In June, we held our first in person event at the RAF Club in London where we brought together Lightning Reach partners and key voices from across the sector for a day of discussions and networking, centred on the theme of Delivering impact through cross-sector support.
You can see a full breakdown of the agenda and watch recordings of the speeches and panel discussions here.
We kicked off with a welcome from Air Commodore Simon Harper OBE from RAF Benevolent Fund who gave some background on RAFBF, the challenges they have in finding and supporting beneficiaries and how Lightning Reach has helped. Simon spoke to the importance of adapting to a digital world and set the scene by asking: “What is important is that we don’t just sit back on an old model, but we continue to ask is this the best way for our services to be accessed?”
Lord Bird then took to the stage for frank and humorous reflection on his lived experiences of poverty and journey to setting up The Big Issue Group. Lord Bird went on to talk about his work to dismantle poverty in the House of Lords and highlighted the stark fact that poverty costs 40% of the Government’s budget. Read more about Lord Bird’s mission to create the Ministry of Poverty Prevention.
Donal Watkin, Chief Executive of the Association for Charitable Organisations, chaired our panel discussion, with Lightning Reach partners from Lambeth Council, the Royal British Legion, TSB and PA Housing representing different sectors. The panel reflected on key challenges including complexity of the financial support landscape, digital barriers and aligning internal stakeholders. It was fantastic to hear the ways in which the Lightning Reach portal has made a difference, from engaging hard to reach beneficiaries and personalising support - to saving staff time with open banking facilitating collection of financial evidence.
In our lived experience interview, Lightning Reach user Luke and Lewis Gabrielsen from Torus Foundation gave a powerful account of their firsthand experiences with the portal. Luke explained his initial barriers to finding support while street homeless with a pregnant wife: "Being a male and being in the military, you don't ask for help, you are the help". Luke went on to say that the Lightning Reach portal took away the fear and the stigma of finding support, and reduced the back and forth he had previously experienced with charities.
What else did we learn?

Image: responses from guests who were asked “Where do you most struggle in providing the best support to your customers?”
Breakout sessions revealed that there are common challenges felt by organisations across different sectors. Some of the most common issues were reported as:
How to handle more complex cases or those in crisis
Sharing data with other organisations to provide holistic solutions
Limited capacity and resource
Addressing stigma and increasing engagement
As discussions turned to how to overcome these challenges and provide more impactful support, lots of constructive suggestions came up. These ranged from fostering partnerships to provide holistic support, using standardised and flexible processes to collect and share data, and leveraging proactive communication to improve engagement before people go into crisis. Encouragingly, some of these solutions are already underway.
Finally, Sara Weller reflected on how to leverage technology to bring the strands of support into one place for individuals. She explained that tools like Lightning Reach which put the user first and integrate into systems and processes will be key to solving this problem. Sara’s vision of the future is that “people in need will end up with greater financial stability, more confidence, and the ability to make sense of the rest of their life, in which finances are the bedrock.”
What next?
Discussions and idea generation is an encouraging start, but we all know that the key to making change is action. Over the coming months, at Lightning Reach we will be working with our partners to draw out key actions that we can take forward as part of our product and service. Our first focus will be to use elements of these ideas to design a campaign to encourage uptake and access to winter schemes. We are keen to bring our partners on board with this, so we will be reaching out to gauge interest in the coming weeks.
As well as doing our part, we encourage you to continue these discussions and question what you and your organisation can do to turn these ideas into action. We are delighted to hear that useful connections and collaborations have already started to emerge following the event, and would love to see this continue. As always, we are happy to discuss any ideas you may have or connect you to others in the network.
Feedback & resources
See our photo gallery [External] Event photos
View videos of the day https://www.lightningreach.org/milestone-event-agenda
Please read a special message from Lord Bird. Link: John Bird Message.pdf
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