As a small charity it’s really helpful to benefit from external pro bono expertise. I am really excited to share details about the work we’ve been doing recently with JPMorgan Chase through their Service Corps Programme. The Service Corps is a skills-based volunteer programme that engages JPMC employees from around the world who share their expertise to help non-profit partners expand their impact on the community.

I came into my new post as Head of Business Development in May 2022 at a time when Settle was implementing its new 3-year strategy. At Settle we’re focused on growing our reach to support more care-experienced young people to thrive when they move into their first home. Our team of accredited coaches work really hard to help young people effectively manage that difficult transition and we really wanted to open up the service to more young people in more Local Authority areas. The timing of the Service Corps aligned really nicely with this goal and it made sense to focus their consultancy support on developing tools to support our growth strategy.

In September and October 2022, I worked with 6 volunteers from JPMorgan Chase, who all brought different knowledge, skills and experience to the project. Via a hybrid approach including in-person meetings and ongoing online contact and support, the volunteers helped us develop a plan to grow our reach. Through the project, the team provided me with a number of tools to use in our ongoing partnership development. This included an internal SWOT and external PESTLE analysis and a decision making framework, which has helped us to particularly focus our attention on further growing our reach across London.

The project culminated in a closing ceremony at the JPMorgan Chase offices with three other charities that took part in the programme.

I was then pleased to secure ongoing support from 2 of the volunteers through the Service Corps’ Implementation Adviser model, designed to help charities implement part of their larger project. For this project, the work was led by me but I really benefited from the ongoing input and advice from the 2 volunteers, who had built up their knowledge of Settle during the first programme and were well placed to feed into my partnership marketing and communications plan and a partnership pricing framework.

Settle continues to work towards our mission to supporting young people’s financial resiliency thanks to the support of long-term partners; we’re particularly pleased to continue working with JPMorgan Chase over the next two years. Our impact has also allowed us to secure funding through newer relationships.

All of our funders recognise the value of Settle’s preventative approach to helping care-experienced young people avoid homelessness and thrive.

I will be working on the roll out of the elements of our new marketing plan, including developments to our website and sharing impact findings from our external evaluators Rocket Science, in the hope that we can continue to build more Local Authority partnerships and therefore reach new groups of care-experienced young people who would benefit from completing the Settle programme.

For anyone working in a Local Authority Leaving Care team that wants more information about how Settle can help ensure their young people thrive on their journey to independent living then feel free to get in touch with me. I'd love to hear from you: lisa.braden@wearesettle.org