It was July 2021 and a beautiful midwinter day in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The temperate conditions belied the turmoil of political protests that had spread to all-out vandalism and looting across the province and, to a more limited extent, Gauteng. Durban’s inner-city, home to the Denis Hurley Centre (DHC), an inter-faith charity serving homeless people in greater Durban, was greatly affected. As Raymond Perrier, director of the Centre, watched the events unfold, he knew there would now be an even greater need for the work of the Centre. Perrier reflected on why the Centre had succeeded in providing a collaborative space for people of different faiths to come together and to work side by side in helping the homeless, when so many other organisations had failed to do so.

No of pages: 23

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It was January 2024, almost 13 years since Fayus Inc, a US-based distributor of Nigerian food products, had started investing in oil palm plantations in Nigeria. The project was progressing well and included a plan to build an oil palm processing mill so that Fayus would own a fully vertically-integrated oil palm business by 2027. Fatai Yusufu, who had founded the business in 1992 and grown it into a global enterprise, now had the opportunity to expand the plantation by a further 5 000 hectares (almost doubling its size). Doing so would help to secure the supply chain for his business, as well as provide much-needed employment for local communities in Edo State where the plantations were located. But it also presented several risks for the business, and Yusufu had to decide whether to expand, or whether it was safer to maintain the status quo.

No of pages: 16

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At the beginning of September 2023, Dr Judy Dlamini, the founder and chair of the Female Academic Leaders Fellowship (FALF), reflected on FALF’s progress in its pursuit of transformation in academia. Formed in 2020, FALF was an independent, registered, non-profit company that aimed specifically to empower black and coloured women from South Africa to progress into academic leadership at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). FALF had been instrumental in continuing the development of a pipeline of female academic leaders at Wits and intended to expand this initiative beyond Wits. But, one of Dlamini’s immediate considerations was to evaluate the impact of FALF. Had FALF been successful, she asked herself, in changing the faces of professors and senior academic leaders at Wits?

No of pages: 16          

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Louise Driver, executive director of the Independent Philanthropy Association South Africa (IPASA), a membership-based organisation of independent philanthropic funders, shared the challenges of the slow progress of the association’s three-year initiative to encourage its members to adopt a climate lens in their funding strategies and to progress members along their climate response journeys. Initially, funders appeared to be stuck in their focus areas and unable to see that climate change was already exacerbating the very problems they were trying to address. Gradually, as IPASA’s initiatives had raised awareness, funders had become aware of the urgency of the climate crisis, that it intersected with their work, and that they had to respond to address its impact. It was December 2023 and Driver was preparing for IPASA’s 2024 strategic planning session. As she reviewed what the organisation had been doing in this area, and how its approach had evolved, she wondered if it needed to find new ways to encourage funders to support climate philanthropy.

No of pages: 21

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By June 2019, Janet Mawiyoo, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Kenya Community Development Foundation (KCDF), and her executive team had reached the conclusion that it was no longer viable for the Foundation, which carried out the organisation’s development activities, to be so integrally involved in the operations of the investment activities of the KCDF Trust, the latter having been established in the mid-2000s to manage and grow the assets of the Foundation. She wanted to find a way of ensuring that she could have more time to focus on her core work at the Foundation, so that the Trust’s activities were managed effectively and that it could act in a decisive and timely manner to grow the Foundation’s assets.

No of pages: 16

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In early March 2024, Adri Williams, the managing director of Khayelitsha Cookies (KC), a social enterprise based in Cape Town, South Africa, was satisfied that, 20 years after it was founded, KC was achieving its vision of providing meaningful work to otherwise unemployable women in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town. But although the company was technically solvent, it still had outstanding debt of R1.1 million (nearly US$60 000), which needed to be repaid by 2027. She needed a three-year strategy for paying off the debt while continuing to be true to her social goals of empowering the women of Khayelitsha one bite at a time. She asked herself if it really was possible to achieve her social impact goals and operate a profitable business that was sustainable in the long term. And if so, how

No. Pages: 16

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In July 2018, Donné Nicol, outgoing chief executive officer (CEO) of the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation, considered how to manage her exit, as she would hand over to Mmabatho Maboya, the new CEO, in September 2018. Nicol, who had worked closely with Ramaphosa since 1991, had helped to establish all his philanthropic initiatives. She had been CEO of the Foundation since 2015, and executive director of its predecessor, the Shanduka Foundation since its inception in 2004. The Foundation had played an important role in philanthropy in South Africa and Nicol’s successor had to succeed for the Foundation to continue to have the impact required. She asked herself what steps she should follow and what mechanisms she should put in place to ensure success.

In July 2020, Charlene Lackay, group corporate social investment (CSI) manager at financial services group, Momentum Metropolitan Holdings (Momentum Metropolitan) was considering how best to monitor and evaluate the activities of the Momentum Metropolitan Foundation volunteer programme. Pressure on funding made it critical to provide evidence of what the programme was achieving. She also knew that as CSI practitioners, her department tended to become invested in their projects and that they needed to be able to pull back and assess their efforts objectively.

No. Pages: 26

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In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began having a devastating impact on the Egyptian economy and people, and Noura Selim, executive director of the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development (SFSD), considered how the foundation should address the needs of the most marginalised populations. Up until then, SFSD had largely focused on improving the lives of poor people through education, and social and economic empowerment programmes. The pandemic posed a new challenge for the foundation, requiring rapid assessment and response to cushion the burden of potential economic and health shocks faced by Egypt’s poor. How could SFSD address those needs quickly and effectively? 

No. Pages: 24
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On 5 March 2020, the first in-country South African tested positive for COVID-19. Less than three weeks later, on 23 March, after schools and universities had already closed and a number of organisations had adopted a work-from-home policy, the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the whole country would go into hard lockdown for 21 days from midnight on 26 March 2020. As these events unfolded, it became clear that reliable, affordable access to mobile telecommunications would be critical for the country’s population in the months to come, as they had to work, study, and communicate from home. Taki Netshitenzhe, the external affairs director of mobile network operator, Vodacom South Africa, knew that this was an opportunity to demonstrate the company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Vodacom’s response had to benefit society without coming at a crippling cost to the company. How to achieve this was a key question that occupied her mind as these events unfolded.

No of pages: 22

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In July 2020, Charlene Lackay, group corporate social investment (CSI) manager at financial services group, Momentum Metropolitan Holdings (Momentum Metropolitan) was considering how best to monitor and evaluate the activities of the Momentum Metropolitan Foundation volunteer programme. Pressure on funding made it critical to provide evidence of what the programme was achieving. She also knew that as CSI practitioners, her department tended to become invested in their projects and that they needed to be able to pull back and assess their efforts objectively.

But what would be the best way of doing this, given that the company had more than 15 000 employees at numerous job levels, a lack of resources in the human resource department, and that she had to respect privacy related to salary levels?

No. Pages: 28
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