3 is a magic number. What does it all mean?

‘Time is a factor so it's time that counts,

Count not the negative actions of one,

Speakers of soul say it's time to shout,

Three forms the soul to a positive sum...

Shake, rattle, roll, to my Magic Number!’

De La Soul, 1996 

As a teen of the 90’s, this little number by De La Soul was the soundtrack to my formative years. I’ve always believed that 3 is indeed a magic number, and it seems that De La Soul & I are not alone. If you want your mind blown, read this summary of 3 and how it recurs in many things in life. Geeky stuff!

InnovateHer celebrated being 3 years old this month and it got me reflecting on just how magic that number really is for us too, and what a journey the past few years have been....

1. A CIC has to have 3 Directors 

When we formed the company in 2016, we had to name 3 Directors as a Community Interest Company with a social purpose. Today we are fortunate to have Tony Foggett, CEO at Code, as a Non-Executive Director working alongside myself and Chelsea. Over the past two years Tony has helped us crystallise our strategy, fine tune our offer and grow individually as leaders. We are forever indebted to this incredible human. 

2. Our very first educational programmes for teens were piloted 3 times with the support of 3 partners and 3 mentors!

Yes, that’s right. In 2016 we received grant funding from the Rosa Fund for Women, match funding from Coop Digital and in kind support from Fact Liverpool to test our ‘Girl Geek Academy’ concept with 60 girls over the course of 12 months (pictured above is one of the early cohorts). Chelsea and I left our jobs to do this full time and never looked back.

It was a resounding success according to both parents and girls alike. It was the start of InnovateHer in its current guise - we launched the brand in 2017 following these pilots and after holding focus groups with our teen community to help us to decide upon our brand identity. 

Shout out to Mike Bracken & Danielle Haugdal-Wilson at Coop for believing in us from the get-go, the FACT team for all their support (and space), and all 3 of our pioneering industry mentors - Alex Hindley, Laura Pulig & Gemma Cameron. Finally to Uniform for the awesome brand design work.

3. Our new online programmes were piloted 3 times this year

At the start of 2020 it was in our business plan to become an e-learning provider by 2023. We launched a Minimum Viable Product in just 3 weeks back in April! Shout out to our 3 amazing industry mentors; Llara Geddes, Amy Messenger and Hazel Wylie. Huge thanks to the wider community for donating to us so we could trial and test the new virtual approach (especially Frank Norris for multiple donations). Last but not least, thank to our talented and very speedy web developer, Steve Clesham, who made it possible in a very short space of time and to a very high standard too. 

4. We have 3 members of staff now (not including Directors)

Sadly we had to make 2 redundancies this year when the schools closed, as the bulk of work was being done in schools. It was a rough time for us, as it was for many businesses and individuals across the UK. We’ve made some hard decisions, come back stronger, and we love our small team who continue to deliver all of their work with passion, courage and integrity.

Special thanks to our support teams at High Performance Consultancy and DH Business Support for your ongoing and much valued advice in HR and finance, during these totally baffling and unpredictable times.

5. We have 3 main audiences - girls / students, businesses and schools

For us, everything we do is for the girls and the impact we can make. Our educational programmes have been transformational for some of the girls we’ve worked with. We’ve worked with over 1,000 students to date across 60 schools. You can download our social impact report on our website for some beautiful case studies. 

Our partners help us to deliver this important work by joining our membership network; their annual fees keep our programmes free for the girls and sustainable. Find out more here.

We’re fully committed to helping schools through this difficult period by providing activities and inspiration for their students online.

6. It’s taken us 3 months to recruit our new board

We had over 80 applications. Humbled by this. What a vote of confidence! Thank you ?? We’ll be announcing the final list very soon.

7. We have 3 new charity partners, who we love to work with!

This year we’ve teamed up with Chayn to donate 5% of sale proceeds to this very important cause. Chayn support women experiencing domestic abuse, which is sadly on the rise this year. They have co-designed our new Christmas gift pack, which you can buy here if you want to support our work.

We partnered with the Princes Trust to provide devices and dongles to students who otherwise could not access our programmes online. We believe it's so important to bridge the widening digital divide, which became more acute this year.

The Black Curriculum are our newest partner, we’ll be working with them to raise awareness of the importance of teaching black history together.

8. The next 3 years - what are we planning?

We’re planning to stay on this path, becoming a fully fledged e-learning provider. We have secured some funding from the Social Enterprise Support Fund to enable us to develop our platform further, so thank you to Resonance Ltd and the Big Lottery for believing in our vision. We’ve also secured some exciting new content partnerships (announcements coming very soon!) with big household brands, which means we’ll have some inspiring industry led content to launch the platform with next year. 

We'll beat this pandemic - with love, tech and equality

2020 has been a tough year for everyone, and running a small social enterprise has certainly been no picnic. There’s been anger, frustration, tears and finally acceptance. Followed by an overwhelming will to fight back and continue our work. We’re proud to have survived it so far. 

Pagans believe in the three-fold law – whatever good or bad energy a person puts out into the world, it will be returned to them three times. Here’s to welcoming the next 3 years, becoming an e-learning provider, and putting LOTS of good energy out into the world. We must take this opportunity to put equality at the heart of how we build back.