upReach
Winner – Embracing Digital
Who they are
This award-winning social mobility charity supports undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds to secure top jobs. upReach bridges the employability skills gap between students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and their more-advantaged peers – 1,300 students currently benefit from an intensive programme of tailored employability support. Through upReach, students broaden their horizons, understand career pathways and develop elusive ‘soft’ skills, networks and professional experiences that they need to access top careers.
What they’ve achieved
In 2012, upReach supported 39 undergraduates. The board decided it wanted to do more. In 2015, the board introduced the Graduate Employability Framework (GEF) to help the organisation reach its goal of supporing 2,000 students per year by 2021.
Designed by the chair, the GEF was central to the charity’s success at expanding its reach and improving its impact. The GEF, which was integrated into the charity’s digital service delivery, comprises a levelled framework of 10 skills that are essential to students securing graduate jobs – such as leadership, commercial awareness, resilience, and professionalism. Upon joining upReach, students complete an online employability self-assessment, providing a baseline score of students’ employability skill levels, as well as giving each student a Personal Employability Report. Annual assessments enable the charity to track students’ individual progress, set personalised goals, and measure the impact the charity’s interventions on students’ skill progression. All upReach interventions and activities are mapped to the 10 key employability skill categories, allowing upReach team members to signpost students to relevant activities. Alongside the Personal Employability Report, the charity has implemented an innovative Strengths Tracker, which maps progression in each skill area live, according to how students engage with interventions.
This digital solution was effective because it enabled the charity to remotely conduct a baseline assessment of students’ skills online, without the time and cost constraints that face-to-face or telephone assessments would place on a small team. By 2018, the charity was reaching student beneficiaries from 53 universities across the UK.
Internally, the board has access to comprehensive live dashboards based on students’ activity on the platform, which summarise outputs and outcomes for trustees. The board discusses progress towards KPIs at each meeting. Live information is used by upReach staff to efficiently tailor support to the needs of each beneficiary, maximising impact for every student.
Why they won
upReach has embraced digital with good governance underpinning their practices. Internally and externally, the charity has shifted to a data-driven approach supported by digital tools with the board leading the initiative and open to challenge on how to do more. The use of digital to capture, monitor and evaluate impact was of particular note.
The digital approach to service delivery earned upReach the Charity of the Year title from the Charity Times Awards, but our judges were impressed with the way digital has been embraced by the board, and utilised to improve internal practices as well. Digital tools help trustees collaborate, participate, make informed decisions and plan strategically. The board have appointed new digital trustees and made digital a core part of their skills audit and strategy.
