How Can Operations Drive the Growth of High-Impact Charities?
Summary
Joshua Axford, founder and CEO of Impact Ops, recently shared insights into his journey and the crucial role that operations play in scaling high-impact charities. His talk emphasised the importance of behind-the-scenes work in ensuring charities are able to function effectively and achieve their mission. With extensive experience in operations, Joshua offered advice for individuals looking to make a meaningful contribution in the nonprofit sector through operational support.
The Role of Operations in High-Impact Charities
Joshua started by discussing his career path and how operations became a key focus of his professional journey. He explained that, although often overlooked, operations are vital for ensuring the smooth functioning of any organisation, especially charities. From hiring and finance to compliance and process improvements, operations cover a wide range of tasks that make an organisation run efficiently.
"Operations is about making things work behind the scenes. You may not be in the spotlight, but you're making sure the charity can function effectively, remove obstacles, and ultimately scale up."
Joshua emphasised that operations are a "force multiplier" for charities. By improving efficiency and removing inefficiencies, operations help charities scale faster and have a greater impact. A well-organised charity can grow more confidently, whereas a charity bogged down with administrative hurdles can struggle to make progress.
Why Operations is So Impactful
Joshua explained that operations are a key enabler for scaling charities and achieving their goals. A well-structured operations team helps an organisation to grow without being weighed down by bureaucratic inefficiencies. In essence, good operations don’t just support the charity—they can transform the trajectory of the organisation.
"With good operations, an organization can scale much more quickly. It removes obstacles, creates efficiencies, and allows the charity to focus on what it does best."
He also discussed the often-underappreciated counterfactual—what happens when there are bad operations in place. In these cases, inefficiencies can severely slow down or even halt a charity’s growth.
The Skills Needed for a Career in Operations
When asked who should consider working in operations, Joshua highlighted the key skills required for success in this field. He stressed the importance of being organized, detail-oriented, and able to prioritize tasks effectively. Operations roles often involve juggling many different tasks at once, and the ability to see solutions to complex problems is critical.
"You need a systems mindset—always looking for ways to optimise processes. And, of course, grit is essential. Sometimes you’ll be dealing with slow-moving bureaucracy, and you’ll need to push through those challenges."
Joshua also recommended that people looking to enter operations roles should be willing to experiment and test their fit in the field. For those just starting out, gaining experience through volunteer roles or project management can be an excellent way to build foundational skills.
How to Get Started in Operations
Joshua shared practical advice for those interested in pursuing a career in operations. He explained that early in your career, it’s important to build your “career capital” by experimenting with different roles and gaining experience. He also recommended starting with project management as a solid foundation for transitioning into operations.
"Operations work can often be learned on the job, but project management provides a strong foundation that makes the transition much smoother."
Embracing the Role of AI in Operations
During his talk, Joshua also touched on the increasing role of artificial intelligence in operations. He discussed how Impact Ops is leveraging AI tools to streamline processes and increase the operational effectiveness of the charities they work with. He encouraged other organisations to use AI as a way to scale more effectively.
"AI won’t replace operations roles, but operations professionals who use AI will be much more effective than those who don’t."
Sustainable Impact
Impact Ops operates on a value-based charging model, focusing on long-term sustainability rather than profit maximization. As a company, they have committed to pledges that ensure they are aligned with their purpose of creating lasting social good.
"We charge what we need to be sustainable and make as much impact as possible. Our mission is to help charities scale, not just to generate profit."
Key Takeaways
The Power of Operations: Operations are the backbone of any successful charity, enabling growth and ensuring sustainability.
Skills: To thrive in operations, you need organizational skills, attention to detail, problem-solving abilities, and grit.
Get Started in Operations: Experiment early in your career, take on project management roles, and focus on building career capital.
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00:00:09
Um, all right, so yeah, we're going to go through: Who am I? Why am I here? Why did JS ask me to do this? What is OPS? Why is it impactful? Who should do it? And how do you get started? So, to kick off with who I am—I'm Joshua, CEO and co-founder of Impact Ops. I launched Impact Ops last year; it was very much a leap of faith, a lot of prayer, and diving into it to start up a company that's helping high-impact charities.00:00:44
Impact Ops has the mission and purpose of empowering high-impact projects to scale and flourish. We do that by having a team of impact ops people. This is from a team retreat we had last week in Serbia. We get together, and we're split amongst a bunch of services, which we provide as back-office operational support for charities to help them scale and flourish. So, we're covering things like setup, compliance, and systems implementation—basically, a wide range of operational functions.00:01:18
So, that’s Impact Ops, but before that, I worked as the Director of Operations at Effective Ventures. Before that, I was Head of Operations at CA, and prior to that, I was Chief Operations Officer at a foundation, and before that, I served as an Operations Officer in the Army. I’ve had quite a lot of operations experience, and I guess that's why JD asked me to talk about operations today.00:01:51
So, what is OPS? Operations is essentially all the things required to make things run smoothly, though it looks different in charities. It covers the basics, which could be hiring, finance, compliance, process improvements, event running, and team management, to name a few. Ultimately, I think it always comes down to risk management—making sure things don’t go off the rails. So, it's very much behind the scenes, like stagehands making sure everything runs smoothly while staying out of the spotlight.00:02:21
Why is it impactful? I always think of it as a force multiplier. If you're increasing the operational effectiveness of a charity by 50%, then you're a force multiplier. Ideally, it's more than that, but you're also a key enabler. You make things happen. You remove obstacles and ensure that whatever needs to happen can happen smoothly.00:02:50
You can also influence the trajectory of an organization. If there's a solid foundation of operations, the organization can scale much more quickly. If they're bogged down by bureaucracy and admin inefficiencies, they won't be able to grow as fast, and they won’t have the confidence to grow. So, you can influence the trajectory of the organization in a big way.00:02:57
There's also the counterfactual impact. This is what would happen if you weren’t there, or if there was a much worse person in the position. Often, this kind of impact goes unrecognized. People don’t realize how bad it could have been if good operations hadn’t been in place.00:03:16
So, who should do it? I think you need to be organized, with good attention to detail. There’s often a lot of things being juggled at once. You need to be a problem solver, someone who can see the solution to complex problems and prioritize what needs to be done next. You should also have a systems mindset—being able to process things and look at what’s a more efficient way of doing them. How can this be optimized or automated?00:03:44
Ultimately, you need to have a high level of grit. You’ve got to push through the painful, sometimes bureaucratic systems that aren't always enjoyable to deal with. That’s why operations work often gets pushed off, but it’s about being able to persevere through those challenges.00:04:12
So, how do you get started? As GR was saying, building career capital in your early career is key—it’s a marathon, especially if you're in your 20s. Experiment and spend some time testing your fit and getting experience. See if this is the kind of thing for you. You can take on volunteer roles—maybe organizing an event like this or being involved in organizing a group. These can be good ways to test your fit for an operations role.00:04:25
Project management is a really good foundation. I started in project management at H charity, and that gave me a very strong foundation for moving into operations work.00:04:30
That’s everything on operations—whistle-stop version. Any questions on operations or how to get started?00:05:11
(Q) "Do people usually start in accounting or finance and then move into operations?"(A) Yes, definitely. We’ve got two accountants on our team who started at big four accounting firms and then moved in. I think it’s a really good foundation—a great level of training. You get your ACCA or CMA or whatever’s needed, and that ensures you’ve got the right credibility and understanding before moving into charity finance. We also hire finance people at the early stages, and you can be trained up within a charity as well.
00:05:46
(Q) "What about AI taking over some of the operations work? Do you think AI will become a huge multiplier of resources?"(A) Yes, absolutely. We just had a strategy week as a team, and becoming AI-enabled is one of our key strategic priorities. We’ve got a saying: "Bookkeepers won’t be replaced by AI, but bookkeepers who use AI will replace those who don’t." This principle applies across all sectors. We need to leverage these tools to increase the effectiveness of charities.
00:06:20
We’re actively looking to do more with less by using AI to increase operational effectiveness. I think our comparative advantage lies with smaller charities that are scaling up. Right now, we work with 34 different charities, including For Impact, and we help organizations across a wide range of causes.00:07:16
We’re excited to be supporting charities like Fortify Health and Giving What We Can, among others in the EA space and outside of it. We’ve also recently started working with a UK charity called Greater Change, which uses a give-directly model for homelessness in the UK. It’s an exciting, diverse portfolio, and we’re thrilled to be involved.00:07:54
(Q) "Do you charge for your services?"(A) Yes, we do. We’ve recently switched from being time-based, which we didn’t think was the most appropriate model, to value-based charging. It’s not about maximizing profit; we just want to be sustainable. We’ve taken the Give What We Can pledge as a company, and the founders have also taken the Founders Pledge. Ultimately, we're here to have as much impact as we can.
00:08:25
We charge what we need to in order to be sustainable. It's all about ensuring the sustainability of our operations so we can continue to help the charities we support.00:08:30
Thank you, everyone, for listening. I hope this was helpful. [Applause] Now, onto our next talk—public policy. Thank you!
