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Ep 3. Sarah Mitchell, CEO Heart of the City: Corporate Social Responsibility and the future of charity partnerships
37 Plays4 years ago
“There is a move away from the more traditional charity partnerships... (towards) a kind of main-streaming of responsible business.”
In this episode I speak with Sarah Mitchell, CEO of Heart of the City, a charity working with small to medium sized companies to help them to develop a purpose beyond profit. We discuss the changing face of corporate partnerships; Scenario Planning amidst uncertainty; and reflect on the positive aspects of working through the pandemic. Sarah also highlights some key leadership learnings and the importance of taking time for reflection and self-care as a Chief Executive.
This episode was recorded in August 2020 via Skype, before Sarah’s new appointment as CEO of Cycling UK was announced.
Guest Biography
Sarah Mitchell has been CEO of Heart of the City since May 2017. She is due to take up the position of CEO at Cycling UK in October 2020.
Sarah has spoken and written about entrepreneurship in charities and is currently working on a book to be published by Routledge on the future of the charity sector. Previously Sarah was CEO at Carers Network and Head of Housing at Crisis and Senior Policy Advisor at Shelter. She has also worked as an Assistant Director in the UK Civil Service (Department for Business), at the European Parliament and in the Commission. Sarah is the Vice-Chair of the grant making charity the Nationwide Foundation.
Links
‘Picture This’ - Guide to Scenario Planning for Voluntary Organisations: https://www.cass.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/37297/picture_this.pdf
www.theheartofthecity.com
If you enjoyed the show please click the subscribe button on your podcast app and consider leaving a 5 star review. It will only take a few seconds and reviews really help make a difference, as they enable more people to find and listen to the podcast.
Visit www.thecharityceo.com for full show details and to submit questions for future guests.
Thank you for listening.
In this episode I speak with Sarah Mitchell, CEO of Heart of the City, a charity working with small to medium sized companies to help them to develop a purpose beyond profit. We discuss the changing face of corporate partnerships; Scenario Planning amidst uncertainty; and reflect on the positive aspects of working through the pandemic. Sarah also highlights some key leadership learnings and the importance of taking time for reflection and self-care as a Chief Executive.
This episode was recorded in August 2020 via Skype, before Sarah’s new appointment as CEO of Cycling UK was announced.
Guest Biography
Sarah Mitchell has been CEO of Heart of the City since May 2017. She is due to take up the position of CEO at Cycling UK in October 2020.
Sarah has spoken and written about entrepreneurship in charities and is currently working on a book to be published by Routledge on the future of the charity sector. Previously Sarah was CEO at Carers Network and Head of Housing at Crisis and Senior Policy Advisor at Shelter. She has also worked as an Assistant Director in the UK Civil Service (Department for Business), at the European Parliament and in the Commission. Sarah is the Vice-Chair of the grant making charity the Nationwide Foundation.
Links
‘Picture This’ - Guide to Scenario Planning for Voluntary Organisations: https://www.cass.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/37297/picture_this.pdf
www.theheartofthecity.com
If you enjoyed the show please click the subscribe button on your podcast app and consider leaving a 5 star review. It will only take a few seconds and reviews really help make a difference, as they enable more people to find and listen to the podcast.
Visit www.thecharityceo.com for full show details and to submit questions for future guests.
Thank you for listening.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Charity CEO Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Charity CEO Podcast, the podcast for charity leaders by charity leaders, with candid, meaningful conversations that really get beneath the surface of issues. This show aims to inspire, inform and deliver practical insights on the challenges facing charity leaders today, for the benefit of leaders across the sector and for those who care about the important work of charities.
00:00:33
Speaker
I'm your host, Divya O'Connor, and each episode I will be interviewing a charity chief executive who will share with us their insights, knowledge and expert opinion on a particular topic or area of expertise.
Sarah Mitchell's Career Update
00:00:44
Speaker
My guest today is the super smart Sarah Mitchell, CEO of Heart of the City. Sarah has just been appointed as the new CEO of Cycling UK. We recorded this episode before her new role was made public and hence make no reference to it. Heart of the City is a charity working with small and medium companies to help them to develop a purpose beyond profit.
Getting to Know Sarah Mitchell
00:01:06
Speaker
Sarah has been with them since 2017. In this episode, we talk about what responsible business really means,
00:01:12
Speaker
the macroeconomic impact of the pandemic on small and medium enterprises, and what charity partnerships might look like post-pandemic. Hi Sarah, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today. Thanks Divya. Thank you for inviting me.
00:01:29
Speaker
Well, we're going to dive straight in with our icebreaker round. And this is about 60 seconds and some lighthearted questions for a little bit of fun. And the purpose of which is for our listeners to get a fuller picture of you as a person beyond your CO role. So this is a bit I've been dreading most because I'm afraid you all know what a boring person I am. So go ahead. Absolutely not. I'm sure it's going to be fun. So I'm just going to set up our 60 second timer.
00:01:59
Speaker
and let's get started. What was your first job?
00:02:08
Speaker
Oh, my first job. I worked in a nursing home. What is your favourite book of all time? Oh, this is a really difficult one. I read so much. I've got no idea. At the moment, I'm reading Alone in Berlin, which is excellent. Okay, well, that was going to be my next question actually. What's your favourite sport?
00:02:30
Speaker
I do quite a lot of different sport. I think probably my number one is cycling, closely followed by open water swimming, which I've just discovered during lockdown. So what's your favourite holiday destination then? Well, this is a bit of a dream at the moment, isn't it? Where could I imagine going on holiday?
00:02:45
Speaker
So if I could go anywhere at the moment, I actually don't think I'd go anywhere super exotic. I'd probably go somewhere like the countryside in France or Germany. That would be exotic for me at the moment. Well, that's our 60-second timer just gone, but I'll ask you a bonus question. I'll hopefully be pleased now that I spoke around.
00:03:07
Speaker
Our bonus question is, if you could interview anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would it be and what one question would you like to ask them? Oh no, it's a really difficult one. I can't believe that was just thrown in at the end there. Somebody I'd really like to interview.
00:03:26
Speaker
Well, there is somebody that kind of pops into mind, but it's a bit obscure, so it would actually be Michael Young. I don't know if you know about Michael Young, but he wrote a really interesting piece of Sociology on East End, which is a really well-known piece of work. He's also, I think, behind the founding of the Open University, and was a real kind of innovative thinker in the charity sector before we had such a thing as the charity sector in the way that it seemed
00:03:49
Speaker
whether it's seen now and i think i'm just really like his way of looking at the world differently and finding innovative responses to it so i'd be really interested to meet him if that were possible but he said wow really interesting that michael young no i don't know much about him but i shall certainly do some reading now that you mentioned that
00:04:10
Speaker
Now to transition into our main discussion for today.
Heart of the City's Mission
00:04:16
Speaker
Sarah, you are the chief executive of the charity Heart of the City and at Heart of the City you describe your mission as we inspire and embolden business leaders to build successful companies that make a positive difference to people, places and the planet.
00:04:34
Speaker
So tell us more about your organisation and its work. So we are a charity but we're unusual in that we work almost exclusively with businesses. We mostly work with small businesses and we believe that any company can be a force for good so they can make a positive contribution to society. So what we're not trying to do is we're not trying to turn businesses into charities but we're helping every business to find some purpose beyond profit. So we work with a whole range of different industries
00:05:02
Speaker
and we work across London and we are now able to work with companies outside of London for the first time and we provide them with the starting blocks, I suppose, on becoming a purpose-led or responsible business.
00:05:15
Speaker
And what's really interesting about that is we work with loads of small businesses and they're very entrepreneurial, they're quite inspiring, they're all very different. And also we have a very unusual model in that we work with lots of really large companies and we get them to help the smaller companies. So we've almost a kind of intermediary function, if you like, between the large company's expertise and the small businesses who are mentored by them and supported by them.
00:05:38
Speaker
Excellent. So in terms of the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on smaller, medium businesses, as we begin to come out of lockdown, there will undoubtedly be some businesses that are fed better
Impact of COVID-19 on Businesses
00:05:54
Speaker
than others. But what are you hearing from your members in terms of the key challenges that they have faced during this time?
00:06:00
Speaker
So it varies enormously from some industries that have actually done really well out of COVID-19 and the lockdown. So we've got one gaming company, for example, that's just been trying to cope with sales going through the roof, to lots of companies that have either really struggled already, and particularly thinking about hospitality and catering, who've been really hard hit through this already, to probably the sort of vast majority of the companies that we work with who are anxious,
00:06:28
Speaker
I feel like the potential pain hasn't quite hit yet because they've got a lot of stuff on furlough. I imagine that a lot of charities are in the same position. There's this period of prolonged uncertainty about what to do and what's going to happen over the next few months.
00:06:44
Speaker
what to do with your cost base, so I think a lot of companies are worrying about can they reduce their costs, how should they reduce their costs, thinking not just about staff but about rent, redesigning their office space. But then the kind of other challenges which we're helping them to focus on, things like how do you develop your business going forward, how do you network and create new sales when you can't go to events anymore, that's a really big challenge. And then a lot of the
00:07:09
Speaker
work which is also crucially important around supporting your staff. So when you're working remotely I think it's much more apparent that employers have a responsibility but also it's in their own interest to support the well-being of their staff. So I think those are the kind of core challenges and I think as people return more physically to work in physical office spaces there'll be a whole range of other challenges that appear.
00:07:34
Speaker
Understandably, this is a time where a lot of the small businesses are very much focused on survival and paying the bills.
Corporate Social Responsibility Post-Pandemic
00:07:44
Speaker
I suppose charity engagement is not really top of mind.
00:07:49
Speaker
The question I have is, what does this mean then for corporate social responsibility and sort of charity partnerships going forward? Do you think we will still see things like Charity of the Year, et cetera, in the next year or two?
00:08:05
Speaker
Yes, so I think saying that charity partnerships aren't top of mind. Again, it sort of depends on what the charity partnership is. So for example, one of the large companies that we work with has an amazing charity partnership with the Red Cross. So they are
00:08:20
Speaker
obviously hugely involved in their coronavirus relief programme across the whole of the UK, and that partnership has thrived. And it will be the same for other companies that have kind of coronavirus relevant partnerships, I guess. They really breathe new life into them in a way, or they're maybe doing slightly different things. So I think some charity partnerships will still be thriving, even through this difficult time. And those sorts of partnerships will still be at the top of the mind of those companies. Those companies will be so proud that they're part of those partnerships and they're working with those charities.
00:08:50
Speaker
But I think when we talk about coronavirus, a lot of the time when we talk about the economy and we talk about entrepreneurship, we often talk about this situation being an acceleration of existing forces. And I think that's the case in what we tend to call the responsible business world or the corporate social responsibility world too. So I think there were a whole load of existing trends, if you like, that were already going through this sector.
00:09:16
Speaker
and probably the Coronavirus will accelerate those. And I think those do have an impact on charity partnerships because I think probably for the last.
00:09:25
Speaker
two or three years. I've seen a change in work around charity partnerships in many of the large companies in particular, so there's a move away from more traditional charity partnerships which we might tend to think of, about fundraising, big group volunteering projects, maybe a kind of annual turnaround of a charity of the year with a kind of beauty parade of three charities that you get to choose from as a large company. If you like a kind of mainstreaming of responsible business, so
00:09:54
Speaker
I guess less an exclusive focus on charities and a broader focus, so looking both at your place in the community through perhaps charity partnerships, perhaps in a different form, but also a real increase in focus on the environment, so looking at
00:10:11
Speaker
getting to net zero targets within companies, thinking about what companies can do to reduce their own environmental impact in lots of different ways, but also looking at staff wellbeing and workforce issues. So I think in front of a lot of our minds at the moment is the focus on inclusion and diversity in the workforce in all sorts of different ways, but I think through the Coronavirus we'll focus on mental health in the workforce.
00:10:36
Speaker
places being a really big theme too. So I think charities that are working in those kind of thematic areas will see that companies are interested in working with them. I think the charity partnerships of the future may start to look a bit different, so that they may be more like strategic partnerships.
00:10:54
Speaker
where charities and businesses get together and think about what their own strategic vision is, looking way ahead five, ten years' time, and think about how they can work together in a more collaborative way to achieve those goals. So it'd be less about a company paying a charity to deliver those goals for them, but actually thinking about how can we both work together to make society function in a way that we want it to.
00:11:17
Speaker
which is a slightly different way of working. It's probably not necessarily going to yield to the same unrestricted cash income that charities might perhaps prefer at the moment, but I think it points to just a really different culture and way of working, which we might see over the next few years.
Strategic Partnerships and Industry Targeting
00:11:33
Speaker
Okay, so as the economic impact of the lockdown really begins to bite and a lot of companies are seeing their revenues and their sales decline, what advice do you have for charity leaders in terms of how they can keep those partnerships and relationships alive?
00:11:53
Speaker
I know this is going to be front of mind for loads of charity leaders because I think for a lot of people it's a really challenging situation at the moment and I appreciate corporate income can be really, really valuable. So I think the way that I would look at it is be really targeted. So I think some industries are going to be struggling a lot more than others. Some industries have actually done really well and will continue to do really well. So I guess my number one piece of advice would be think of which
00:12:17
Speaker
industries you're targeting, understand where they are in terms of their own finances and whether they're likely to have a headspace or the cash to be able to support the charity partnership, but also think about what their drivers are. So understanding what's in it for them, what are the drivers in different industries around the reporting requirements that they have, for example, on environmental issues.
00:12:39
Speaker
What are their drivers around their staff? So around issues, around inclusion, diversity, mental health, what's driving them to make those differences? And I think try to develop a relationship with those companies, understanding what they want to get out of it as well as what you want to get out of it. And I know lots of charity leaders do this already through their corporate programmes, but I think they're maybe a kind of a refocusing and a realignment on particular kinds of industries.
00:13:04
Speaker
And I think that companies are increasingly coming round to understand what impact is, non-financial impact. So I think this is an area where the charity sector is way ahead of the corporate sector and it's something we should be really proud of. But I think we have a few things to teach them about how you measure impact and develop theories of change, logic models. So I think
00:13:23
Speaker
Being able to demonstrate really clearly and in a way that has lots of data to companies that you're already making a difference is really meaningful. So I would definitely encourage people to really focus on that. And then I think really focusing on those kind of key topic areas that you know those interests are interested in is a really good opportunity too.
00:13:44
Speaker
So what I'm hearing, Sarah, is essentially all of the fundamentals of good corporate fundraising in terms of focus on relationships, looking at how you can together deliver impact on really building or aligning, if you like, strategies for the longer term. All of those have just come into much, much more sharper focus in the current climate.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think we also just can't rely on those relationships being the same as they have always been because companies' priorities will be changing. And I think we all have to just move at a much quicker pace than we have done in the past. So reassessing those relationships, reassessing those objectives on a regular basis, making sure that what we have to offer is fresh, it's relevant, it's responsive, and to show that we're still a really helpful and useful partner in that.
00:14:34
Speaker
Okay, so talk to us now a little bit about your own personal situation. What impact has the pandemic had on your organisation
Leadership Challenges and Strategies
00:14:44
Speaker
and specifically on your leadership? I mean, how have you personally dealt with the crisis?
00:14:51
Speaker
So it's a really good question. I think I've spent about four months with lots of people checking I'm OK. So I had an awful lot of people saying, are you all right? Have you had a break? How are you feeling? But I mean, it was definitely quite an adjustment to start with. But I think the heart of the city is in a really strong position. We have really good reserves. We're really fortunate in that respect. We'd already got all our membership fee income in for the year before the coronavirus struck. So we're in a much better position than anybody else, I think, many of the other charities that you will know.
00:15:19
Speaker
Obviously, we moved all of our work online. For us, it was a lot easier because we already had laptops set up. So all of the kind of practical things were relatively easy for us to do. We have a big programme of events, which we do at large companies all over London. We did a pretty quick job of moving all of that stuff online. So I think we'd kind of anticipated this was probably going to happen. So we've been
00:15:41
Speaker
making sure that we had the right software to be able to deliver things properly quite quickly after the beginning of lockdown. But my team were brilliant. I mean, they're used to doing things at a moment's notice. So I think we did a fantastic job of making everything immediately very virtual and checking in with our members on a regular basis. And I think the bigger challenge for us is sort of looking to the future. So we did that kind of change quite quickly. Then we did a pivot of the sort of content that we offer. So traditionally, we've done the kind of core elements of responsible business.
00:16:10
Speaker
But we looked around to all of our members and realised that a lot of them are sort of struggling to survive now. And it seems that we felt we should have a programme that was a little bit more catering to their specific circumstances. So we developed very quickly a whole new programme of work which we're calling Survive and Thrive, which is aimed at helping those companies to cope in the current circumstances.
00:16:35
Speaker
So it's got a lot of advice around flexible working, working from home, and then lots of more practical things like the legal implications of furlough. We've just done a great one on business planning, which was really helpful, and then communicating during the coronavirus how we can do that in a sort of sensitive way. So we had a whole range of different events, but also a whole programme of resources that we set up on our website. So we pivoted our content and the way that we deliver it quite quickly.
00:16:59
Speaker
And I have to say, for me personally, that was a really nice distraction at the beginning of lockdown. So to have this big, meaty project to see through, I think actually, personally, I found really helpful. I think in terms of looking ahead, I think it's more challenging because you're trying to plan for a whole load of uncertainty. So we at the moment are doing a whole big project around trying to look three years ahead. And let me tell you, that's probably one of the most challenging things I've done in a long time. But it's really interesting stuff.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yes, I completely agree with you in terms of those organizations both in the charity sector and indeed SMEs that have really taken the opportunity to grasp the transition into the virtual world and the digital transformation that are going to come out the other side, so to speak, having a business or an organization that is going to sustain for the longer term.
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's true, but I think we're also really lucky in that the people we work with are all online, so all of our businesses are online, they're working from home, they're quite happy to use Zoom. My previous job before Heart of the City was running a Carers charity, and one of the challenges we had is that a lot of the people we work with just didn't go online, so everything still relied on being face-to-face and paper-based, and the charity's working with that sort of group. It's a real challenge, I think, to be able to do anything meaningful online. Yes, I totally hear what you're saying.
00:18:23
Speaker
So let's talk a little bit more about planning for the future because I'm sure this is on the mind of every charity chief executive right now in terms of how do you actually make any plans for the future in the midst of so much uncertainty. And I'm also curious to hear
00:18:41
Speaker
As a chief executive, how much time do you actually dedicate to looking at the external environment and scanning the horizon, so to speak, versus being focused internally and charting a course forward for your organisation? How do you balance that?
00:18:59
Speaker
So it's something that I actually feel quite strongly about and I don't think that we do enough of it in the sector. So it's something that I really try hard to do because I think it really helps you to be responsive and doesn't necessarily help you to predict the future, but it helps you to be prepared for a range of different things that might happen. So I actually have a bit of my diary blocked out every week for half an hour every week to just
00:19:25
Speaker
reflect on a bit of highs and scanning, so looking at what's going on, thinking about the implications for us. That's my normal weekly check-in with myself about it, but I also do work in a very fast-moving world in responsible business, so literally things change month to month.
00:19:40
Speaker
And I think under the coronavirus, I've spent a lot more of my time thinking about this. So straight away, I think even just before lockdown, thinking about what's our plan for the next three months. And then once we started our Survive and Thrive series, I was immediately thinking what's next, what's in the autumn. But what I've been doing over the last month is doing a really interesting piece of work around scenarios planning. So this is something that businesses use quite a lot.
00:20:02
Speaker
And there is actually a really useful, quite old document produced by Cass Business School and NCVO called Picture This, which introduces scenario planning for charities, which I'd really recommend. It's basically to give some structure to your quite difficult thinking about the future. So I found myself sitting around with my notebook, writing down all of these different potential things that could happen that would affect heart of the city over the next three or five years. And I just basically came up with a kind of something between a nightmare and a risk register.
00:20:31
Speaker
really wasn't very helpful at all. But going through this process, I think, is really helpful because it helps to structure your thinking, helps you to ask the right questions. And it's a good way of getting a whole load of other people involved in developing that thinking too. And the outcome from that, I hope, will be
00:20:48
Speaker
that we look at a few different ways the world could look in five years time and then we help to prepare our charity for those different scenarios and hopefully there'll be some patterns that we would do in any case. There might be some big bets that we want to take if we decide to go down a particular path but we'll have done that through a process and a structure that I think helps me personally feel that the future's a little bit more under my control. I know it's an illusion but it makes me feel better.
00:21:13
Speaker
I completely understand where you're coming from. Yes. And certainly when I was in my chief exec role at Children with Cancer UK, I would do the same in terms of setting aside some time in the diary every Friday for reflection time.
Environmental and Community Changes During the Pandemic
00:21:27
Speaker
And it was really hard to actually keep that sacrosanct, but it was so important because the weeks that I actually took that time, I found that things were flowing much
00:21:38
Speaker
smoother and actually could get more done in terms of what the strategic priorities for the organisation were. Also, just for our listeners, we will include in the show notes a link to the resource from Cass Business School that Sarah mentioned for those of you who want some more details on that. Sarah, are there any positives that you would take from the pandemic? You've touched upon a few already, but what do you really hope changes for the future?
00:22:08
Speaker
So personally, I had a great experience at the beginning of the pandemic, living in North London, suddenly having empty roads and people were out walking. And as somebody who commutes to work by bike all the time, I was so heartened to see suddenly all these new cyclists on the road. It was wonderful. So I think there's a part of my heart that still hopes that we've seen a way through for environmental impact reduction. And we're going to retain that memory of what it was like to have quiet streets and clean air. And save the plant. And we're going to hold that dream in our hearts. And we're going to believe it's still possible for us to
00:22:38
Speaker
have that. Quite difficult to believe at the moment when the roads are so full of cars again. But I think there is a kind of positive, I think we had a glimpse of a different kind of world. So that was, I think, in some ways for me personally, very positive. I think there's been a lot of positivity around community. I think people feel more embedded in their community. And I think from a responsible business or a corporate social responsibility perspective,
00:22:57
Speaker
That's important. I think companies see themselves as a part of a community where they're based and employees see themselves as a part of a community where they live in a way that they didn't before. So I think that's a positive. I think that that's going to be helpful both in the charity sector and recognising that you're not just a faceless company, you're actually part of something bigger.
00:23:17
Speaker
I think there's been a really important recognition of inequality across the country, so inequality in all sorts of different ways, in terms of income, in terms of health inequalities, in terms of ethnicity, access to different services. And I really hope that that affects some change in the future. Maybe I'm a little bit too optimistic, but I think that's a good thing that we've got that level of recognition, just in terms of kind of practical work stuff.
00:23:42
Speaker
I've discovered some great digital tools, so I think this is a positive thing and I really hope we will continue to use them. And there are so many of them that are free and really, really good. So Miro is a great discovery for me. We're using Friedkamp all the time. Obviously Zoom, which you can do all these amazing things with. So a lot of it is for free. And I think it's kind of, I think it's opened people's eyes. People are a little bit more accepting and interested in what they can do with digital. So I think there's loads of potential for the charity sector and for me and my organisation and that.
00:24:12
Speaker
some positive things for you. That's good, isn't it? Excellent.
CEO Work-Life Balance
00:24:16
Speaker
Looking back then from the vantage point of where we are today, what advice would you give yourself on day one of your first CEO role? Yeah, good question. I think, you know what the advice that I would give myself for that first day is don't try and do everything at once.
00:24:35
Speaker
So I think in my first job, I saw lots of things I needed to fix, but I didn't give myself any pace. And I tried to do everything really, really quickly. And I quite quickly realized that I couldn't work seven days a week. So I'm really strict now about my weekends. And certainly maybe like two months into that, I said, I have to have at least one day off a week. This is ridiculous. So I think having pace prioritizing
00:25:05
Speaker
that is probably my number one message that I would give to myself. Yes, I hear what you're saying. I think there was an Akibo report a couple of years ago that said that most chief executives did on average at least 10 hours additional unpaid work, whether it was evening or weekend, and that just seemed to be the norm. So I think setting pace, also as you are the role model of being the leader of your organization, actually walking the walk and talking the talk, I think is really important.
00:25:35
Speaker
That is so important. Also, you have to know yourself, don't you? And I know myself. I know I can't work 10 hours a day. I just can't. I won't concentrate. I'm much better working for a shorter period of time and really intensively. I do appreciate in these jobs, you have to work evenings sometimes and sometimes you have to work weekends. The point is you don't do it all the time. And I've spoken to so many chief executives during this period of lockdown who have been working constantly and got to the stage where they're just bursting into tears and they're really tired and they're really grumpy and they can't see straight. And that's not good for them, but it's not good for their organizations either.
00:26:05
Speaker
No, burnout. It's not good for anybody.
Inspiration from Heart of the City's Stakeholders
00:26:10
Speaker
Sarah, as we are now coming towards the end of our podcast episode, I'd like to touch upon inspiration because I really think that we can all do with a bit more inspiration in our lives. Tell us, what is the best thing about being the chief executive of Heart of the City? What really inspires you about your organization?
00:26:34
Speaker
I think one of the most inspiring things about our organisation is that it's got a huge number of people who really care about it. And I was sort of tempted to say, our volunteers are the real inspiration about our charity. But I don't really think that's quite right. I think it's a much broader group than that. So part of the city was formed out of
00:26:56
Speaker
the Bank of England, the City of London Corporation and the predecessors of the Financial Conduct Authority. So it comes in quite eminent institutions 20 years ago. But over the years, it's sort of accumulated this group of people who, some of whom have worked in Hertford City, some of whom have been our ambassadors, that's our kind of volunteering network in large companies, some of whom have been on our board, or trustee council members. We've got a huge kind of
00:27:21
Speaker
if you're like a snowball of people who really care about the charity and are quite invested in the charity. And I think that sometimes feels like a huge responsibility. But it is quite inspiring when you hear their stories about the things that half the city has done over the years. So I think that kind of history and goodwill from a huge range of stakeholders is probably one of the most inspiring things about the charity. Do you have a story of something that inspired you recently that you could share with us?
Innovation Driven by Challenges
00:27:47
Speaker
It's inspired me recently.
00:27:51
Speaker
So I guess probably the work that we're doing around survive and thrive, I think I was a little bit nervous about doing something slightly different, worried about what that big group of stakeholders might think about it.
00:28:07
Speaker
But I think I have been overwhelmed by the amount of support and excitement that people have had about it and messages of support that we've had, but the real effort that our trustees have gone to to say what a great job we're doing. So I think sometimes that recognition itself can be really inspiring. And I think thinking about that more broadly, a lot of the inspiration that we get as an organisation comes from the companies that we work with.
00:28:34
Speaker
So I think during this period...
00:28:38
Speaker
One of the really interesting things has been to see how small businesses have adapted under COVID-19. And it's been quite surprising and quite inspiring in many ways. So I'm thinking of a particular hospitality company who wouldn't want me to say who they are because they're a little bit shy about talking about this stuff. But they're a catering company and they work with usually a lot of the large city firms. They do catering for black tie events and lots of formal stuff within those companies. And obviously when all the offices closed down, they lost all of their work.
00:29:08
Speaker
But instead of just putting everybody on furlough and basically battling down the hatches, they decided they were going to use their kitchens, their skills, their staff to make meals for key workers. So they created this whole new area of work doing great meals, nutritious meals for key workers. And I thought that was really inspiring. So I don't think they made very much money out of it. But I think from their point of view, they had a big commitment to being a responsible business. And they saw this as an opportunity to do something
00:29:37
Speaker
in action about that and I think that was really inspiring, particularly because they don't want to talk about it, which I think is astonishing, but they just feel like they don't want to get credibility from all kind of kudos for doing something like that. And you'll find that a lot of companies actually, they probably do a lot more stuff that you never get to hear about than you'd realise. That is beautiful. I really think that
00:29:58
Speaker
challenge often brings out innovation. And I think that would be certainly for me, the key message coming out of the pandemic is what opportunities have been presented through this
00:30:13
Speaker
of situation that we have all found ourselves in. I think that's true and I think as charity leaders it's just really difficult to do it but we've got to kind of draw ourselves away from the current situation and try and think afresh about what we want to achieve, what our mission is and are there different ways that we can go about that in the current situation and try not to be too attached to the way that we're doing things at the moment which is always difficult.
00:30:34
Speaker
Yes.
Episode Wrap-up and Next Guest Preview
00:30:35
Speaker
So on that note of inspiration, innovation, and impact, Sarah, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you today. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show. Thanks for having me.
00:30:48
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed listening to my conversation with Sarah Mitchell, CEO of Heart of the City. My next guest is Charlotte Hill, the long-serving and founding CEO of StepUp to serve. Charlotte is currently on secondment as Executive Director for Children and Young People to the BBC's Children in Need. Charlotte and I discuss the impact of the current crisis on young people, youth social action, and the hashtag I Will campaign.
00:31:14
Speaker
So look out for episode four of the Charity CEO podcast, which will be available in a few weeks time. Meanwhile, if you enjoyed the show, please click the subscribe button on your podcast app and consider leaving us a five star review. It will only take a few seconds and reviews really help make a difference to increase the visibility of the podcast and help spread the word. Visit the charityceo.com website for full show details and to submit questions for future guests. Thank you for listening.