Rachel Rank
By: Cassie Robinson.
Tags: Leadership, Social Change, Digital, Data, Social Justice

CEO, 360Giving

“I wish the social sector did more to leverage its voice and influence as an expert network that understands issues in detail and has the long view and concrete proposals on how to address them.”

As someone running a social sector organisation can you describe what the challenges are?

Balancing the external engagement opportunities and networking (and needing to be opportunistic with those) with day to day internal demands, including board engagement, strategic planning and fundraising.

Who do you go to, where do you go to or what do you read/listen to for support, and renewal?

My board, who are hugely supportive but also hold my feet to the fire; my mentor, Simon Burrall; a network of women CEOs that I’m in; my team, who I try to share most things with as part of building a team that’s trying to create long-term behaviour change — we share ideas, build straw men, bring our contacts in & try not be insular in our thinking.

Twitter has proved extremely useful for getting quick ideas, intros & making connections. Also a network of like-minded individuals in our target organisations who tell me what they and others really think about our work. I don’t have time to read much and its a source of frustration, but I try to set aside 1–2 hours each week for certain blogs, newsletters & news articles (I have a list I can share if useful?). For personal headspace/renewal, I enjoy podcasts.

Who do you think of as fellow travellers and why do they matter?

People running small, start ups that are reliant of grants; people working on open data standards (OpenContracting, IATI, OpenOwnership); female CEOs, who have generally been more open with me about how they balance the pressures of running a non-profit or start up. They matter because they’re either facing similar challenges (fundraising, managing growth and expectations, workload) or similar technical issues (data quality, data literacy, infrastructure that people want but don’t really understand what it takes to get it in place).

What are the biggest trade-offs you are having to make at the moment in terms of running the organisation?

How much time I spend doing external engagement, advocacy and promoting our work versus fundraising, reporting and supporting staff. It never feels comfortable having to choose between the two so I’ve had to learn to be brutal with prioritising, delegate to the point it feels uncomfortable and to not sweat the small stuff — its taken me a while to get to this point and to feel ok about saying no to people.

I’d like to see more alliances coming together to talk about an issue and work on joint strategies.

What do you wish the social sector did more of? And less of?

More of — Leveraged its voice and influence as an expert network that understands issues in detail and has the long view and concrete proposals on how to address them, e.g. on homelessness, disability rights, poverty, climate change, etc. I’d like to see more alliances coming together to talk about an issue and work on joint strategies.

Less of — talking about innovation. The word is used too much and I sense is partly driven by funders and the need to appear new, exciting and different. It’s ok to keep on keeping on, and focus on fixing or delivering a specific thing.

If you were designing a programme of support and training for the kind of social sector leadership that we need today, what would be the essential ingredients?