We are going far together: on the road to expansion with JPMorgan Chase

For the past couple of years, we have had the privilege of forming a strong relationship with the wonderful team at JPMorgan Chase. That has materialised in many capacities as they are one of the proud supporters of our initiatives Black and Good and My Moon Landing. One of the key aspects of our relationship has been their willingness to engage deeply with us on the development of our organisation, to ensure the impact of our work in the present and for the future. Their expertise has helped us achieve milestones and some of our largest goals relating to our core mission to support Black communities across the UK. 

Where we are now and where we want to go

As you may know, DiNN has grown from a grassroots operation to a much larger organisation with incredible speed, moving from a team of 1 to 24 in 2 years. This rapid jump has meant that our internal operational capacity grew, our networks expanded, and our reach of impact too. With this comes excitement but also cause for deliberation as to what these changes mean for us and the sustainability of our long-term impact.

Our ultimate vision: 
To be the Black community’s foremost champion enabling the systemic development and co-production of equitable opportunities and outcomes for Black people.

Our 5-year goal to expand across the UK is rooted in the need for our ultimate vision to be achieved across the country, and we will achieve this by working in partnership with the Black-led networks and organisations that make up the Black Community in each place. 

From Discovery to Recommendations

In the last quarter of 2022, we worked with domain experts from JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) along with PYXERA Global on a custom-made expansion toolkit. The project began with a desire to collaborate with the JPMC team to assess where Do it Now Now is, where we want to be, and how to get there. We drew up a Scope of Work document that outlined the essential needs and desires of our organisation when it came to geographical expansion. Our hope is to eventually turn Do it Now Now’s initiatives, research and services into solutions that can be applied in places all over the UK with grassroots specificity while benefiting from the operational capacity being a national organisation brings.  

The process for this collaboration involved a 7-week intensive deep dive into the internal structure of DiNN and a look into the as-yet more abstract understanding of the areas of expansion we were seeking. Kicking off with three full days, the experts from JPMC and the Do it Now Now leadership team looked through all our existing data on different cities in the UK based on our work in them over the past few years. We were wanting to understand what makes them unique, what existing support the Black community of each city has, what barriers they face, and how we can best position ourselves to be of service to them while respecting and supporting the work of the community leaders already focusing their energy on their development. Through the lens of our Theory of Change, we gauged our internal capacity and sought to understand what we could potentially achieve in the short and long term. 

The volunteers at JPMC familiarised themselves with the Do it Now Now team, our supporters, and external experts. They quickly established that it was clear that there is a lot of enthusiasm for DiNN and the work we do, as well as excitement about future possibilities.

As DiNN has grown so rapidly, it has meant that we are still wearing-in our new shoes, so to speak. Our teams are still streamlining internal processes and we are also testing the elasticity of our capacity to achieve everything that we want to in each quarter. The question arose: How do we fortify while also maintaining our momentum.

To start off, we looked at Operation Models, and how we managed corporate governance, business governance, structure, documentation and procedures. Then we assessed Organisational Resiliency through our varied resources, followed up by a proposal for a restructuring of our organisation’s framework and how we ran everything from budgeting and planning to reporting and monitoring. 

As a collaborative group we asked several key questions that ranged from which initiatives would best lay the foundation for us to step into a new location, and what were the needs of the Black community in our shortlist of places. This continual balancing act of impact and sustainability gave us an anchor that was evident throughout and helped us determine the where, when, why, and how of our expansion between now and 2028. All of this was laid out through four steps: Discovery, Ideation, Initial Recommendations, and Final Recommendations and all with a dual focus on impact and sustainability.  

From this process, we have understood that our primary objective over the next 12-18 months is to fortify our organisation for the future of our impact. 

Fortification and Momentum

We have a learning culture and we’re not afraid of the “new”. That mentality has propelled us and increased our impact and ability to co-produce with our community. It is important for DiNN not to lose this energy as it is a core organisational characteristic. Through the next couple of years, we will be applying that energy towards our fortification. For an organisation that is used to the rapid growth of impact, making the decision to slow down was difficult as it required a shift in our view of what it meant to pause. Rather than slowing down our mission and drive, we were building resilience and putting structures in place on the road to expansion. 

The work that we are already doing in other places (e.g. Lambeth, Southwark, Haringey, Glasgow) and the plans we are setting out for increasing our presence are underway. We look forward to laying the foundations that make our work in these places and other places in the future much more sustainable. The work with the JPMorgan Chase & Co team has been invaluable and yet another vital support system that has come from our continued collaboration. The people that worked together from our side and theirs found passion and heart at the centre of all that we unpacked, and we built lasting relationships driven by shared motivations, for which DiNN are highly grateful.

Conclusion

The final recommendations from JPMorgan Chase. outlined how we can structure our governance, mindfully streamline communication with our communities, manage risks and strategies, and many more key considerations that are going to be the bedrock of 2023 for DiNN’s internal evolution. All of these fortifying changes will ensure that Do it Now Now can grow sustainably, expanding our impact on Black communities positively for many years to come.

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