Agenda's alliance development: listening and learning

Agenda Alliance's Deputy CEO Jess Southgate reflects on the response to our recent member survey, and outlines our next steps.

Eight years on from our foundation, Agenda is reviewing how we can best convene our Alliance to be empowered and cohesive. We want our Alliance members to feel actively part of our movement to end cycles of harm and effectively involved in work to influence public policy and practice. Together, we can bring about effective change for women and girls with unmet needs.

We recently surveyed our members and allies to explore how best we can achieve this, and you can read my previous blog about our ambitions for this review here.

We were delighted with the response to the survey, which has given us great insight into where we are currently working well with Alliance members, and where we could strengthen and grow. Organisations across the country, of different sizes and working across a wide range of specialisms, took the time to share their feedback and views. If you took part – a sincere thank you for your time.

Respondents to our survey told us they see Agenda as leading experts in women and girl’s unmet needs, and as speaking with a clear, authoritative and intersectional voice. Having been part of Agenda’s journey as we have grown and developed, I was particularly pleased to hear members describing us as collaborative, working with integrity and as centring the voices of women and girls with lived experience.

"Am a huge fan of Agenda - truly providing something unique. Agile, responsive, and able to be holistic due to the focus on multiple domains. Thank you for always being so open, professional, informed, energetic, adaptable."

"The shared knowledge and experiences have been instrumental in shaping our approach to addressing the needs of women and girls facing inequality." 

I was encouraged to know that the areas we have invested in are well received. Survey respondents said they value our evidence and insight; our work sharing good practice and raising the profile of gender-specialist expertise; our cross-sector convening; our partnership working; our influencing at both national and local level; and our coproduction activities and strong advocacy of women and girls’ voices.

"As a non-campaigning organisation ourselves it is extremely important to have a strong national ally who can speak on behalf of the women we serve and highlight, create a platform for their voices to be heard in order to address social injustices." 

"Allowing our women to feel powerful because their voices are being heard and issues they believe is important and Agenda Alliance also make that issue important."

It is clear, however, that is a challenging time for women and girls facing multiple unmet needs and the organisations working alongside them. Agenda Alliance’s own research has shown that the ‘triple shock effect’ of austerity, the Covid-19 pandemic and the escalating cost-of-living crisis is having a devastating impact on the most marginalised – with sometimes fatal consequences for women and girls.

Against this background, members told us that – now more than ever – it was vital that organisations come together across sectors to change systems and services and improve lives. Some commented on the sense of feminist solidarity they felt being part of the Alliance and the positive impact they felt working with other values-driven organisations who take a gender and trauma informed approach, and who centre the voices of girls and women.

We felt a strong appetite amongst our members for more opportunities to be more involved in Agenda’s work and campaigns, more opportunities to learn from one another across our network and for the Alliance to collectively advocate for system-wide approaches that drives meaningful change.

We are now taking steps to share these learnings across our alliance and have deeper conversations about how we can translate what we have heard into practical action. We are holding a series of focus groups across February about the future of our Alliance, and I am excited to hear more from members through this process.

Our discussions will also focus on our proposed priorities for influencing around the 2024 general election, to ensure that these are informed and supported by the Alliance itself. This will be another important opportunity for us to reflect on our progress so far and understand where we can do more and go deeper.

If you are an Agenda Alliance member and would like to be part of a facilitated conversation with Jess and Maisie from the Agenda team, please contact Jess for more information.

We really hope to hear from you.