Impact Report 2023-2025

Why The Journey Does Not End When a Programme Finishes

Support rarely arrives as one clean intervention. It's a Health Check here, a grant there, a mentoring session somewhere else. Meet Carib Eats, MEM Academy, and Youth League UK, three founders whose journeys show what happens when support becomes a connected pathway instead.

Introduction

For many social entrepreneurs, support often arrives in fragments.

A short programme. A grant. A workshop. A one-off mentoring session. A useful connection that may or may not lead anywhere.

But building a sustainable organisation does not happen in one intervention. It takes time, trust, reflection, practical support, and the ability to access the right kind of help at the right moment.

At Do it Now Now, our model is designed around that reality.

We do not see our programmes as isolated moments of support. We see them as part of a wider ecosystem that helps Black and Global Majority changemakers move through different stages of growth, from early capacity building to investment readiness, from participant to collaborator, from founder isolation to strategic confidence.

This is what we mean by wrap-around ecosystem support.

It is the combination of Health Checks, cohort learning, Critical Friend support, grant funding, peer networks, alumni opportunities, and progression routes through our Levels 1–5. Together, these elements create a pathway that can meet founders where they are, and continue supporting them as their needs change.

The stories of Carib Eats, MEM Academy, and Youth League UK show what this looks like in practice.

From Participant to Partner

Wrap-around support is not only about helping organisations grow internally. It is also about creating pathways for founders to return to the ecosystem as contributors, collaborators, and leaders.

Carib Eats is a powerful example.

When Ali Kakande joined DiNN’s Level 2 Build Hustle Grow programme, her organisation was already deeply rooted in Hackney. What began as a WhatsApp group during the COVID lockdown had become a weekly community canteen, food programme, and cultural space. But the organisation was still being held together by goodwill, short-term grants, volunteers, and Ali’s determination.

The Health Check revealed a familiar pattern for grassroots organisations: a powerful mission, but weak infrastructure. Governance was informal, there was no clear succession plan, policies were often reactive, and financial management depended heavily on spreadsheets and project-by-project budgeting.

Through cohort training and Critical Friend support, Ali began turning what was already working into something more strategic and sustainable. She developed a clearer action plan, strengthened governance and administration, began formalising HR processes, built a funders pipeline, and explored new income streams beyond catering.

The results were visible quickly. She secured new grant funding, developed local authority partnerships, piloted new delivery models, and began packaging her expertise into consultancy, public speaking, online sessions, digital products, and one-to-one support.

But the most important part of the story is what happened next.

Ali returned as a collaborating organisation for a Level 1 programme, helping to support new entrants. In 2025, she also joined DiNN’s Advisory Board, bringing her lived experience and operational knowledge into our strategic decision-making.

Her journey shows the ecosystem at its best: a founder receives support, grows stronger, and then helps create the conditions for others to grow too.

From Participant to Partner: The Journey of Carib Eats

Read The Full Case Study

From Survival to Investment Readiness

Some organisations need more than one stage of support. They may begin with urgent capacity needs, then grow into more complex questions around investment, trading income, scale, and commercial discipline.

MEM Academy’s journey shows how the DiNN ecosystem supports that kind of progression.

When MEM Academy first engaged with DiNN, the organisation had a powerful mission: using non-contact boxing to steer young people away from offending. But beneath the impact, it was fragile. Income sat at just over £43,000, the organisation was almost entirely grant-dependent, and cash flow was stuck in a “stop and start” cycle.

Through Level 3 Innovate Now, MEM Academy began building the foundations for sustainability. A Health Check identified critical gaps in financial management, strategic planning, and the underdeveloped e-commerce trading arm. Critical Friend support helped the founder, Derrick Twum, automate bookkeeping, create an asset register, build a more strategic fundraising pipeline, and invest in e-commerce marketing.

The results were transformative. MEM Academy secured £350,000 from the National Lottery Trust and £80,000 from the London Marathon. The organisation expanded from five to seven sites, increased its annual reach from 400 to over 600 young people, and gained the operational stability to think beyond the next grant application.

That success made MEM Academy ready for the next stage.

Through Level 5 Big Business, the focus shifted from stability to investment readiness. The goal was no longer only to survive, but to prepare for £500,000 to £1 million in commercial investment to scale the trading arm and build long-term self-sufficiency.

The support became more commercially rigorous. Derrick worked on financial discipline, data tracking, investor messaging, e-commerce conversion, AI-enabled marketing, and a pitch narrative that could speak to commercial investors as well as social funders.

MEM Academy’s story shows why progression matters. The journey from a £43,000 grant-dependent CIC to a business positioned for a £1 million investment round was not a single leap. It was a staged process, enabled by support that changed as the organisation changed.

From Survival to Investment Ready: The Full Journey of MEM Academy

Read The Full Case Study

From Grant Dependency to Trading Confidence

Wrap-around support also helps more established organisations move from stability into strategic confidence.

Youth League UK had been serving families in Barking & Dagenham for 25 years. Its youth centre, the Attic, had become a trusted space for Black African and Caribbean families, and its mentoring model was rooted in traditional African values.

But despite its deep community role, the organisation remained financially fragile. Almost every pound came from restricted grants. There was no strategic plan, no operational plan, and limited systems for tracking outcomes. The founder, John Wainaina, knew the organisation needed trading income if it was going to move beyond precarity.

Through Level 4 Make It Big, Youth League UK began building that foundation. Health Check insights, peer learning, and one-to-one capacity building helped John write a business plan, set a target for 30% of income to come from trading, grow income from £200,000 to £284,000, expand staff, strengthen the board, and secure £220,000 to renovate the Attic.

When Youth League UK later progressed to Level 5 Big Business, the support did not start from scratch. Because the organisation had recently completed a second Health Check, the Critical Friend could use that validated information to move straight into advanced support.

The breakthrough came through hands-on financial modelling. When the local council offered three more years of funding for the “Bridging the Divide” programme, John needed to know how to price the work properly. With his Critical Friend, he built a per-person costing model and developed a stronger negotiation position for a Service Level Agreement.

This shifted the conversation. Youth League UK was no longer only asking for funding. It could explain the value it delivered, what it cost, and how that cost could be structured sustainably.

Today, Youth League UK has cleaner finances, a negotiable SLA rate, and a clearer path towards trading income.

From Grant Dependency to Trading Confidence: The 25-Year Journey of Youth League UK

Read The Full Case Study

What these journeys tell us about wrap-around support

These three stories are different, but they point to the same lesson: social enterprise development is not linear.

A founder may start with a strong community idea and later become a trainer, collaborator, or advisor.

An organisation may begin by stabilising its finances and later prepare for commercial investment.

A long-standing charity may have decades of impact but still need support to price its work, build trading income, and negotiate with confidence.

That is why support has to be flexible.

DiNN’s ecosystem is designed to allow movement: between levels, between learning and application, between receiving support and contributing back, between grant dependency and trading confidence.

The common ingredients are clear:

Health Checks help organisations understand where they are.
Cohort learning gives them shared language, tools, and peer support.
Critical Friends turn gaps into practical action.
Grant funding creates space to build, not just survive.
Alumni and advisory pathways allow members to return as contributors.
Progression routes help organisations access the right support as they mature.

Together, these elements make support more than a programme. They make it a pathway.

Building an ecosystem, not an intervention

The social entrepreneurs we work with are not short of vision. They are not short of commitment. They are not short of community trust.

What they often need is infrastructure: the systems, strategy, funding, confidence, and relationships that allow their work to last.

Wrap-around ecosystem support is DiNN’s answer to that need.

It recognises that one programme cannot solve everything. But a connected pathway of support can help founders take the next step, and the next one after that.

Carib Eats shows how a participant can become a partner.
MEM Academy shows how survival can become investment readiness.
Youth League UK shows how long-standing community impact can become commercial confidence.

Together, their stories show what becomes possible when support is not designed as a cliff edge, but as a continuing ecosystem.