We believe that every impact-driven or impact-curious organisation deserves expert advice and guidance.
Traditional consulting approaches don’t work well for everyone though. Strategies designed for traditional approaches to commercial success can’t always be applied to a company focusing on its environmental or social impact, or a charity working for societal wellbeing or reduced inequalities. A standard merger process doesn’t focus on the social outcomes of the transaction. These ‘solutions’ don’t work well for our clients.
Sonnet is an impact-focused research, finance, design and strategic consultancy.
We are a multi-disciplinary team of experts from all kinds of backgrounds including financial and economic advisory, social research, corporate finance, enterprise, and strategic management and development. We believe our strength is in our diversity: blending perspectives and strengths to work on the issues that matter most to us and our clients.
Our clients work in the charity & social enterprise, private and public sectors. Wherever they work, and whatever their goals, they – and we – have one thing in common: We care about impact and working towards positive social and environmental change.
Sonnet helps clients to:
Understand ‘audience’ needs (whether these are for beneficiaries, users, clients or supporters) and the outcomes sought
Plan what to do in response, balancing direct intervention with systems improvement
Design their activity and their approaches to delivering it, using design thinking and systems thinking amongst other techniques
Resource their delivery, raising funding (including repayable finance) and developing joint working with others if helpful
Plan and deliver transactions including mergers, acquisitions and business sales that enhance impact and financial sustainability
Measure, report upon and improve their impact
We bring three elements:
- A range of services and support built around the key questions clients ask us. This enables the client to enhance and deliver the impact they are targeting, whatever that might be
- Conversations with clients and potential clients to inspire and enthuse them about seeking to create impact or lighten any negative impacts
- Publishing a flow of insights and commentary that fuel positive change, and help key stakeholders to shift mindsets and focus on change that’s needed.
Our services are delivered through three broad practice areas: Strategy, Systems & Governance, Transactions & Finance, and Impact Management. We realise, though, that such rigid definitions are not always helpful or appropriate, so we made the decision to present our offer, instead, on the 3 questions our clients ask most. These are reflected in the diagram below.
We blend our expertise across projects as necessary – ensuring that clients get the advice and support they deserve, without needing to select from tightly defined services. In this way we enable clients in their pursuit of positive impact, tailoring our support to the need, the audience(s) and the agreed timeframe.
What do you need to organise for impact?
We support organisations to develop and implement fit-for-purpose strategies and corresponding governance arrangements and control and operational systems to achieve impact goals.
We will help you at every stage on this journey, supporting you to develop a better understanding of your business, markets and communities, make sense of the options available, and put in place plans and systems to make them happen.
Our analysis and advice enables you to understand and change contextual and systems constraints, to develop good standards of scrutiny, and to facilitate effective participation and transparency in your operations and reporting
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What do you need to build sustainable partnerships, raise capital and develop your resources?
Properly resourcing your plans and setting up the partnerships to make them happen are new areas to some, and areas needing specialist help for many.
Whether that be raising money to fund your work, developing and managing an innovation fund, purchasing assets to facilitate for growth or ensuring that any merger, acquisition, joint ventures, wind-down or sale is done with positive impact at its core, we can be there to support you throughout the entire process.
We bring specialists in these areas who also have the experience to support you in using them to deliver and enhance your impact.
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What do you need to better understand, improve and demonstrate the value you create?
Impact is the intended (and unintended) outcomes of an organisation’s work. We work with you to plan, articulate, monitor and deliver positive impact through your activities and to identify impact opportunities.
We help you to identify the impact you want, articulate that clearly, and develop a plan to deliver and resource it.
We help to develop frameworks to monitor and measure your impact and can work with you to evaluate your impact using research-backed evidence, and to report on that evaluation.
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