Please describe your proposed solution.
<u>How you perceive the problem you are solving</u>
Cost versus investment framing
We contend that Community Hub operators – as with other actors within the continent, have often been framed in the past as charity-based organisations, reactively being given funds to solve problems and issues, where the funds provided are often seen as a cost, or gift, by those providing them.
Recognition of value created
A major challenge African Community Hubs (ACH) face is one of recognition of the full value they create.
This is a common challenge for many organisations that create both commercial value (measured by money) and cultural value (measured by wellbeing). However, our capitalist-based systems traditionally account for (value) only tangible value, i.e. that measured by money. As a large part of what public or third or fourth sector organisation produce is cultural value, it is deemed as Intangible value – which is then not measured.
This non accounting for value is compounded by another major challenge faced by many sustainability organisations: that much of the purpose driven worth (cultural and commercial value) they create is projected into the future – to become Impact. And this worth and associated impact is often discounted down when assessing it as humans are not good at dealing with a future vision of more than a few years.
Recognition of the challenge of wicked complexity
Running a complex organisation with several sets of clients and users combining non-profit and profitable operations, whilst expected to act as:
· Educators
· Transformers
· Integrators
· Advocates
· Champions
· Providers
· Change agents
…and while:
· using known and emerging tools,
· running projects and social media channels,
· expected to understand and master strategy and operations for both business and non-business areas
… all at once, is a challenge.
Community Hubs in Africa and other developing nations face a more complex challenge than those in other environments.
<u>Your reasons for approaching it in the way that you have</u>
Our Solution
We will build and run an MVP of a Community Hub Africa Accelerator / scale-up programme.
We have already taken our Impact Accelerator model from our existing F7 funded proposal for Impact Accelerator for Catalyst programme and recut it to as a Beta level MVP trial with WADA – a non funded trial that is presently ongoing. With WADA as our lead partners we will reframe this MVP to produce a viable MVP Community Hub scale-up programme that will then be run with selected Community Hubs on the continent.
Following that it is envisaged that the programme be rolled out through the other Community Hubs as appropriate.
Impact Accelerator / scale up programme overview
· Our programme takes a founder/leader through a self-assessed audit of their organisation against our framework.
· The results and findings are discussed during a series of coaching sessions, and a development plan for the organisation is developed and agreed upon.
· A coach then works with the leadership team through the programme.
· Our programme consists of an online self-assessment that is then discussed with a coach. A coach is assigned to each participant in the programme to help them to grow and maintain their independence.
· Where specific skillsets or experience are required to deliver the agreed growth programme, these will be introduced from our business specialist network.
Skills required
The following skills are required to deliver our proposal.
• Capability to organise and run an Accelerator programme
• A platform to run an online programme
• An ability to attract appropriate people to the programme
• A method of measuring the success of the programme
• The ability to mentor, coach, consult and train participants in the programme
• The ability to adapt our existing programme into a Community Hub focused MVP programme
• The ability to construct and deliver a research report on the MVP programme
• The ability to engage with the Catalyst community to launch and leverage the programme
We have many of these skills within our current team and will welcome the contribution of others to further expand our collective capability.
Massive opportunity for Investment
Looked at from an investment perspective, these wicked challenges mean that there is the opportunity for developing solutions that will result in exponential gains for the organisations involved and the communities they serve.
Community Hubs in Africa are also a critical nodal point, the channel for delivering massive potential for support and change at all levels and areas within the continent. The challenge is how to support that growth and development.
From our experience three things are needed:
1. A model for valuing more than just commercial value and impact and the ability to use it.
2. The understanding of how to drive both commercial and cultural outputs – the building of capabilities and income. Followed by how to build and undertake a programme that allows the community hubs to consistently focus on and spin up both commercial and cultural assets over time to reach the levels of community impact that they desire.
3. Building a Social Impact Organisation – sometimes called fourth sector orgs, this is our definition of how to position and run a community hub as a proactive entity, one that defines its activities in its own terms - undertaking charitable and revenue generating activities as it sees fit, not being bound by the definitions of centralised entities such as accountants and governments.
This is why we have proposed a high impact tailored accelerator / scaleup programme approach.
<u>Describe the value that the solution will add</u>
Solution Impact
This proposal will produce a blueprint that will integrate the business strategy and operations necessary to empower a Community Hub to become a social impact organisation (SIO), delivering both cultural return on intent, and commercial return on investment.
These social impact hubs will deliver channelled, local resources, targeted to support the Catalyst Ecosystem in proposing and running challenge proposals
Primary Impact
This proposal will also produce a blueprint that will describe a series of nested solutions that operate at the country, community, individual and the Cardano Catalyst levels.
At the country level
The blueprint will describe:
· How to support Cardano’s mission in building self-sustaining community hubs within nations
· By enabling these hubs to be profitable organisations
· That act as local channels for Catalyst supported products and capabilities
· That they can offer to engage with their local stakeholders and resources.
At the community hub level
The blueprint will describe:
· How to support community hubs in building revenue-generating enterprises as part of their Social Impact Organisation’s development,
· By helping them to build and deliver the products and channels they need to support them growing local knowledge-based business capabilities, processes, and structures
· Including SPO Incubation, business accelerator services, word of mouth marketing capabilities, TECH DEV training, CA support for catalyst, and developing outsourced high-end professional support.
· To give community hubs and their staff a higher demand for engagement from their target community
This will enable the community hubs to begin the transformation into paid professional service outsourcing suppliers.
At an Individual level
The blueprint will describe:
· How individuals will have access to a wide range of educational material and training courses
As Community Hubs become more SIO capable and focused on building income generating services, individuals will begin to be offered opportunities such as the catalyst support services for proposers initiative mentioned above.
These individuals will have the opportunity to engage with their local Community Hub as a qualified contributor, gaining both revenue and experience from working on outsourced hub projects.
At a Cardano and Catalyst level
The blueprint will describe:
· How the Community Hub Impact Accelerator programme is designed to become self-supporting and self-replicating both at an individual hub level and at a hub Ecosystem level.
It follows the ‘watch on, do one, train one’ ethos. As each generation of community hubs progress to being SIO’s they join the alumni that coach the next generation. In this way the network becomes self-sustaining, one that focuses on delivering both cultural return on intent, and, commercial return on investment.
We see this as being supported at Nation level by organisations such as our partners WADA, who will be part of this blueprint and MVP.
<u>Describe the scalability of the solution</u>
Our solution is scalable because:
· It offers a modular programme that can be replicated at different levels of an org and in different locations. It is hoped also to translate the content into different languages as required.
· It is envisaged that further down the roadmap it will be offered as a train the trainer programme – similar to our F8 funded ‘SPO train the trainer Africa’ programme.
<u>Describe the sustainability of the solution</u>
Sustainability
Our view of sustainability is using resources better to grow long-term asset value, which is the intent of this proposal.
Business sustainability
We will support the delivery the long-term business survivability of Community Hubs in Africa by having the right resources in the right place at the right time to be able to make a long-term sustainable impact.
Environmental sustainability and impact
This will provide a clear understanding of purpose and impact, and by working with environmental sustainability goals will deliver commercial and cultural impact.
<u>Who your project will engage, or who its stakeholders are</u>
Our project will have multiple stakeholders:
Community hubs and their leadership teams who wil be educated on how to run a blended commercial cultural organisation and grow it to scale.
Wada who will act as primary partners and learn how to replicate the programme across teh CH in Africa.
Edify CoLabs who will provide the full value framework and develop the scope of work for templating
The wider community in each CH area in particular Impact entities dependent on Catalyst funding will develop a pathway to sustainability
<u>How your project will be implemented; </u>
The project will be implemented in phases.
As described in our referenced miro board
<u>What you will produce </u>
We will produce and deliver in collaboration with out partners WADA an MVP of targeted accelerator/scaleup programme for Community Hubs in Africa.
<u>What will happen as a result of your work </u>
This programme will can then be productised and rolled out by our partners WADA, ourselves and other appropriate WADA partners across the Continent.
<u>Explain what's unique about your solution, and what value it brings to the Cardano ecosystem.</u>
The Edify CoLabs full value Impact framework and organisational journey programmes are the result of decades worth of experience in the off-chain business world. Translating it into a programme that can support Community Hubs in flourishing will increase the value of the companies that are operating in the Cardano ecosystem that will reflect in the overall value of the ecosystem itself.
<u>Explain who will benefit. </u>
The beneficiaries of the project will be:
1. Community Wada, Catalyst & Cardano – will be the initial direct beneficiaries of the project as a proper valuation will enable Wada to continue to expand the Cardano Community in Africa but in a self-sustaining way with eventually less dependence on Catalyst funding
2. Cardashift - Greater variety of organizations with tangible investable properties will benefit and validate Cardashift’s business model.
3. Other Cardano on and off-chain businesses – will experience a full valuation of their businesses, and will be able to more effectively use their assets for business growth
4. Edify EcoLabs – will gain reputational benefit as our systems underpin the growth in value of the ecosystem.
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
Our proposed solution will support Community hubs in becoming a proactive part of the foundation of the Cardano ecosystem within the African continent. Community Hubs can be a vital channel for both the local and regional communities in terms of employment, education and impact growth support. We believe that community hubs can do this by understanding how to manage and grow themselves from both a commercial and cultural perspective – becoming proactive, so becoming Impact focused Social Impact Organisations- in control of their own existence and destiny.
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
We envisage the following risks:
Risk – To organise community hubs to effectively participate in the programmes
o Mitigation – Engage with WADA to reach out to potential community hubs
Risk – the ability to translate our existing content to the local cultural norms, terminology and market environments
o We will collaborate with WADA for the Africa rollout and hopefully work with them on supporting the phase two, nation rollout.