2019 Winners | Muslim Women’s Network UK (MWNUK)
Muslim Women’s Network UK (MWNUK)
Winner – Improving Impact – charities with 4-25 paid staff
Who they are
Muslim Women’s Network UK (MWNUK) works to improve social justice and equality for Muslim women and girls. The charity is focused on reducing the vulnerability of Muslim women and girls, reducing the prejudice they face, and giving them greater access to rights and services – all of which allow them to contribute to society like any other citizen. Its membership also includes women of other faiths or of no faith, as well as men who support its work. The charity uses research and data from helpline enquiries to understand the experiences of Muslim women and girls, identifying policy and practice gaps and advocating for change through grassroots community campaigns.
What they’ve achieved
Muslim Women’s Network UK regularly commissions external evaluations in order to to ensure that it truly meets the needs of those it seeks to support. Trustees do not shy away from addressing any gaps or areas in need of improvement that such evaluations may uncover, and the board is prepared to take the necessary steps to implement change – turning threats and weaknesses into opportunities and strengths. For example, one external review flagged that the charity could improve its process for measuring tanglible impact of its activities. Trustees approached this challenge by first redefining what impact means to them: (1) empowering women through better awareness of their rights and the support available to them, and (2) challenging the barriers that inhibit equality for women and girls. Trustees then implemented a range of new services and monitoring systems, and worked collaboratively as a trustee-staff team towards their shared vision. In 2015, the charity launched the only national faith and culturally aware helpline for Muslim women, which has supported more than 2,650 individuals over four years. MWNUK also produces reports and booklets with advice or information for its service users, reaching tens of thousands of people thanks to online downloads and tracked print distribution at events or workshops.
Why they won
The Muslim Women’s Network UK is a small organisation working in ways that are notoriously difficult to measure, but which nonetheless provides a great example of a board working in harmony with the charity’s executive team and demonstrating best practices for an evidence-based approach to strategic and operational decision-making. When an external review highlighted how ineffective the charity was in evaluating its impact, the board used the opportunity to address its own blind spots in governance and take steps to significantly improve its impact. Judges were impressed by the clear evidence of board leadership in helping the charity through operational changes such as overhauling staff hiring practices, updating staff and volunteer training programmes, re-writing governing policies and procedures to reduce risk and increase efficiency, developing new programmes driven by the mission of the charity and backed up by research into community needs, developing strategic community partnerships, and building in efficient benchmarking and evaluation practices across the charity’s work, and implementing new strategic review processes led by trustees.
