How we performed in 2020-21
We believe it’s essential we hold ourselves accountable to our stakeholders as a charity. As part of our annual reporting process, we reflect on how we performed against the goals we set ourselves in the previous year’s report.
So did we do what we said we’d do?
Here (p.42) are the goals we laid out in our annual report 2019-20, and how we performed against them in the financial year 2020-21.
| Goal | Achieved? | Comment |
| We will shape our vision for the impact we want SSE to have and develop a new three-year strategy. | Ongoing | We delayed timelines due to Covid-19. We’ll launch our new strategy in 2021/22. |
| We will finalise collaborative work with our network to lay the foundations for future impact. | Yes | See the full report when it’s published for more info. |
| We will remain responsive to the needs arising from the Covid-19 crisis. | Yes | See the full report when it’s published for more info. |
| We will ensure existing programmes and courses continue to thrive. | Yes | Despite the pandemic, we successfully secured all renewal opportunities. |
| We aim to generate new funding to meet the needs of emerging and established social entrepreneurs. | Yes | We secured significant additional funding to support social entrepreneurs through the crisis, through the Social Enterprise Support Fund. |
| We will develop and market sustainability products to diversify our income and offering. | In part | We were able to secure new income by selling sustainability products, but some of this work took a back seat as we responded to Covid-19. |
| We plan a number of technology developments: becoming more cloud-based, collaborative & using more online learning. | Yes & ongoing | We have rolled out many cloud-based and collaboration technologies, and migrated five environments down to one. We’ve done lots of virtual learning and meetings! |
| We will put renewed emphasis on regular cash-flow forecasting and support a review of business model needs for reserves. | In part | We have renewed our emphasis on cash, have regular cash-flow reporting, and are revising our reserves policy. We have not yet reviewed our business model, due to Covid-19. |
| We will refresh and roll-out an updated staff training programme. | Yes | We have rolled out: information and security training; compliance training; safeguarding training for all staff; mental health first aid training for all student-facing staff. |
| The Programmes & Learning team will review our processes and procedures to ensure we strive for greater efficiency, innovation and impact. | Ongoing | We launched a standardisation project across all SSE teams, exploring the programme lifecycle from start to finish. We have streamlined processes to improve students’ and applicants’ experiences. |
| Deliver high-quality programmes within budget, and achieve at least an 80% satisfaction rating. | Yes | We achieved 88.3% satisfaction rating. |
| We will integrate our core learning principles into our programme design and delivery. | Yes & ongoing | Our learning team uses the principles to frame meetings, create our programme design methodology & to design many aspects of programmes. |