Our purpose
We help purpose-led organisations achieve greater impact towards a more just society by putting integrity at the heart of everything they do. Our work is dedicated to supporting them and the wider sector to avoid deepening the very injustices it seeks to address.
We support organisations to recognise the full impact of their work, including their aims and the means they use to reach them, breaking down silos and centring just and equitable practices.
As a non-profit organisation, we are committed to raising awareness and sharing our knowledge as it evolves so we can strengthen the movement within the sector and help bring wider meaningful change for a more just society.
We are committed to contributing to a sector where organisations will holistically address their overall impact to bring greater integrity to their work and achieve genuine change for a more just society.
The challenge
Even with the best intentions, purpose-led organisations can cause harm, perpetuating the very injustices they aim to address. This is because impact is primarily measured by what is achieved, with minimal attention to the means for delivering it.
What’s more, organisations tend to take a siloed approach to safeguarding, anti-racism and ethical investments, among other integrity areas. This fragmented approach is replicated on boards where a systemic understanding is needed for a more holistic, meaningful and effective approach.
At the same time, donors, regulators and others within the sector exacerbate the challenge, also using narrow impact measurements and often crowding out the opportunity to step back, identify and respond to the shared root causes of harm.
This shows how entrenched the challenge is – and how widely the risk of harm is misunderstood.
Our holistic approach enables organisations to understand how power can undermine or enable their integrity.
Our offer
Our approach offers practical, informed support to organisations, while at the same time fostering wider movement building for a more just and equitable sector.
Professional Services
We work with organisations to develop a holistic understanding of how power dynamics influence their governance, operations and overall impact, while raising awareness across the sector.
We recommend our workshops as a first step for trusts, foundations and non-profit organisations to understand their practices and impact – and identify practical steps moving forward.
This is achieved by applying power analysis tools that we have adapted following research undertaken with organisations in the sector. We also offer bespoke services, including strategic consultancy, training and coaching and we recommend other experts in the sector for specialist areas.
We find that board engagement is vital to ensure the organisation’s formal power enables rather than undermines organisational integrity.
Contact us to find out more.
Movement Building
We know that the wider challenges within the sector make this important work harder for organisations. Recognising this, we support movement building and collaboration within the sector to raise awareness and create space for change.
We participate in roundtables, talks and webinars. As an open-source, non-profit organisation, we also provide open access to our learning and evolving toolkit. See insights below for more information.
Contact us to find out more.
“We at NCVO are excited by Power & Integrity’s proposal to develop practical, sector wide, approaches to addressing this issue. We look forward to supporting the work.”
Together we can:
- Measure organisational impact by both its aims and means.
- Break down silos for an organisation-wide approach to reduce risk of harm.
- Embed equity, diversity and inclusion as integral to understanding impact and risk of harm.
- Improve internal impact and work culture.
- Strengthen representation for communities served in decision-making.
- Prepare board and senior teams for emerging integrity issues and bolster their confidence to support innovative approaches.
- Build a movement for integrity across the sector to bring real change for a more just world
Insights and Learning
As part of our commitment to strengthen a movement within the sector, we are sharing insights and learning as they evolve.
To identify the best approach for us to improve the understanding of power and to bring integrity to organisations and the sector, we hosted a series of Power Labs These were carried out with five UK-based organisations: UNICEF UK, PoHwer, CBM, The Bridge and NHS Confederation.
Learning tools and shared insights are available as a resource for all.
Find out more about the Power Lab.
Find out more about the PI initiative
Check out our media channels
We’re starting to explain more about PI at events and via blogs and other media channels. See what’s available on our news page.
Stay updated
If you want to know how our work is progressing, why not join the PI mailing list? We’ll let you know about news, upcoming events and other important information.
Get in touch
Do you want to know more about participating in the PI initiative? Perhaps you have a media enquiry or just a general enquiry about our work? If so, let us know.
Power-sensitive
Adapting well-established work by nonprofits on power and inequality, we are exploring how societal power structures underpin negative organisational culture and behaviours such as saviourism, sexism, racism, bullying, and corruption.
Power analysis identifies the for multiple aspects of integrity, essentially providing the lens for the whole-system approach to organisational integrity.
A power-sensitive approach also provides valuable insights into how best to address negative power manifestations and – importantly – how to nurture positive power.
Together we can:
- Measure organisational impact by both its aims and means.
- Break down silos for an organisation-wide approach to reduce risk of harm.
- Embed equity, diversity and inclusion as integral to understanding impact and risk of harm.
- Improve internal impact and work culture.
- Strengthen representation for communities served in decision-making.
- Prepare board and senior teams for emerging integrity issues and bolster their confidence to support innovative approaches.
- Build a movement for integrity across the sector to bring real change for a more just world.
Whole-system
We are exploring how organisations can embody integrity. We mean this in both senses of the word: honest, responsible, accountable, and principled; and whole and unbroken.
Organisational integrity requires a holistic and strategic mindset, combined with integrity practice at individual, organisational and sector levels.
Using a whole-system approach, we will support organisations to integrate integrity practice that strengthens oversight, strategy, risk management and operations. This will help them be more proactive, more efficient, and much less likely to cause harm.
Synergy-led
Integrating power-sensitive integrity practice requires continuous learning and diverse perspectives to shape a shared understanding. So we will help build an enabling environment with the nonprofit sector to work collectively on power and integrity.
We will also work to increase coherence between donor requirements around integrity and contribute to wider sector-level work on legitimacy, decolonisation and power.
By learning collectively and reducing duplication, the sector can establish a strong foundation from which organisations can strengthen their integrity practice and, ultimately, their impact.
