From 'what we do' to the 'difference we make' - Ellen MacArthur Trust's Impact Journey

Click here to see the live data visualisation we created for the Trust.

Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust has undergone a profound culture shift since it began working with Trust Impact in November 2019.

Our journey with them began at an initial meeting on the Isle of Wight, where we asked their leadership team some challenging questions about their organisation’s core purpose. Although their responses revealed somewhat diverse perspectives, there was a common thread of ‘taking young people sailing to rebuild their confidence after cancer’.

Whilst the Trust was clearly making a difference, proof of their impact was limited to some great stories, case studies and responses to informal and unscientific feedback forms – which changed each year, making year-on-year comparisons impossible.

There were no reliable measures of what ‘confidence’ actually meant, nor robust processes to prove whether it had been rebuilt (or even needed rebuilding) as a direct consequence of participating in one of the organisation’s sailing or outdoor adventure trips. Neither was there any real data to evidence the longer-term effects of the Trust’s work.

Almost three years on, their work with Trust Impact has given them a different and fundamentally deeper understanding of the impact they make on each young person they work with – and the data to prove it.

Delving Deeper

The initial work with Trust Impact inspired the organisation to delve deeper and try to quantify its outcomes and impacts – to both prove and improve what they do.

They realised that understanding their impact on young people was the key to connecting better with them, their parents and cancer care professionals – and ultimately persuading more young people to go on their trips. In fact, achieving a better understanding of their impact underpinned everything they wanted to achieve.

The Importance Of Listening

The first step was to begin a ‘listening exercise’ to explore the Trust’s outcomes through the lens of the young people it supports, as well as those of volunteers, skippers, charity partners and supporters within the Trust’s wider community. The results would then be used to challenge and review their brand identity, key messaging and impact measurement framework.

It was at that point Covid-19 struck. All Trust trips were cancelled, which certainly made impact measurement a little more tricky, but did give everyone in the organisation a chance to press the pause button and conduct some in-depth self-analysis. What emerged were some key findings:

The ‘listening exercise’ showed the Trust’s previous strapline of ‘rebuilding confidence’ didn’t adequately encapsulate the organisation’s impact on its participants. Its trips actually provided an environment from which participants benefited in many different ways. The Trust was in fact having a far richer and more varied impact on young people than it realised.

Feedback showed that, having gone through the trauma of cancer and all its associated adversity, young people gained the following from the Trust’s sailing trips:

• An increased sense of purpose
• Increased feelings of self-worth
• Improved optimism for the future
• Improved autonomy

A New Focus

After considering all the research, the organisation, working alongside Trust Impact, decided the most validated and appropriate way of conceptualising their impact was improved mental wellbeing, which in turn gives participants the ability to believe in a brighter future.

“That decision marked a massive shift in our mindset,” said Karenza Morton, the Trust’s Communications Manager. “The findings told us we are actually a much more aspirational organisation than even we realised. Having come sailing with us, young people gained a new sense of possibility. That included confidence, but it’s so much more than that.

“Mental wellbeing and ‘brighter futures’ are now what people talk about across the organisation. If we hadn’t done this piece of work with Trust Impact, we would never have understood or been able to showcase that. It has given us a pillar, and we are now all coalescing around this one thing.”

The research outcomes formed the basis of the organisation’s new Theory of Change:

The Theory of Change is now the foundation of all top-level decision making. As Karenza explains: “It has given us a common goal and helped us challenge why we should and shouldn’t do things. Essentially, if it doesn’t help us achieve improved mental wellbeing for our participants, then we have to question whether we do it.”

Measuring

With mental wellbeing established as their impact, the next task was how to measure it, and therefore benchmark their success, in an academically rigorous way.

Hannah Woods, Trust Impact’s Senior Research Consultant, got to work embedding the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale into the organisation’s impact measurement processes, breaking mental wellbeing down into a range of sub-components and measuring them at three different points pre- and post-trip (as opposed to the single post-trip questionnaire used previously).

“Wellbeing can sound like a nebulous concept at first,” explains Hannah, “but the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale gives clients confidence that wellbeing is measurable – and that we can measure it well.”

The 2021 summer season was used as a pilot for this new measurement system. It was the Trust’s first full season back on the water post-Covid, so there were changes to the trips and a lot of new and unfamiliar safety processes for the team to adjust to, as well as this totally new way of collecting participant feedback. The data the Trust did collect provided good early indicators of positive improvements in wellbeing, but the low response rate meant it wasn’t yet statistically significant.

Connect Mix Share

Earlier this year, the Trust’s impact measurement process was revolutionised thanks to its introduction of the Connect Mix Share live data sharing platform.

It’s no exaggeration to say this tool has transformed Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust’s way of working, giving it a whole-organisation focus on impact.

Connect Mix Share collects data from the Trust’s existing databases, systems and spreadsheets and creates visualisations, automatic surveys, benchmarks and much more. Many of its functions are automated, instantly streamlining or removing many parts of the impact measurement process that Trust staff were previously doing manually via the Salesforce platform.

With 30 trips a year for over 500 young people, that used to involve a lot of admin – at a time when Covid-19 was already adding to the team’s workload.

“The response to it was extremely positive,” explains Frank. “Previously, staff had to manually send the surveys and chase replies. The process involved a lot of input from them.

“Connect Mix Share quickly gave us confidence that it would minimise team workload and streamline a lot of those processes. It pulled all the trip data and triggered all the surveys at different key points (two weeks before, two weeks after, then three months after a trip) so all the team were now being asked to do was mention it to parents and young people at different touch points.”

Culture Shift

The real-time data visualisation capabilities of Connect Mix Share have made all staff feel part of the organisation’s ‘impact journey’. If staff can clearly see 70%+ of participants have replied to surveys and 80% have improved wellbeing after their trip, the benefits are much more tangible, their job satisfaction and value are lifted and they are motivated to raise those figures even higher.

Karenza says: “Previously, survey responses sat on Salesforce and only the leadership team really looked at them. It felt like an onerous task we were imposing on people – and we understood that.”

The culture shift continues to permeate through the organisation, with staff now understanding why the changes are important. Their language and behaviour are evolving and they understand their role within the new impact-based ethos.

The Trust is about to launch its latest three-year ‘Ambitions’ strategic plan for 2023-25 and, as Frank says, “impact now underpins everything within it”.

As Hannah summarises: “Previously the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust’s impact work was sitting to the side, but Trust Impact helped the team bring it front and centre and embedded it within the culture of the organisation.”