Stakeholder Impact Forum

Sufina Ahmad MBE is Director of the John Ellerman Foundation, a leading UK grant-making charity that supports organisations tackling inequality, environmental challenges, and social change. Working at the intersection of funding, policy, and community action, Sufina helps charities and institutions build trust, strengthen participation, and create lasting impact through collaboration and systems-focused thinking.

Many organisations invest significant time and resources into change initiatives. Yet many still struggle to achieve lasting results. Sufina Ahmad argues that successful collaborative change making starts with involving people in the process, rather than imposing solutions on them.

Too often, organisations focus on policies, structures, and processes alone. While these tools matter, they cannot create lasting impact without genuine participation. Collaborative change making requires organisations to listen deeply, build trust, and work alongside the people they want to support.

When organisations co-design and co-deliver change, they create stronger ownership and better outcomes. This approach helps build trust, strengthens communities, and creates change that lasts beyond any single initiative.

Soumitra Dutta is a globally recognised expert in innovation, AI, and digital transformation, with leadership experience spanning Oxford, Cornell, INSEAD, and the World Economic Forum. As co-founder of the Portulans Institute and creator of internationally respected indices, including the Global Innovation Index, he helps organisations and governments understand emerging technological shifts and build future-ready capabilities.

Building digital transformation resilience has become one of the defining challenges for modern organisations. As Soumitra explains, the real barrier to technological adoption is rarely the technology itself. It is organisational inertia, legacy systems, and the ability of people and processes to adapt quickly enough.

True digital transformation resilience requires organisations to rethink how they approach growth, talent, and innovation. While technology is advancing exponentially, many institutions are still operating with mindsets that limit their ability to respond to change.

To remain competitive, leaders must develop the courage to embrace new models, expand ambition, and create organisations capable of scaling. Those that fail to evolve risk falling behind in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Steve Hill is Chief Communications Officer at Auticon UK and a leading voice in purpose-led engagement and inclusion. With extensive experience translating social impact into organisational momentum, Steve focuses on how lived experience, belief, and advocacy turn engagement into sustained change.

The most effective engagement doesn’t start with strategy decks or campaigns; it starts with people. Lived experience engagement creates credibility, trust, and emotional connection that no top-down message can achieve.

When individuals with personal connection champion a cause, momentum builds organically. Personal experience engagement turns engagement into a movement, powered by belief rather than persuasion.

By activating internal advocates and existing communities, organisations amplify impact in ways traditional communication never can.

Matthew Lovell is Head of Recruitment and Retention at the Institute of Physics, where he focuses on attracting and retaining early-career professionals within a scientific membership community. With direct responsibility for engagement strategy, Matthew brings a practical, channel-aware perspective on how organisations must adapt to stay relevant to younger members.

For many membership organisations, recruitment at early-career stages is strong, but retention is a bigger problem. The challenge lies in early-career engagement, especially when communication and outreach don’t match how younger members consume information.

Webinars and long-form content still have value, but they are rarely the entry point. Early career engagement increasingly depends on short-form, peer-led content that feels authentic, accessible, and easy to share.

By amplifying real member voices and meeting early-career professionals in their own digital spaces, organisations can turn awareness into ongoing participation.

One of the most complex pressures facing organisations today is intergenerational membership. Expectations, behaviours, and motivations vary widely between age groups, making it increasingly difficult to design experiences that work for everyone.

Too often, organisations respond by creating silos, separate groups for different demographics. But intergenerational membership works best when knowledge, experience, and mentorship flow across generations rather than being divided.

The future of membership lies in connection, not fragmentation. Bringing generations together around shared purpose creates resilience, relevance, and long-term value.

Inclusion does not happen by accident. Inclusive leadership is the difference between well-meaning intentions and meaningful impact that people can actually feel.

Real progress starts when leaders listen, collect stories, and respond to lived experience. Inclusive leadership turns insight into action by removing barriers, enabling participation, and empowering people to speak up.

When leadership commits visibly and consistently, belief grows. And belief is what drives sustained engagement and cultural change.

Traditional member organisations often treat collaboration as a project. Ecosystem thinking reframes it as something living, evolving over time, shaped by people, institutions, and shared ambition.

Rather than focusing only on fixed stakeholder groups, innovation ecosystems stay open. New voices, unexpected contributors, and diverse forms of participation bring energy, ideas, and resilience into the system.

The role of leadership is not control, but framing. By setting a clear direction and allowing collaboration to emerge, member organisations can move from managing complexity to unlocking collective momentum.

Organisations today are facing increasing stakeholder engagement challenges, particularly in navigating resistance, shifting expectations, and complex social dynamics. As Berkeley Wilde highlights, many organisations are no longer struggling with silence but with active pushback, making engagement more difficult and nuanced than ever before.

One of the key ways to overcome these stakeholder engagement challenges is through building trust over time, rather than expecting immediate buy-in. This requires organisations to move beyond surface-level initiatives and instead centre authentic voices, lived experience, and real community insights in their approach.

By combining research, storytelling, and direct community engagement, organisations can create meaningful dialogue that resonates. The most impactful engagement doesn’t come from top-down messaging, but from creating spaces where stakeholders feel heard, valued, and genuinely represented.

Michelle Newell is Membership Manager at CharityComms, where she leads the design and delivery of member experiences for charity communications professionals. With a strong focus on listening, iteration, and practical value, Michelle brings a grounded, member-led perspective on how professional communities evolve in the digital age.

For membership organisations, the challenge is relevance. Engaging charity communicators depends on whether members clearly see value in how programmes support their real-world challenges.

By listening to feedback and redesigning services like mentoring for digital delivery, CharityComms has created more accessible, flexible ways for members to connect. This approach improves speed, choice, and participation without losing the human element.

Ultimately, engaging charity communicators means building experiences where members give as much as they gain; strengthening community, capability, and long-term connection.

The strongest engagement doesn’t come from campaigns — it comes from experiences people believe in. creating engagement with impact starts when members feel proud enough to talk about what they’ve been part of.

Word of mouth is the real measure of success. When people share experiences publicly and bring others with them, it shows that creating engagement with impact has moved beyond messaging and into identity.

Designing for advocacy means focusing on moments people want to vouch for — not just attend.