EASE (Empowering Action and Social Esteem) was set up in 2001 by Jackie Sear when she moved to the Copley Close Estate in west London. As a youth worker in the community, Jackie saw issues such as anti-social behaviour, violence and racial harassment that were not being dealt with and founded the charity to try and address them.
EASE aims to provide information and support networks to local residents. ‘We break the cycle and grow a generation of people who aren’t reliant on benefits’, says Jackie. The charity works with over 200 local families each year; Lorraine used to be a service user at EASE and is now a volunteer: ‘Being a volunteer has not just changed my life for the better and given me so many opportunities to learn and gain skills, it has had a positive effect on my two young children who have seen me grow more confident and happy. They want to grow up to be volunteers! EASE has created something special that makes people feel they belong.’
Jackie does all the charity’s fundraising but realised that knowing how to cost and value services required a different mind-set.
Initially, the Pilotlight team focused on producing a business plan, but in the middle of the project the charity’s main funding stream was cut. This reduced turnover from £450,000 in 2010-11 to £250,000 in 2011-12. Clearly some hard decisions had to be made.
‘After hearing about the cuts, managing change became the focus of our work. It was invaluable having the Pilotlighters there because it meant we had an outside perspective to check whether we were looking at things in the most objective way,’ says Jackie.
One of the hardest decisions Jackie had to take was making redundancies. With full funding the charity had 20 staff, but after the cuts this had to be reduced to eight. Jackie also had to look at which projects to drop and whether a social enterprise model could be utilised.
‘The Pilotlighters helped me go through a process of prioritising so we could see what EASE was going to look like at the end, without losing the essence of what we do,’ she says.
They also helped Jackie work on a social-return-on-investment model for EASE’s domestic violence service. They calculated the amount of money spent on domestic violence in the borough and this revealed that for every £1 the council invested in its domestic violence service, it saved the local economy £34. ‘That information can be used to justify our funding and to urge the council to give us more funding because ultimately we are saving them money. This is a model we can use on other projects so we can work out our value and how we promote ourselves on the back of that.’
The experience has, adds Jackie, changed her perception of the business world: ‘They understood what we were trying to do and embraced it. That was a good learning curve for me and being told that we are doing things the right way built my confidence.’