Written by Paul Stuart, CEO of Ripple Effect.
In June 2022 SAC changed its name to Ripple Effect after 34 years – to reflect the organisation’s new strategy and the range of work they do supporting rural communities in east and southern Africa. CEO Paul Stuart reflects on the rollercoaster ride.
I’ll be honest: being the head of a charity that changes its name is a big risk.
Of course this wasn’t my personal decision, and we spent more than a year researching it carefully and engaging with all our stakeholders. But at the end of the day, when we decided to press Go it was my head on the block. So why did we do it?
1. Our old name was holding us back
For me, one particular meeting with the CEO of a company crystallised the need for change. He started by saying that he hadn’t planned to see me because our name didn’t fit at all with their goals, but the colleague who introduced us had told him: “Don’t worry, they don’t do that anymore – they’re a great organisation.”
It made me wonder how many times this was happening: we just weren’t getting our foot in the door.
Discussions with government departments in the countries where we work, covering the details of our programme implementation, would end with officials saying: “And when do we get the cows?”
Francis Twesigye, one of our project managers in Uganda, says:
“When we went to start the four-year project in Rakai, a few local people actually arrived with ropes to lead cows home.”
2. “Sending” isn’t what we do any more
We have no issue with fundraising in high-income countries to send funds to low and middle-income countries: that’s one very important way to address social injustice.
But the idea of “sending” goods and expertise to the communities where we work expressed an outdated model of development that doesn’t match with the way we actually respond to local needs and the community resources available.
3. We’re not just about cows
We knew that. All our ambassadors and individual supporters and funders knew that.
But if we’re to achieve our ambitious goal of reaching another 5 million people by the end of the decade – in addition to the 2.5 million we’ve worked with over the previous 34 years of our work – we need to work with new funders and delivery partners who don’t already know about our depth of expertise in agroecological farm systems, our gender and social inclusion work, and our innovative enterprise training.
We will continue to support livestock with a range of improvements in feeding, breeding and health of as a key part of our One Health approach. That expertise hasn’t disappeared.
4. We needed to talk about impact
Everyone we’ve worked with tells us that our USP is the depth of our impact. There are other NGOs that work in similar areas to us, and that’s not surprising because we’re all focused on the SDGs. But
our rigorous monitoring and evaluation tells us that for every family we work with directly another three will benefit – and that is the most conservative figure across all our country programmes.
Our staff are passionately committed to the core principles of our work because they’ve seen their effectiveness.
Martin Kasozi, our project finance officer in Uganda, says:
“When I went to Kamuli District for the first time I really saw the lives of people being changed. You see the gardens, you maybe see a cow, you see a green sustainability. You see a family can thrive in a village setting.”
The farmers we work with become advocates for the techniques they’ve learned, and their skills are passed on through self-help groups and peer-farmer training. We also train local delivery partners and government workers, so the practices are embedded in communities long after projects are completed.
5. We needed to be bold
There are always good reasons for not taking risks. There is a chance we might lose some key supporters. It might take us a long time to gain the same “market visibility”.
The scale of need in the region where we work is what spurred us on. There’s a real risk that millions more may fall back into poverty as a result of the triple threats of climate crisis, conflict and Covid.
We didn’t underestimate the size of the task: change is hard, and everyone has a view. But frankly, if we couldn’t persuade our supporters that this was the right step to take, we didn’t deserve to be doing our jobs.
Many people (and especially many young people) “get” the new name straight away. Others were against it, and the opportunity to engage with the people who’ve expressed their concerns has been an incredible connection. It’s been very powerful hearing what motivates them to support our work. And some of them changed their minds.
Personally, I loved the name Send a Cow. It was hands-on practical, and reminded us of our heritage and a great story of innovation. What we’ve learned is that a new name is a process of becoming-familiar: you have to let this new identity sit with you for some time, and get comfortable with what it represents.
Julius Adubango, our project coordinator in Uganda says:
“It is surprising that it has taken us so long to describe ourselves: to move away from our history to what we are today. We have finally shifted to what we really are and it’s easy to explain that it is about our effect. It starts on an African farm and moves on and that’s what we’ve been all along.”
