In this episode of Executive with a Cause, host Tammy Ven Dange chats with Annabelle Daniel, CEO of Women’s Community Shelters.
Identifying a need and addressing it through sustainable impact is a goal for most organisations, but how often is it truly achieved, particularly in a crowded landscape? In today’s episode, we hear from Annabelle Daniel about applying her organisation’s unique grassroots franchise model, which partners with communities to deliver needs-based change in New South Wales.
Realising a need is often the easy part, but would-be Not for Profit ideas don’t often make it to fruition as they are stuck on the ‘how’? Annabelle describes how Women’s Community Shelters (WCS) answers this pain point by providing their expertise and support to create hyper-local, community-oriented ‘franchise’ shelters.
From helping find a location to providing operation advice, the focus remains on local collaboration, and Annabelle provides excellent advice on relationship building and fostering these community partnerships. Operationally, we hear how implementing technology has allowed the organisation to efficiently share information with franchises, as well as track and evaluate outcomes. Finally, we discuss WCS’ community initiatives, such as their ‘Walk the Talk’ school program to educate teenagers on domestic violence and tangibly involve them in contributing to systemic change.
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IT in Plain English
In this episode, we learn about SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation. Tammy explains what it is, and why it’s so important when 75% of searchers only look at the first page of results. If you’re a Not for Profit looking to improve your search engine presence, consider applying for a Google Ads grant to increase your organisation’s searchability and online reach.
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Topics from this episode:
- 0.00 | Introduction
- 01.05 | Social Impact Leadership Program
- 01.52 | Women’s Community Shelters
- 06.30 | Managing a collaborative stakeholder model
- 10.35 | Local partners
- 12.00 | Walk the Talk schools program
- 16.30 | Back office support
- 17.45 | Franchise Management System
- 21.26 | Protecting clients
- 26.55 | Starting in the NFP sector
- 30.00 | Flexibility in crisis accommodation periods
- 31.35 | Funding sources
- 35.30 | Creating a strong franchise framework
- 39.00 | Building relationships
- 41.40 | Final reflections
- 45.50 | IT in Plain English
Quotes from Annabelle Daniel in this episode:
“Leadership can be a lonely path at times. And so having a cohort of 23 other CEOs in incredibly diverse fields, but who will face really similar challenges, was a fantastic opportunity to learn together and to study together and to build connections.”
“One of the most important things is that we engage the community in everything that we do because we believe that domestic and family violence is a whole of society problem, and it needs a whole of society solution.”
“The way that it works is if there are local champions within a community, we seek to connect with those people. And we seek to walk alongside them through the process of finding an appropriate property, it might be at a peppercorn rental or from the private rental market. We establish the legal infrastructure of the organisation, we help it get charity status, we find the right people to be involved with it. We engage community groups in perhaps getting the kitchens ready or the bathrooms ready.”
“We also provide all of the things that you would need on a day-to-day basis to actually run the shelter. So, if you wanted to set up the safety procedures, for example, or how you might work with the residents or what you might do if something happens, then all of that we already know. And so we can provide that to this new organisation. And then, once we’ve created the shelter and got it running, we join everybody together in the network. And so everybody becomes part of the WCS family. And we make sure that the boards can talk to one another, and all of the members, that the shelter managers have a best practice group, and that the staff are also involved and can learn things from one another.”
“I think one of the real strengths of working this way is that you’re not actually working from the top down and sort of dropping solutions on people.”
“If you were to sum this up, we’re actually a social franchise model. We’ve got Women’s Community Shelters as the hub. And each shelter we set up is actually a separate little entity in its community.”
“It is building capacity with people by walking alongside them and showing them how to create these organisations. And it’s fairly and squarely about meeting a need that isn’t being met in the broader charity landscape, you know, a lot of other funded services are trying to do more than what they’re funded to do, or they’re not getting to everybody. And so that, to me justifies our reason for being we are meeting a need that is not otherwise being met”
“And so it actually becomes a whole of community education piece where you’re moving the needle on people’s understanding about these issues.”
“When you have, you know, teenage boys, feeling empowered to do something positive to help people who are experiencing domestic and family violence in their community. I think that’s, for me, the barometer of the change that we want to see in the community to help resolve things if people don’t want to feel like they’re experiencing this alone. And particularly, people want to feel empowered and positive to take action to do something to help solve the problem. And so, you know, that’s evolved now into our ‘Walk the Talk’ schools program, where every school that is a part of it is partnered with a local shelter to undertake a project where they do something positive, just like that. And that has been growing and incredible.”
“One of the key things that my founding board identified, you know, before I even came on board, they did a really comprehensive feasibility study where they, where they surveyed the existing sector to determine the gaps.”
“The issue of coordination, the issues of who’s supposed to be doing what, the issues of sustainability, you know, if a small local organisation faces a significant governance challenge, or a significant HR challenge, or a significant funding challenge, it can completely derail them from their strategic mission, you know, for a long period of time. And so having a backbone organisation, that is, I guess, a little bit like the processing chip inside a computer, you know, that sits behind the scenes, and you can put whatever brand you want on the front. But we are there providing the support and the sustainability and the underpinning, I think that’s a really powerful way to work.”
“What we do see, and increasingly so are things like the jailbroken phones, or tiny little tiles, or air tags, which can be attached to the simplest of devices, you know. We’ve found tiles inside children’s teddy bears, or soft toys, you know, things inside the wheel arch of a stroller attached to a car, or it can even be something as simple as a forgotten Fitbit or Apple Watch that’s been, you know, left in a bag in the back of a car, which is then tracked somewhere near where a shelter or refuge might be”
“So having literacy in tech security, and being able to know, what sort of questions you should ask when you’re bringing somebody in, is a very important part of our intake procedure these days. As are partnerships with local tech organisations or technology specialists who can actually work with us to deactivate some of those more risky devices or a move to a safe, dumb phone, I suppose, you’d call them, compared to the smart ones that everybody has so that someone can maintain a connection, but also remain safe until we’re confident we’ve got the tech stuff under control.
“As part of that community education process that you go through when you’re establishing a shelter, having a police liaison as part of that process is incredibly important because they know that if they get a phone call, or if the shelter manager brings somebody to talk to them, that it’s serious, you’re not just someone who’s dropping it out of the blue, you’ve already built that relationship with the local area command, so they know who you are, what you’re doing, and also that you’re there to work in partnership.”
“That was my opportunity to take some leave from the public service and to go and manage ALC Women’s Refuge. And it completely changed my life that year because it felt like all of the issues that I had an intellectual handling on in terms of systemic disadvantage, abuse, the care penalty, lack of superannuation for women, every gendered and systemic issue that women face was suddenly right there in front of me. Because my office, you know, is in the refuge in the shelter. And so, you are confronted by the women and kids who are living there every day, and the issues are there, and you cannot run away from them. And it just made it so much more at what made it so much less intellectual for me. But it also made it so real for me around those issues of women and children being turned away from services that they really needed at a critical time in their lives.”
“What’s been really heartening is the shelters that were established six or seven years ago have actually built up to get to the point where they’ve had capital campaigns to actually buy their own shelter properties. Which has been fantastic because it has said loud and clear that the community has taken ownership of this service, they want it to continue, and they want to embed it permanently. So for me, that’s an absolute victory in community capacity building terms and in local ownership of services.”
“In those early days, it was very much a learn by doing approach. And to realise that if you set the bar at absolute perfection when you were trying to innovate a model, you would never get there. And it would never work. You have to be content with that space between doing something well and doing something perfectly, and sometimes doing something well is what’s required just to get to the next stage.”
“You know it’s good to talk about why we’re passionate about what we’re doing and why it matters. And to always just look for those points of human connection.”
“You want people who can robustly challenge your points of view and have a good argument with you whilst maintaining respect. All of those people I’m unlucky enough to have in my organisation, and I want to continue to surround myself with people who challenged me and to not be afraid of that because that’s how we all get better and how we sharpen ourselves.”
Links & Resources
- Connect with Annabelle on Linkedin
- Visit the Women’s Community Shelters website
- Learn more about the Walk the Talk school program
- Visit the Franchise Management System, Op Central’s website
Other Episodes Mentioned in this Show
- Watch our Episode 18 interview with Frances Crimmins of YWCA Canberra
Credits
Thanks to our Producer, Nick Whatman, and the entire team at Lonsdale St. Studio. Thanks also to our Digital Content Creator, Laura Kleinrahm.
Tammy Ven Dange is a former charity CEO, Not for Profit Board Member and IT Executive. Today she helps NFPs with strategic IT and data decisions with her business, Roundbox Consulting.