The Difference Podcast: Renae Mann, Refugee Council

“It's hard to find the space to step back and really think: what are we here for?”

That's Renae Mann, Executive Director of Services at Refugee Council, on how easy it is to lose sight of the bigger picture when you're doing frontline work in a complex space.

Renae has spent twenty-five years in the social justice sphere, with a particular focus on refugee and migrant justice. She's social work and community development trained, and after five years at Refugee Council she has just been appointed CEO of Unseen, which provides safe houses and community support for survivors of trafficking and modern slavery.

Finding the golden thread

When Renae arrived at Refugee Council, the organisation was doing brilliant work, but it had no single, joined-up story about the impact it wanted to have. Lots of great outputs. No North Star.

We talk about the three-year process of building one: starting in service delivery, then realising they needed to step back and rebuild the theory of change from scratch, sense-checked directly with refugees. Renae's advice for anyone starting an impact journey: it must be bottom-up, not top-down, and the conversations with the people you serve should come first, not last.

The tension between delivery and influence

One of my favourite moments from our work with Refugee Council was a room split right down the middle, half the team thought the greatest impact came from direct service delivery, half thought it came from changing government policy. Renae reflects on that tension, and why the answer wasn't to pick a side but to get clearer about what each was actually for.

Safety as an outcome

Refugee Council's data has shown a stark difference in how safe people feel depending on how they arrived in the UK, through the asylum system versus a safe route. Renae talks about what that uncertainty does to people, and how the political landscape around it has shifted since the Refugee Convention's tenth anniversary of the Brexit vote.

Risk, or “bold action”

We've asked a few guests about risk during this podcast series, and Renae's answer was particularly insightful: reframe it. Risk implies fear. What organisations actually need is bold action - grounded in robust governance and a psychologically safe culture, so people have permission to try things that might not work.

Also in this episode

• Why 50,000+ people's worth of outcome data has changed how Refugee Council tells its story, including through last year's rebrand
• What “holistic” support actually means when casework, therapy, community development and volunteering work together

Listen now

Renae Mann was until recently Executive Director of Services at Refugee Council. The case study features in The Difference: How to Understand, Measure and Maximise Social Impact, out now.

The Difference Podcast is hosted by Matt Stevenson-Dodd and Helen Gregg.

The Difference Podcast: James Blake, Chief Executive of YHA (England & Wales)

“It isn’t rocket science, nor is it incredibly expensive.”

That’s James Blake, Chief Executive of YHA (England & Wales), on realising that YHA’s impact didn’t need a big new programme or budget – just a different way of using the moments the charity already had with every guest.

James has led YHA since 2017. Before that, his career ran through central and local government, from neighbourhood renewal policy under the Blair and Brown governments to Chief Executive of St Albans City and District Council.

James’s YHA story is one of the case studies in the book. This is the conversation behind that chapter.

Finding the North Star

Coming out of Covid, Trust Impact were invited to help YHA think about impact. They put a question to YHA’s board and exec team: are you a social tourism business, a wellbeing charity, or a youth charity? The debate didn’t land on any single answer. Instead it produced something sharper: connection, between people inside the hostel, and between people and nature and heritage outside it, eventually distilled into three measurable outcomes – connection, confidence, and belonging.

Impact you don’t need a big budget for

The interventions that came from this insight cost next to nothing to implement: a different conversation at check-in, staff prompting guests to talk to each other in a self-catering kitchen, clearly marked walking routes. James built connection, confidence and belonging straight into YHA’s KPIs and dashboards. YHA has now completed its first full year of baseline data – one early outlier being Black Sail, a hostel reachable only on foot, running at roughly 140 against an average score of 100.

Also in this episode

• Why prioritisation was the hardest part of the process for James and the team
• How aligning impact and income, rather than treating them as competing, de-risked decisions across fundraising and school trip programmes
• What James is now recommending to Hosteling International, the global federation of youth hostel associations
• His honest answer on whether the work of YHA will ever be “done”

Listen now

James Blake is Chief Executive of YHA (England & Wales). His case study features in The Difference: How to Understand, Measure and Maximise Social Impact, out now and a number one Amazon bestseller.

The Difference Podcast is hosted by Matt Stevenson-Dodd and Helen Gregg.

The Difference Podcast: Marchu Belete, Director of Migration Exchange (formerly CEO of Hibiscus)

“The moment required us to step up.”

That’s Marchu Belete, on why she chose to challenge Hibiscus’s biggest source of income rather than let the organisation drift further from why it was founded.

Marchu is an excellent leader in the UK’s migration and refugee sector. She was co-director at Women for Refugee Women, then Chief Executive of Hibiscus, and is now Director of Migration Exchange at Global Dialogue. Helen worked alongside Marchu during her time at Hibiscus, in her Trust Impact capacity, so this conversation carries real history with it.

Marchu’s story is one of the case studies behind Chapter 4 of the book. This is the conversation behind that chapter.

The biggest question - purpose or money?

Marchu joined Hibiscus in October 2020 to lead an organisation set up to support migrant women. When she looked at the numbers, most of the people Hibiscus was working with were men – this was the result of government contracts that had quietly pulled the organisation away from its founding purpose.

Rather than asserting a fix, she went and found Olga Heavens, the woman who founded Hibiscus in 1986, and invited her back in to tell the team why the organisation existed in the first place. Marchu made the case to walk away from a government contract worth a huge share of Hibiscus’s income, because keeping it meant working against the very reason the charity existed.

Centring the right risk

We talk about what Helen calls Marchu’s quiet leadership, and Marchu’s answer to how you build a culture that takes risks: keep pointing back to who you’re there to serve. Her sharpest point is on risk itself – the reputational risk a funder worries about is nothing next to the risk migrant women face to their safety, their homes, their children. Getting that comparison right changes every decision that follows.

Also in this episode

• Why the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter moment made 2020 the right time to force the purpose question, not the wrong one
• How Marchu carried the same discipline into Migration Exchange, building a clear purpose statement from day one
• Her case for why charities can’t afford to work in silos any longer
• Her honest answer on when the work of a charity like hers is never “done”

Listen now

Marchu Belete is Director of Migration Exchange at Global Dialogue, and former Chief Executive of Hibiscus. Her case study features in The Difference: How to Understand, Measure and Maximise Social Impact, out now and a number one Amazon bestseller.

The Difference Podcast is hosted by Matt Stevenson-Dodd and Helen Greig.