For 14 years, we’ve backed early-stage ideas, supporting over 70 extraordinary leaders to date. Our new strategy outlines our vision that by 2030, this community will grow to over 100 leaders acting as a powerful, connected, and courageous driver of systemic change. We want our Big Changers to be a beacon of what’s possible when changemakers are supported to transform systems from the inside out, ensuring all young people are set up to thrive in life.

It was a total joy to hear our community share their successes. From shaping policy to scaling their reach, our leaders are doing the hard work of changing the lives of countless young people. Keep an eye out on our socials because we’ll be amplifying many of these incredible stories through the year. 

But alongside this, we also heard some very honest truths about how tough this work really is. 48% of respondents cited financial instability as their biggest hurdle. Between shifting government policies and demand for services completely outstripping capacity, our leaders are hugely stretched. It’s a powerful reminder that we must carve out time and space for rest and recharge - as our CEO Essie North wrote in this blog before going on her sabbatical last year, “for us to spark lasting change together, we need the leaders to last”. 

One of the most eye-opening insights was about how we connect. While 85% made new contacts through our community in the last year, only 26% have actually turned these into  tangible partnerships or collaboration.

There is a massive desire to move past just networking and toward collective action. Our leaders want to explore ambitious goals that no single organisation could ever achieve alone. We also realised we have more work to do in intergenerational collaboration; with respondents ranging in age from 21 to 58, our diversity is a huge asset, but we need to ensure we’re truly sharing power.

We are also reflecting on our unique position within the social leadership ecosystem - as an organisation that both funds leaders and provides invaluable support that helps them grow their practice, relationships, and impact. We want to deepen our understanding of where we can uniquely add value, how we invest in collective leadership for lasting change, and support pathways for leaders to learn and act together. We're reflecting on how we can lean into our network of donors, supporters, and sector allies to bring their expertise to busy changemakers. Most importantly, we are committed to listening. Not just to the loudest voices, but to those who share more quietly, ensuring we continue to learn beyond these measurement moments.

Our new strategy moves from supporting individuals to enabling a collective force and funding a more ‘joined-up’ approach to systemic change. Armed with the insight from this survey, we'll be focusing on creating the conditions and infrastructure to deepen trust within our community, and build stronger relationships - so that collectively, we can be greater than the sum of our parts. In 2026 we are focusing this work on:

• Mapping and visualisation to articulate how our leaders' work aligns and interconnects, identifying where there is potential for collaboration, partnership, and collective action.
• Playing an essential weaving, connecting, and brokering role; creating spaces for partnerships to emerge organically, while also making active introductions where we spot opportunities for collaboration.
• Continuing to create spaces for rest, recharge, connection, and inspiration, especially out in nature through our Big Days Out.
• Creating containers for deeper relationships to explore shared challenges together. We're moving from single days of learning on a topic to shared experiences and collective learning. We'll be exploring peer learning journeys with funding attached to enable insight sharing and action on a shared goal, and a separate small funding pot that responds to community members who are collaborating with a shared desire to take action
• We will also be bringing in an experimental new fund in 2026 that funds the infrastructure for collaboratives of individuals and organisations with a shared ambition of broader transformative change.

These rich insights have been gathered through responses from nearly half of our leadership community. It gives us plenty to fuel a massive 2026 while we endeavour to also hear from those not yet represented. We’re committed to continuing to learn out loud, guided by the wisdom of our community, donors, supporters, and allies. We aren't just here to help organisations survive; we’re here to help a whole community of changemakers thrive so that every young person is set up for life.