Here's how you can drive sustainable growth in the social impact sector with key leadership strategies.

When I got interested in social impact, I believed that my passion alone would be enough to drive a team. Until I realized that part of being a leader is establishing a shared goal and vision, even if it does stem from your passion. Impact work and outcome is the driving force of social impact. This means being an impactful leader in sharing a vision, this means helping teammates understand their individual impact in the overall goals, and this means communicating a shared value that is embedded in impactful outcomes.

Practical Experience channelises actual vision of a leader. When at the helm, it’s imperative that one let’s go false imaginations and fascinations of perfection. While long term vision has to be out of the box, bypassing all current states, yet focus on what one wants to be, is the key. Vision at time may be distorted by idealism and too much self criticism. That’s why it’s important that the person on top has utmost clarity of the organisation, its people and its future.

Visionary Leadership: Develop and communicate a compelling vision that aligns with social impact goals. Stakeholder Engagement: Foster strong relationships with stakeholders, including communities, donors, and partners. Innovation: Encourage innovative solutions to social challenges through creative thinking and collaboration. Capacity Building: Invest in the development of team skills and organizational capabilities. Sustainable Practices: Integrate sustainability into operations, ensuring long-term impact. Measurement and Evaluation: Implement robust systems to measure impact and inform strategic decisions. Transparency: Maintain transparency and accountability to build trust and credibility.

To be blatantly honest, this could not be very easy to preach. It is the most difficult phase of the journey of the contributor to social impact sector. Clarity of vision helps navigating tough challenges but comes out as a paradox by being the most difficult challenge itself. I feel if you have your personal reasons and your professional goals/projections in place and that aligns with the average of what this industry offers, that can be your litmus test.

To drive sustainable growth in the social impact sector, focus on clear vision and strategy, effective resource management, and strong partnerships. Develop and communicate an inspiring vision with actionable goals, optimize resources, and explore innovative funding opportunities. Build collaborative relationships with other organizations and regularly assess and adapt based on impact data. Invest in staff development and infrastructure while staying flexible and responsive to evolving needs. These approaches ensure long-term success and enhance your organization’s ability to make a lasting impact.

A lot of fingers raised on Sushmita Sen for Portraying Gauri citing inclusivity gap and that a transgender should have be empowered for the role. Speaking to an LGBTQ rights activist, I was suggested not to be or to try to be flag bearer of their issues and that the community should lead this battle. While talking to a major portion of the marginalized communnity of bidi makers from Murshidabad I was informed about the protest they were participating in. I joined them because why not. Only to discover later that it was to remove the mandatory "death warning" and cancerous images from the packaging. TALK! And you will find your way there. Unless to talk to only side of the spectrum. HEAR! But not only to the loudest voices.

Effective delegation is as important in leadership as is patience in art. Leadership comes in all sizes. One thing we know is we can manage resources and talents and money and time and can never manage people directly. Adaptability gives leaders an upper edge with resilience and ability to survive in difficult situations.

Sustainable growth in the social impact sector hinges on impact measurement and transparency. The world of impact measurement is still very fragmented and inconsistent, so it can be difficult to rate and compare impact across projects, themes and geographies, but that doesn't mean that measurement should be forgotten. Rather, we need to be working across the sector to set industry standards. At the UBS Optimus Foundation, we developed and rolled out our own industry-aligned rating tool that aims to assess programs against three impact categories--intentionality, additionality and measurability--and I'm keen to see how the sector progresses in this space.

What I've learnt in my past experiences is that its imperative to track the KPIs of each of your organization's social impact initiatives in order to assess the impact of those initiatives which will then help you make clear and informed strategic decisions to drive continuous improvement in your social impact work. It can be easy to get swept up in doing work that has quick and easy wins but which may have no substantial long term value or impact. This is why setting or optimizing impact measurement tools and metrics can provide a great analysis on how sustainable and valuable your social impact work is, then you can decide to double down on the initiatives that create strong impact.

Además de la participación de las partes, considero que es fundamental tener como categoría adicional para el crecimiento sostenible en el sector de impacto social, el conocimiento profundo del contexto, puesto que muchas veces se involucra a las partes interesadas para escucharlas en cierto nivel que no alcanza para dimensionar las realidades propias culturales y sociales en las que se enmarcan las estrategias y las acciones. En mi experiencia como comunicadora, antropóloga y coach, creo que una de las claves del éxito para liderar estrategias de impacto social es una alta comprensión de los dinamismos propios de los entornos en los que se desarrollan estas estrategias, las cuales requieren además de escucha, observación participante.