Community Sector Strategy

Lynda Ford recently joined Enterprising Partnerships and brought with her many years of experience in the government and not-for-profit human services sector in addition to outstanding qualifications in criminology, social science, business and impact measurement accreditation. As an inventor and provisional patent holder, the area of social innovation is of specific interest to Lynda and imagining, designing and practising human services differently and for more effective outcomes is a feature of her work within Enterprising Partnerships.

Lynda specialises in the following areas:

Social business development
Lynda has many years experience in the design and start up of social enterprises for migrants and refugees. In addition, she is has undertaken feasibility and business planning processes for social business, has significant experience in impact measurement and is currently gaining accreditation in two UK forms of impact measurement.

Impact measurement
Often community development programs are not undertaken with the end in mind – what is the community change anticipated as a result of the investment being made and how do we know if, and how well, the change has occurred?

Social Accounting and Audit examines the ‘social, environmental and economic’ performance and impact of an organisation and establishes a framework for ongoing monitoring, evaluation and accountability to stakeholders both internal and external to the organisation. Identifying and verifying (auditing) performance ensures that an organisation is working in accordance with its values.

Social return on Investment (SRoI) is one of a number of methods of articulating change. SROI aims to help organisations understand and manage the social, environmental and economic benefits (value) they are creating. Developed from cost-benefit analysis, it is a measurement approach that identifies the economic value of social benefits by translating social objectives into financial measures and focuses on the most important sources of value as defined by stakeholders.

Lynda works with community change projects from the beginning to design projects and plan for evaluation and outcome measurement which creates a robust environment for articulating and measuring social change over time.

Board and organisational development
Managing a community-based organisation has as many, if not more, compliance requirements as commercial businesses. Management Committees (Boards) need to be active, aware and accountable and fully engaged in working with staff, services users and other stakeholders in setting the direction for the organisation. Lynda mentors Boards and key staff in better management of governance, financial matters, organisational structure, connection with clients/community, creation of strategic, operational or funding source plans and best practice program design, planning and implementation to ensure that funding bodies, staff and service users can be confident of the viability and practice quality of the organisation in which they are investing time, reputation and/or money.

Community Development and Crime Prevention mentoring
Lynda brings almost twenty years of community development practice to her mentoring with staff in local government and the community sector. Known for her ability to bring together ‘unusual’ partners in projects, activities and enterprises, Lynda encourages all community sector practitioners to work within a community development framework – to work with communities directly to identify their own needs, create their own solutions, engage stakeholders who can help them realise their dream and act on the plan piece by piece until solutions become long-term and sustainable.

Senior staff are often pushed for time and feel unable to devote the amount of time they would like to skill up new community development or crime prevention staff. Mentoring at the beginning of projects can assist inexperienced staff to position projects for the best long term community change. Coupled with Social Accounting and Auditing and/or Social Return on Investment methodologies, one-to-one and team mentoring provides the best and most cost effective approach to successful community development.

Organisational, program, service and facility reviews
Looking at what we do, when, for whom and why we do it are critical questions in a cycle of continuous improvement. Lynda has undertaken organisational, program, service and facility reviews as part of her career in local and state governments and the community sector and now in her consulting role with Enterprising Partnerships.