Social Movements for Health: What the programme taught us

The Social Movements for Health programme, run by Nesta and Dunhill Medical Trust from 2019–20, supported seven social movements with funding and other kinds of support.

The programme focused on four areas of building social movements:

  • Leadership and purpose
  • Measuring impact
  • Sustainability
  • Growing awareness and mobilising new people

This report, written by Icarus, an experienced collective which evaluates the impact of social change initiatives, explores the successes and failures of the programme. It offers insight into how the social movements grew over the year and the impact on individual members who participated. The recommendations for approaches to similar programmes and initiatives will be valuable for other funders, builders of social movements, activists and researchers.

Authors

Helen Bovey

Helen Bovey helped to found Icarus Collective Ltd over 20 years ago and has been working in consultancy ever since. She is committed to working on projects where people have an opportu…

Helen Carr

Helen Carr is an associate of Icarus Collective Ltd working alongside them since 2017. Previously, Helen worked in the voluntary sector and has managed a range of social action project…

Dr Nicola Stenberg

Dr Nicola Stenberg is a Senior Lecturer at Huddersfield Business School. She joined the University in June 2019, having worked in the fields of training and development and consultancy…