and Bonnie again for the inspiring session. Don’t worry if you missed it, you can watch it below!

Find our article here to help you better practise listening to stakeholders.