Consultancy

Power of Purpose

The Power of Purpose three-part workshop series is designed to support charities and grassroots social-change organisations to better understand and clearly communicate their “why”, their “what” and their “so what”. Because we believe this is the bedrock for effective impact and long-term survival. 

In other words, in a time of deep financial challenge with the pressure on funds and capacity at an all-time high, an organisation that can clearly articulate “why” they do what they do, “what” that is, and their impact - their “so what” - will have a greater chance of lasting and flourishing in this climate.

Created and led by Take Note and produced in collaboration with The Binks Hub and The Centre for Research on Families and Relationships at the University of Edinburgh.

What is it?

Three one-hour online Power of Purpose workshops cover: 

  • Telling Your Story: An introduction to Impact Map making and honing your message

  • Understanding Your Impact: What difference does your work make and how do you know

  • Making it Happen: Setting your strategy, building the infrastructure and raising the money

These are delivered by Take Note’s Lead Consultant, Marianna Hay MBE, drawing on her over 15 years’ experience designing, building and delivering high-impact, award-winning arts and social-change organisations and initiatives and sharing the strategies she has learnt and deployed along the way.

Take Note can offer this workshop series to individual organisations or groups. Power of Purpose can also be built upon with further bespoke support. Get in touch to find out more. 

Who for?

These workshops are best suited to:

  • Small-medium sized charities and grassroots social-change organisations

  • All roles but ideal for those with responsibility for strategy development: senior staff or workers, trustees 

  • Particularly helpful for workers and leaders steering organisations through significant financial challenge and uncertainty

Impact

Power of Purpose was originally delivered in 2025 as a series of three workshops in collaboration with The Binks Hub and The Centre for Research on Families and Relationships at the University of Edinburgh for over 40 Scottish-based organisations, with an offer for these organisations to apply for bespoke follow-up support. 

Hear more about the impact of Power of Purpose from those who took part in the original workshop series:

“Having written funding apps for almost 20 years, this is probably the most concise way I have seen of identifying what we aim to do and what we are actually doing. I will definitely use the Impact Map as a tool."

“Power of Purpose is presented as both bite-size and scaleable. It feels like a framework my team can apply as we support increased capacity in smaller community-led voluntary initiatives.”

“Insightful, empowering, actionable content.”

“The training pulled together so many aspects of strategy and delivery into a simple but powerful impact”

“Accessible, short, rich with distilled learning opportunities, relevant and positive”