Projects

HoMie (www.homie.com.au) is a social enterprise that supports young people affected by homelessness or hardship to equip them with skills, confidence and experiences to be more work-ready and better prepared for their future. Think Impact has been working with HoMie since 2018, supporting them to build their capacity to become an impact-led social enterprise. The work we’ve done has been supported by a range of philanthropic and government funding. During the later phases of work, HoMie was also adapting its services in response to the COVID pandemic.

Becoming impact led

Being impact led is about an organisation embedding impact at the core of decision making. It is more than measurement, it is about understanding your impact and using this to drive strategy, culture, service design and fundraising. To do this effectively you not only need to have the foundations of impact measurement in place, but you need to be using the findings of your impact evaluation to manage for better impact. This was the aspiration of HoMie when they first contacted Think Impact.

Our partnership

The initial focus of the work was a formative evaluation and forecast Social Return on Investment (SROI) Analysis on the Pathway Alliance Project that HoMie had established with a range of corporate and NFP partners. This project aimed to support more young people that came to work in the social enterprise to effective transition into long-term employment in the retail sector. From this a draft theory of change and outcomes framework was developed to support HoMie to measure their impact more effectively.

Image: HoMie's Theory of change

The findings from the evaluation also assisted Think Impact and HoMie to commence a service redesign process with the partners in the Pathway Alliance Project. This process was run in parallel with facilitated conversations with the Board to embed impact considerations into strategic planning. HoMie was realigning strategy to maximise impact.

HoMie collected data using the outcomes framework and capacity building support was provided to analyse this data and produce HoMie’s first Impact report in 2020. Both HoMie’s theory of change and outcomes framework were revised at this stage as the organisation has as strong commitment to continuous improvement. Alongside this, Think Impact supported HoMie to revise their business model based around strong shared value partnerships with corporates and clarify their End Game (End Game needs a whole separate article to explain!). The final piece in the puzzle was developing an Impact Prospectus with HoMie that strengthened their capacity to raise pro bono support, funding and investment.

Throughout the partnership, Think Impact was focused on building capabilities and capacity with the HoMie team so they could take on responsibility to manage for better impact in the longer term.

‘Working with Think Impact has been great. They have taught us so much and really embedded an impact-led approach into the work we do’. Nick Pearce, Co-Founder.

The results

The results of the partnership working have led to HoMie having solid impact measurement foundations in place for understanding and communicating their impact. They have a clear impact narrative to communicate to stakeholders with a specific focus on building strategic partnerships and guiding all of this, they have clear impact-led strategic imperatives.

'I have a job for the foreseeable future ... which has helped me to move-out (into private rental) and HoMie's class on budgeting and savings helped me a ton'. HoMie Intern.

It was at the graduation when I was like, 'Oh my god, I did this. We did this together. I can actually do this stuff. What's stopping me from going to my next goal? My next dream? I can do this, I feel it'. HoMie Pathway Alliance Alumn

Watch this short video to hear more from HoMie’s Pathway Alliance Alumni and their experience during their internships.

Click to learn more about HoMie’s impact story