About TSIP

The Social Innovation Partnership (TSIP) inspires people and organisations to reimagine a fair society.

At the heart of our work is our approach to participation and community engagement. When those with first-hand experience of a given social issue lack ownership and involvement in the development of programmes to address it, solutions are often irrelevant and ineffective. All too often, this then leads to a lack of engagement in the resulting programmes, and failure to resolve the original issues.

A related issue is the toxic practice of ‘research extraction’, where third parties are parachuted into a community to ‘do research’. Because no benefit remains in the community, it creates deep antipathy to traditional forms of research and mistrust of the people and organisations conducting it.

To reimagine a fair society, we must centre those who have experienced social issues first-hand, as well as groups that are likely to be disproportionality affected, and focus on issues that reinforce or create inequalities and injustice. Community engagement is paramount across everything we do – from participatory research and developmental evaluation, to co-design and co-production of new and existing funding and services.

How we work

We recognise that the changes that we want to see in the world are interconnected and systemic, and that they therefore need interconnected solutions. Our Theory of Change  illustrates our emerging thoughts on what is needed to make lasting change so that communities can thrive.

The three interlocking bases of this change are:

• Redistribution of assets, power and resources
• Participation of communities and individuals in the decisions that affect their lives
• Mindsets – changes in mindset at all levels to reflect different ways of living and being together.

While these are the driving forces underpinning all of our external work, we also capture their power within the organisation by:

• Inclusive, empathetic leadership and decision making
• Fair and transparent remuneration
• Embedding these forces to our competency framework
• Learning what it takes to a nurture our diverse team and value our lived and learned experience equally.