Become a placement host

Overview

At On Purpose, we attract and develop talented professionals to help strengthen and scale organisations using commercial approaches to create positive social or environmental change.

Our leadership programme brings mid-career professionals into the impact space and supports them to develop rapidly by matching them with purpose-led organisations to do impactful work, and providing them with a sector-leading leadership & development programme, including training, mentoring and coaching.

As a placement host you work successively with two of our participants (Associates) for six months each over the one-year programme. Our Associates undertake a wide variety of work, from one-off projects to day-to-day business roles, and from strategy through impact management to marketing .

Benefits

Three reasons to host an Associate:

High calibre, purpose-driven talent at below market rates
Our Associates bring an average of 7-10 years of professional experience from diverse fields such as law, finance, marketing and more
Strengthen your impact
Accelerate important projects with Associates who are ready to hit the ground running, bringing the skills and ambition essential for systemic change
Join our community
Gain access to On Purpose's hive mind with the latest thinking and practices around systemic change, impact and leadership

What our placement hosts say

Who we work with

We work with a range of organisations including social enterprises, B Corps, social divisions of for-profit companies and commercially-minded charities. What we look for in a placement:

Combine commercial ways of working with social and/or environmental impact
We are less concerned with the type of organisation and focus more on the type of work and impact that Associates will deliver on their placement.
Appropriate level of challenge
Associates are bright, generalist problem-solvers that bring an average of 7-10 years work experience. We seek organisations that can provide projects with a level of challenge that befits this expertise.
Adds real value to your organisation
Our programme prepares Associates to lead in purpose-driven organisations and we look for placements where the work adds real value to the organisation.

How to become a Placement Host

We are always on the look-out for new and exciting organisations to work with. The Associate Programme runs over a calendar year and we work with two cohorts each year, one beginning in April and the other in October.

1. 1 Oct & Apr
  To secure a place as a placement host, arrange a call or a coffee using this link.
2. 2 Feb & Aug
  Our well-oiled matching process allocates you two skilled and motivated Associates, recruited by us via a rigorous application process.
3. 3 Apr & Oct
  Associates begin their first placement. They'll work with you for six months before the second placement begins with a new Associate.

Case studies

Big Society Capital

Big Society Capital has worked with every On Purpose cohort in London to date, with Associates working on a range of projects across the organisation.

As an Associate Tamer identified £300m of previously unrecognised financing for social sector organisations by conducting an analysis of the UK’s SME Finance Support Schemes and designed BSC’s internal social impact monitoring model and process.
Read more about Big Society Capital
Interface

Associates at Interface sit within the organisation's innovation team and have delivered on two major projects:

Associates have scoped, delivered and scaled Net-Works, a programme tackling the growing environmental problem of discarded fishing nets in some of the world’s poorest communities by buying and recycling nets into new yarn for the Interface supply chain.

More recently, Associates have worked on ReUse and ReEntry, a programme of work which prevented 2 million m2 of carpets going into landfill around the world in 2016 and 2017. Associates have built the UK network of partners and have explored and tested the RePurpose market, investigating how to use carpets to create other products and services as an outlet that not only diverts carpets from landfill but also from waste to energy.
Read more about Interface
Ben & Jerry's

Nadia, October 2014 Associate, managed a campaign across the five countries as part of the company's social mission and created a long-term strategy for the programme to scale social enterprises and drive innovation in the company.
Read more about Ben & Jerry's

Find out more

Find out more by reading our Placement Host Pack and get in touch to have a conversation with us.

Get in touch Download Placement Host Pack

“Bates Wells has now hosted several On Purpose Associates and our experience has exceeded my expectations. The Associates are intelligent, motivated, curious, confident self-starters, which means that they have adapted swiftly and flexibly into our work environment. They have each taken on a challenging project for us and helped deliver something valuable that moves us forward as a law firm and as a B Corp.”
Sally Procopis
COO of Bates Well, the UK's only B Corp law firm
“[Our Associate} was outstanding. The impact she was able to have in just six months was deeply impressive, especially given the complex content and mix of very senior clinicians and academics with whom she was working. She took something that was little more than an idea and turned it into a major programme of work with the potential for significant and lasting impact on population health.”
Prof. John Moxham
Director of Clinicial Strategy, King's Health Partners
“[Our Associate] has been simply outstanding working for Winnow. She led on important projects helping launch our large scale deployment internationally.”
David Jackson
Global Key Account Manager, Winnow

High calibre, purpose-driven talent at below market rates

Strengthen your impact

Join our community

What our placement hosts say

Combine commercial ways of working with social and/or environmental impact

Appropriate level of challenge

Adds real value to your organisation

Big Society Capital

Interface

Ben & Jerry's