Scaling up to Sustainable - Insights from The Outdoor Connection 2024

The Outdoor Connection
Written By All The Elements

The evolution of a community group from grassroots meetup group, to start-up, to mature, sustainable organisation is hard to navigate…

The Outdoor Connection is an All The Elements x YHA Outdoor Citizens partnership event, supported by YHA England and Wales, Natural England and Sport England. It brings together community groups, organisations, system partners and brands, working to support access to nature and the outdoors to share experiences, learn from each other and develop new skills.

In this series of articles, we’re sharing key takeaways from some of the sessions at The Outdoor Connection 2024. 

One of the sessions in our 2024 event was ‘Scaling Up to Sustainable’ run by Naveed Bakhsh, Co-Founder of community walking group Boots & Beards. This article, based on his session at The Outdoor Connection, asks you to consider the different elements of developing an organisation, including values alignment, operational considerations, and your role as a leader.

Meet The Expert

Boots & Beards is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation, established in 2016, to help minority ethnic communities in Glasgow and across Scotland, connect with nature through walks, hiking and caring for the environment. 

As Programme Manager for Boots & Beards, Naveed is the driving force behind their current and future initiatives. Naveed’s goal is to establish Boots & Beard’s vision throughout the rest of Scotland and inspire future generations to lead healthier and happier lives.

Scaling to Sustainable in The Third Sector

Within the All The Elements community there are many organisations that fall under the umbrella of ‘the third sector’ – this is the term used for organisations that are values driven (e.g. they have strong social or environmental purpose, rather than wanting to make profit) and it includes community groups, voluntary organisations, faith and equalities groups, charities, social enterprises, co-operatives, and community interest companies (CICs, sometimes pronounced ‘kicks’). The learning Naveed shares in this article particularly focuses on scaling for these organisations as part of the third sector.

“The whole third sector was new to me,” Naveed said in his session. “I know about business – I buy something, I sell. But the third sector, it's a totally different ball game.”

When thinking about scaling up your organisation, being a values driven organisation will change your approach. If making a profit isn’t your main motivation for growth (as it often is in private businesses) what is your motivation? If money isn't your mission, how do you help people understand the purpose behind your work? Here are some ways to start thinking about these questions.

Your Values Are Your Business Plan

When your organisation is values driven it can be useful to think about the values of your business as the plan for your business. 

Naveed said that despite working on Boots & Beards as a team of volunteers at the start, the team used their values to plan ahead. “We sat down as a team, as volunteers and asked ‘why are we doing this? What does Boots & Beards mean to the community?’ And this was our business plan.”

One thing that can help you to pinpoint your values is thinking about what you want your organisation to achieve and officially stating it somewhere. For Boots & Beards, this is on display on their website as their Vision, Mission and Purpose:

Vision – “To create a better life for present and future generations.”

Mission – “Boots & Beards believe in uniting and motivating individuals to lead an active healthy lifestyle.”

Purpose – “Boots & Beards works with communities to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals through the means of physical activity”.

Your values are the backbone of your organisation, but that doesn’t mean they have to remain the same as you grow. “Your values will change,” Naveed said. “They will change over the next couple of years… and that's good because you always get new ideas, you always get new people that join the group and they bring their own stuff to it as well.”

There are some great resources online to help you work out the vision, mission and purpose of your organisation, such as this guide to charity Vision, Mission and Values on Enthuse.

An example of values from Boots & Beards

Decide When to Say ‘No’

When you have an official note of what your organisation’s values are, you can use this to steer your organisation as you grow. When you get opportunities to work on projects or with partners, refer back to your Vision, Mission and Purpose  to decide what to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to. “If it's not in my values, if it’s not in my mission statement, I'm not doing it. You have to say ‘no’ to people, say ‘I can't do it’ and I've done that lots of times.”

When you say ‘no’ to something that doesn’t align with your values it opens you up to say ‘yes’ to all the opportunities which do align with your values.

This idea of saying ‘no’ is a recurring theme in our insights from The Outdoors Connection sessions. In our ‘How To Tell Your Story with Authenticity’ session, Sabrina Pace-Humphreys told us that “If you say ‘no’ to an opportunity… you are creating space for something more aligned with you, better, bigger, whatever it is. ‘No’ is really powerful.” We also know from the session on ‘Managing Wellbeing and Burnout’ that being able to say ‘no’ can help avoid stress and lets you prioritise other aspects of your work.

Understand Your Sources of Income

When it comes to deciding how you operate, settling on sources of income is one of the most important aspects. There will be some elements of private business thinking that could be useful here, and Naveed said, “Have your business hat on”.  Sources of income could be grants, projects with sponsors or partnerships, or sales of goods and services you offer. For Boots & Beards, the income that pays for their operations is a mix of grant aid, trading income, and event fundraising.

Don’t disregard your community's ability to contribute towards your income as part of your income source – by using ‘pay-what-you-can’ or cost bands, those that can pay for the support you offer can help to support you. “We started off not being funded by the government or by projects,” Naveed said, “but we were getting funded. The participants paid”. However, there are risks to relying on this model alone. “If you advertise for something and only two people turn up, is that going to cover the cost for what you've booked?”. 

Volunteers or Paid Staff: Which is Best For You?

As well as models of funding,  it’s also important to consider how you operate internally. At a smaller scale, having a team that works on a voluntary basis can be the solution, and this was how Boots & Beards started. “We kept going, volunteering for about four years, giving up our time for the sake of the community. Our ethos was always, ‘If nobody comes along for a walk, I'm going [on a walk] anyway’”.  As you scale up, your volunteer capacity might not be able to scale with you. Naveed said, “Volunteers are good but they're not here forever… you need to get paid staff if you can.” (To get more tips on managing volunteers, you can check out our previous article on Top Tips For Volunteer Recruitment and Management.)

Whether you work as a voluntary or staff organisation, allocate some time to understand what roles you need. This will vary depending on your organisation, your income sources, your needs and values. Naveed said that “I've got a member of staff who just assesses working tax credits”. They might not be full time, but he said, “If you have just that one person or two people on your team who are always there for you, it makes a huge difference.” 

Scale Strategically With a ‘SWOT’ Analysis

One model that Naveed recommends to support organisations looking to scale is a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) analysis. This is something that is often recommended on business courses, but it’s not just businesses and profit-seekers that can benefit from this. 

Think about your:

Strengths – What are you good at? Have you got staff members? Have you got funding? Have you got offices? Have you got a website? Have you got volunteers? Have you got specialist qualifications? These are all strengths.

Weaknesses – Do you have to rely on volunteers? Is there just one of you? Are there too many groups like yourself in the area? Do you lack knowledge on processes like governance? “I hated spending time in governance,” Naveed said. “I had no knowledge about governance, but I had to bring somebody in to facilitate that.”

Opportunities – Opportunities could come out of the weaknesses - for example, the fact that there's cross collaboration opportunities with other groups. If you are a non-profit, you might be able to get support with things like governance free of charge. Naveed also said don’t be afraid to charge organisations like the NHS as well as companies. “If you think you've got a skillset that they want, charge for it. Don't be shy.”

Threats – What could go really horribly wrong? Are you managing risky activities, or running events that can’t go ahead without selling tickets? 

A thoroughly completely 'SWOT' analysis will usually highlight work to be done. Following the analysis, don’t forget to schedule the time to review and implement the findings. 

Treat Admin as a Priority 

A thoroughly completely 'SWOT' analysis will usually highlight work to be done. Ensure that following the analysis you've scheduled the time to review and implement the findings. Some examples that came up in the session were: 

  • Risk Assessments

  • Governance

  • Insurance

  • Permission forms for photography and film

  • Complaints Procedures

Create a Multi-Year Plan 

Another useful step is completing a multi-year strategy or business plan, which can ensure your organisation is sustainable in the long run. Naveed also points out that this makes your organisation seem less risky for funders. “Funders like to see what is the big picture here, how serious are you about this? If they give you £10,000, £20,000, they want to see have you done all your homework, have you thought about it?” 

As Boots & Beards grew, the values, strategy and ambition also grew. Eight years after the organisation was started, they have recently released a three-year strategic plan, which Naveed kindly shared with us. “This was only published about three months ago [six months at the time of writing]. But it took us six months to do it”. From their first ‘business plan’ created in a volunteer meeting, to a 32-pages forward strategy, it’s a fantastic example of what ‘scaling up to sustainable’ looks like.

How Will Scaling Support You?

Scaling an organisation can take a huge amount of effort  and when you are not driven by profit, Naveed pointed out how important it is to keep sight of the benefits that you get from your work. This includes making sure you’re enjoying the process:

“Fun is very important. It's so important. With Boots & Beards, I could do hundreds of projects but one thing that I’ve always stuck to my guns on was that I'm not doing it if it doesn't benefit me personally. If it doesn't benefit my health, I'm not doing it.”

He also emphasised that “you’re in it for the long run.”  It’s worth remembering that ‘sustainable’ isn’t just a goal for your organisation – it needs to be true of the process and the wellbeing of the people within it as well. And that includes you!

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If you’re not already a part of the All The Elements community, we’d love to hear from you. We support individuals working on diversity, access and representation in the UK outdoors by providing peer-to-peer support, resources and capacity-building. We believe in the strength of community, and if you’d like to find out more about how we can support you, collaborate with us, or tell us about something you’re working on, please get in touch. 

This article is part of our Insights series from The Outdoor Connection 2024. You can find out more about the event and find a full list of articles from the sessions on The Outdoor Connection page.

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