DESIGN & STRATEGY: Building social enterprise capability and Business Resilience
What was the Opportunity?
Over a period of a couple of months, TDi worked with the City of Darebin on two discrete programs focused on supporting the sustainability of small-to-medium businesses.
Firstly, we were asked to run a series of (of three) social enterprise capability workshops as part of its Social Enterprise commitment. The Council has a strong commitment to building capability and capacity of its emerging social enterprise sector and was seeking new ways of creating value.
Secondly, we were asked by City of Darebin to contribute to its Business Webinar Series as part of its Coronavirus COVID-19 Resilience and Recovery Strategy. We facilitated the initial two webinars of the series: Strengthening Your Financial Position and Pivoting Your Business Model – Case Studies and Conversation.
Tell us the ‘Nitty Gritty’ details…
Social enterprise capability workshops
City of Darebin was seeking support in developing a workshop series to improve business sustainability and the ability for businesses to monitor and assess their social impact. With the backdrop of a COVID emergent environment, and as the world made a move from face-to-face to online delivery, we developed three sessions that aimed to help businesses to pivot their business models and regain a sense of stability.
Each workshop was designed to draw out the challenges facing each business, as well as the opportunities that were starting to emerge. This included identifying new business models, improving the customer journey from start to finish, creating clearer financial models, running cheap experiments to validate new ideas, and tools for navigating uncertainty. Workshops were held over a period of two months.
Business Recovery Webinar Series
The thematic of our two webinars drew heavily from our broader COVID-19 adaption and recovery work (link to other relevant pages eg. PNG capacity building and business coaching support), including 100+ conversations and coaching sessions between March and August 2020.
Our first webinar Strengthening Your Financial Position shared a narrative of our own journey through COVID as well as practical ways to manage cash flow, reduce costs, extend financial runway, and adjust your pricing strategies.
Our second webinar Pivoting Your Business Model – Case Studies and Conversation explored options for pivoting (through case studies) and encouraged businesses to share their perspectives on pivoting during the early-stage business during COVID-19.
The Outcome…
Our workshop and webinars provided interactive, collective-learning environments, aiming to build capability through highly conversational, technical and practical sessions. Workshop and webinars were well attended and feedback from participants and Council was strongly positive.
Several entrepreneurs have pivoted their business models in the following months, serving new customers and making the most of their new channels.
