News

By Francis Shaw, Director of Operations at The Fore

Introduction

Since launching our pilot in 2012, The Fore has identified and backed the UK’s most promising small charities and social enterprises, providing unrestricted funding alongside targeted skills support. We do this because we are clear that solutions to even the most entrenched challenges we face already exist within grassroots organisations. Communities know how to solve their own problems, but they need the freedom and support to scale their impact.

That conviction is proven by what charities backed by The Fore have gone on to achieve, with many now driving change far beyond their grassroots origins. Football Beyond Borders are influencing national policy on how to stop vulnerable children being excluded from school; and Greater Change are pioneering personalised cash-grant models, delivered through partner charities, that help people experiencing homelessness overcome immediate financial barriers and chart a path out of homelessness.

These are just a couple of examples, but across our portfolio we are seeing many charities moving from grassroots to nationwide impact, and they are achieving this in very different ways, whether through geographical expansion, replicating their model, shaping national conversations, or influencing policy and best practice.

To understand what made this possible and whether there are any common enablers, we spoke with a wide range of charity leaders backed by The Fore who have successfully scaled their impact.

We are sharing what we learnt in the hope that it may be useful for other charities thinking about how to grow their impact and for funders thinking about what support the organisations they are backing need.

Success factors for turbocharging impact beyond their grassroots beginnings

While there was no single formula, across the conversations, eight factors consistently emerged as instrumental in the success of the charities we spoke to.

Unrestricted, multi-year funding

Unrestricted and multi-year funding gave leaders the headspace to get out of the weeds of day-to-day delivery and think more strategically about where they wanted their organisations to head. Even small, early-stage core grants were described as transformational; not because of their size, but because they created space to plan, invest in the right roles and systems, and carve out the foundations for a more sustainable path forward. However, with much of the funding out there short-term or tightly restricted, planning in this way is still a luxury.

Codified delivery models

Many charities reached a point where they had to clearly define what they did, through playbooks, manuals, or theory of change work. This codification enabled consistency, replication, and quality control, and was particularly critical to geographical expansion or model replication.

However, the leaders noted that codification can be a double-edged sword. What works in inner-city London won’t translate directly to the suburbs of Sheffield. The takeaway was clear: codify core principles and delivery, while leaving room for local adaptation and judgement, otherwise scaling becomes more painful than it needs to be.

Strategic clarity from leaders

Leaders stressed that knowing what not to do was often even more important than knowing what to do. Clear mission boundaries reduced overreach and burnout, and enabled more strategic choices, including mergers or strategic collaboration over direct expansion where the latter wasn’t the right option. Leaders described the ability to recognise when a chosen route was no longer working, and to step back and pivot without being overly wedded to past decisions, as vital to their success. It is our observation that underpinning this was a particular leadership mindset: the ability to separate the organisation’s needs from founder identity and ego, and to make decisions based on impact and organisational need, rather than personal attachment to the cause.

However, it was not just a question of mindset: having the space, often enabled by flexible funding, to step out of day-to-day delivery was critical in allowing leaders to see the bigger picture and make these calls.

Evidence-led models

Evidence was the foundation for growth in almost every case. It wasn’t just about demonstrating organisational impact, but about being clear from the start about why the organisation was needed at all. The organisations we spoke to had built their models on evidence of unmet need and what worked, not anecdotal assumptions. This helped build early credibility and unlocked access to larger funders, government, and policy influence.

For many leaders, investing early in evaluating the effectiveness of their work also proved pivotal in strengthening credibility and accelerating traction with influencers.

Strategic, business-minded support at the right time

Sustained operational or strategic advice, often from people with business or consultancy backgrounds, helped organisations professionalise without losing sight of their mission. This was particularly valuable where boards lacked experience of organisational growth, and leaders needed support to strengthen governance alongside strategy, finance, and operations. Most organisations accessed this support on a pro bono basis, making high-quality expertise available at moments when it would otherwise have been unaffordable.

Building networks

Warm introductions often triggered the next leap forward. Being connected to the right people through existing relationships opened doors that would otherwise have remained closed. Leaders who were most successful here took a long-term view; building relationships before they were immediately useful, and seeing this as an investment that would pay dividends later rather than something to be rushed or transactional.

Telling a clear story

Knowing who they were, and being able to explain it simply, made a real difference. Organisations that invested early in narrative, brand, and comms found it easier to influence and attract funders and partners. Some felt that they left this work too late and while they got to a place of national influence, they said it took them much longer to get there because of it.

Openness to collaboration

Being open to working with others, whether larger charities or similarly sized organisations, accelerated impact. For some organisations, collaboration created routes to wider influence that didn’t rely on growing the organisation itself. This included merging with a larger charity to become more than the sum of their parts, or another organisation passing on the principles of their model without the administrative burdens of franchising it. These leaders set aside ego and resisted the pull to scale the organisation for the sake of it, focusing instead on how their ideas or approaches could be taken up and used as widely as possible.

What this tells us

There was no single formula for success. What mattered most was having the space for leadership to make thoughtful decisions (often catalysed by unrestricted funding), access to the right support at the right time, and the self-awareness to adapt when things weren’t working.

Growth was rarely linear. It involved testing ideas, investing in foundations early, letting go of approaches that no longer served the mission, and in many cases, working with others rather than trying to do everything alone.

What this means for The Fore

Much of what the leaders described as critical, including flexible funding, skills training in comms and providing space to reflect, already sits at the heart of how The Fore works, which is reassuring for us. Because of this, the learning here is less about changing our direction, and more about where and how we can sharpen our support to better reflect the realities charities face.

This includes being clearer about the non-financial support we have available, and strengthening it and adding to it in targeted ways. For example, through workshops and pro bono support to help organisations gain traction with policymakers; or guidance and peer learning opportunities to better support the codification of delivery models for scale.

We will also continue to amplify the visibility of our portfolio leaders, including through our soon-to-launch charity showcases and our wider work connecting leaders with funders, policymakers, and other influencers, helping to maximise the opportunities for their solutions to grow beyond the grassroots.

If you’re ready to help create a society that solves its own problems, we’re here to work with you. Contact Partnerships@TheFore.org to explore our bespoke corporate and philanthropic options.