The Sustainable Development Goals aren’t working, so we’re fixing it.

If we keep going at the pace and in the way we have been, we won’t meet the sustainable Development Goals until 2094. With that in mind we have joined a global movement called Catalyst 2030 to galvanise the collaboration and infrastructure that is necessary among social innovators worldwide to reach the Goals by 2030 as intended.

We’re proud to be a Founding Member of this fantastic organization that was launched in Davos with the active support of the leading social innovation organisations in the world; Echoing Green, Ashoka, Schwab Foundation and Skoll Foundation. I was given the opportunity to present the introduction of the Catalyst 2030 movement at the 2020 Skoll Forum alongside two other Founding Members; Kristine Pearson, founder of Lifeline Energy and Colin McElwee, co-Founder of Worldreader.

Our global membership group spent months deep diving into the methodology that would support widespread collaboration within the cohort and to ensure the sustainability of this volunteer movement. In February, the founding members met in Northampton (UK), hosted by Spencer family in their stately home, Althrop, and there we decided on engaging members in working groups.

The majority of our members utilise the connections made within the network to further their own work and find new qualified partners for their endeavours, while also engaging in the organisation and development of one of the following aspects of our work.

WG1 - Governance - as you can imagine, this working group is focused on ensuring we are effectively working together to meet our collective goal as a movement.

WG2 - Communication - in this working group, we ensure that the Catalyst movement is effectively portrayed at all times, and devise methods to ensure more people get to know about the work we are doing.

WG3 - Collaboration - this working group is at the core of the Catalyst movement. Through the use of technology and other key components, members are given the opportunity to effectively communicate their needs, offer support and gain new insights to help them catalyse their own individual work.

WG4 - Impact measuring and visibility - for those of us that are passionate about impact measurement, the democratisation of impact information, usability of that data and transparency within the social sector, working group 4, impact measuring and visibility has been a great opportunity to explore ideas and methodologies with like minded people.

WG5 - Financing - this group’s mission is to catalyse the development of powerful systemic change to the financing infrastructure that supports social entrepreneurs. It’s all about embracing complexity from the funder side of things.

WG6 - Country and UN interactions - to ensure that we achieve the SDGs we have to work more effectively with governments and the UN. The aim of this group is to create an ecosystem in which all governments, UN & multilateral funding bodies recognise, respect & enable social entrepreneurs/social innovators to take action to implement solutions in their nations and organisations

WG7 - Private sector interactions - their aim is to represent the rest of the world that engages with the ecosystem in which we all operate. They work to engage and mobilise corporations, communities, civil society, and young people as catalysts to bring about systemic change.

WG8 - Convergence - in this working group, members are focused on designing the architecture for a systems highway that will allow us to share data and information easily to help build capacity for non-profits.

The Secretariat offers varying levels of support. In some initiatives it is a guiding force, whereas in others it is hands on. Its role is to coordinate, support and facilitate engagements, projects and opportunities with Catalyst 2030 members and working group members. As we worked to develop the governance structure of Catalyst 2030 it was important to us that this volunteer run organisation adopted a bottom up approach and that is reflected in the modality of the Secretariat which acts primarily as a Backbone structure, the core of that backbone being One Family Foundation, led by Catalyst 2030 founder, Jeroo Billimoria.

We have 10 years to achieve the goals. So over the next decade we are going to have to evolve our approach to meet the challenges that arise and to continue catalysing the impact of the status quo at the time. Right now, we’re in the Preparation phase. We’re building the movement’s foundation, performing scoping activities and determining what our key actions are to be.

In the Incubation phase, over an 18 month period, working groups will initiate pilot programs that will foster learning, and produce effective iterations.

In the Expansion phase, we’ll spend these 4 years scaling the proven models developed within our working groups, with the scope of the projects reaching across geographies and sectors.

In the five years following, what we have named the Maturity phase, we’ll further scale our interventions. By this time, we intend to have created new structures, policies, practices, and norms that can be embraced by system actors.

We know that we’ll have to be adaptable and that, as we are currently experiencing, focus can shift and change. Thankfully, the model itself, from the start, was built to absorb shifts and changes well. I’m excited about how well all of this has come together in such a short space of time, and how well we are collaborating and developing across our working groups, as an entire body.

Catalyst 2030 is made up of many fantastic organisations around the world that have decided to work together and make a concerted unified effort towards the meeting of the SDGs in 2030. Surely if the entire world can change in a matter of weeks, as it recently has, the entire world can change again for the better, and faster through efforts such as these.

If you would like to find out more about what we’re building, head over to the Catalyst 2030 website for frequent updates on our activities.