Forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion
– Oprah Winfrey
That is certainly what JIGSAW’s Chief Executive Officer, Hattie Clayton, has been doing. Hattie is doing all she can to make sure JIGSAW flies as the inclusive, empowering and uplifting charity that it is, and her passion for making it happen shines through.
Hattie has been the CEO of JIGSAW Thornbury full-time since May 2023. Prior to this she took care of the charity as a part-time interim CEO during a period of change, and was previously Chair of Trustees. With this wealth of experience, I was keen to catch up with Hattie to find out how proud she is of the 2023-24 Charity Commission Annual Report that has just been published, and how that is owed to a much-improved governance structure that she has been working hard to embed.
The Charity Commission Annual Report is a document which all charities must produce on a yearly basis; the report identifies and explains the charitable purpose as set out by the charity, and reports on what has been done to achieve these purposes. For JIGSAW Thornbury, it is also an opportunity to reflect on the impact achieved and take learning into future planning. It is the result of an essential process which charities follow to hold them to a high account – which is why I was so eager to get some more context on its contents from Hattie!
Q: So, Hattie – what made you want to work for JIGSAW?
I actually started volunteering at JIGSAW as a trustee, during lockdown in 2020 so that was all remote. At the time, we were just starting to do a strategic review, so I got a really good induction and introduction to JIGSAW. I had to understand what it was about, where it has come from and where we wanted to go. I worked with the CEO at the time to drive the strategic review forward. Because I got to know JIGSAW so well at the time and worked so closely with the members, staff and volunteers, I felt like I had become a part of that and JIGSAW had become a part of me – it was too important to pass up the opportunity to work for JIGSAW when the opportunity came up.
Q: What is your proudest achievement as CEO this past year?
I’ve got so many, but I think I’d have to say the Youth Empowerment Services (YES), and seeing some of our older Young People really come into their own. It came about from us identifying a need to support our young members aged 11-25 years in our strategic plan – we wanted to grow along with the families and young people we started out to help.
We started our new YES group in October 2023, with the aim of upskilling Young People to feel more empowered as themselves with an understanding of what is important to them. The group meets monthly and each session is planned around what the Young People want to achieve.
Since October, our YES group has been working together to collate a united voice for children and young people with additional needs or disabilities. During their monthly sessions they have chosen a topic important to them – which is disabilities and accessibility. They have learnt about methods for collecting information, designed and launched their youth empowerment survey with a video message, categorised responses from 26 survey participants, created storyboards for the change they want to see based on what young people told them, and practiced adapting communication styles to different audiences. And of course, we have had lots of fun along the way. You would be surprised to hear how well they were able to communicate the benefits of beans on toast to Taylor Swift!
I am immensely proud of what we have collectively achieved through our Youth Empowerment Services.
JIGSAW’s governance structure was updated fairly recently and you’ve worked hard to embed it this year. Can you tell me a little about why that change came about and summarise the new governance structure for those unfamiliar?
Of course. During lockdown, as with many charities and service providers, we needed to reduce our services and offer support online. Also during this time, the venue we were using was condemned, and we took the decision to move into a bigger venue in the centre of town, which we started delivering services from in 2021.
Through building up face-to-face services in our new venue, we quickly realised that the needs of the families we supported were far greater and more diverse coming out of lockdown. From listening to our families, we had developed a large number of new services. To ensure these were well-planned and governed, we needed a more robust structure that suited this new scale of delivery. We set out for our updated governance structure to be simpler and more accessible, with the view that our families – particularly our Young People – would be able to navigate this and have a voice at every level. We’ve been able to follow through on this with our YES group and would like to take it further by supporting a Young Person to take up a position as a trustee!
As for the improved governance structure: essentially, the trustees delegate the day-to-day running of the charity to the CEO, who works closely with the whole JIGSAW team. The CEO is responsible for Business Plan objectives, agreed annually, and delegates functional area objectives which feed into these. This makes sure there is a clear sense of direction within the charity, and our objectives remain clear and focused, and run through our day-to-day operations. Here is a visual for our governance structure:
We often see lots about how members benefit from a charity’s services, but how are external stakeholders’ interests taken into account within JIGSAW’s governance structure? For example, funders of the charity?
Firstly, the clear, simple structure means that everyone can access and understand how our charity is governed – including funders, who can see how issues are raised and dealt with within the charity, as well as how our objectives trickle down into our day-to-day.
Since we improved our governance structure, we have also developed better monitoring and evaluation reporting due to the simpler structure; things are more focused, and therefore we have more robust data, more impactful feedback and quotes from members, meaning it is easier to show new and existing funders the positive impact our services and their funding have. Essentially, we can also communicate to new potential supporters what is so special about JIGSAW and what they could help us to achieve.
Above all, the improved governance structure has ensured that we are confident that our deliverables link directly to our purpose and values. We are always delivering to a plan, so are focused on outcomes which have the maximum impact.
Not only are we clear on our values, but the structure in place means that they run through everything that we do. This includes finding funders who share those same values; our purpose starts with our core value of celebrating uniqueness, and it is the innovative, compassionate, community-focused, empowering ways in which we work that make what we achieve impactful and makes us who we are. We are confident that our values are our funders’ values, because of the clear direction that we have in making the right connections.
Finally, our governance structure enables us to be present in the community, focusing on delivering impact to the families that we help. However, that presence also extends to the wider community, of which local supporters are a part of. They can see the impact their funding is having first-hand, through getting to know members and their stories. Additionally, they can see how the wider public benefits from our presence.
The 2023-24 impact report says the improved governance structure embedded by you ‘ensures everyone has a voice at the relevant times’. Can you give an example of this? Why is it so important?
Yes – it is important because we exist for people, so first and foremost those people need to be able to have a voice when it is relevant to them.
As for when it’s relevant, our governance structure enables us to do this well – our strategic reviews happen every 5 years and this is when trustees ensure that our strategic plan will meet our charitable purpose. Then, our yearly business plan objectives led by the CEO involve consulting with various stakeholders through conversations, meetings and surveys: members, families and staff. The objectives are then drafted to go back to trustees to sign off. As trustees are the only members of the charity with voting power, our governance structure and processes ensure that they have all the necessary information to do this most impactfully – each level of our charity has input at the right time leading to this.
Another specific example of when we have utilised a relevant voice when appropriate: we included a young member in the interviewing and recruitment of our Community Fundraising and Participation Lead. This Young Person has volunteered 100 hours with us since April 2024, so they had a wealth of experience to lean into, and valuable insight into what it takes to find appropriate opportunities for Young People to engage in volunteering with JIGSAW. We are very proud to have elevated this incredible voice and are always looking for opportunities to do more of the same.
Thank you so much for your time, Hattie. I cannot wait to see what JIGSAW manages to achieve in the next year!
No problem, and nor can I!
You can read the 2023-4 JIGSAW Charity Commission Report in full by clicking on this button
Read here
About the author:
Nicola Pitsillis is the Marketing and Communications Volunteer at JIGSAW Thornbury. With a background in English and primary teaching, she now assists in the writing and creation of online content and communications.