Having worked at The Grants Hub in various roles since 2016, I’ve decided to call it time. I’m excited for my own next chapter, and will keep cheering on the TGH team and community from the sidelines.
It’s always a difficult decision to finish up at an organisation, especially one that serves so many inspirational members doing amazing things across the country.
Throughout my journey, there are a few learnings from my experience at this customer focused business that I wanted to share.
Start with the problem
People come to The Grants Hub with a problem, and it’s simply our job to understand that as best as we can.
Funding can be hard to navigate at the best of times; while we have always aimed to provide easier access to grant information, we know that navigating applications and waiting for a response can be a challenging and disheartening game.
Understanding common grant-seeking challenges and using this to inform new features and services has been crucial to our success, and I believe this approach is crucial regardless of your field.
Humility leads to headway
In my experience, teams work best when they can put their ideas and opinions on the table flexibly, humbly focusing on the greater cause.
This can be a difficult to get right - it’s easy for opinions, egos, or agendas to get in the road. But I’ve seen that humility provides a team with one of the greatest opportunities to find practical solutions to people’s problems.
Tech is amazing, humans are better
We’ve always had a general philosophy at The Grants Hub - allow tech to do what humans can’t, enabling humans to do what they do better.
Technology is great - The Grants Hub wouldn’t exist without it, but we all have a deep need for connection. For the most part, we want to understand and solve problems together. We want to be listened to… heard. I’ve valued hearing firsthand members' inspirational and heartbreaking stories on the front line.
Technology in our day and age is amazing, but humans trump it, every day of the week.
Values drive culture
I was lucky enough to have heavy input into the establishment and delivery of The Grants Hub’s values from the get-go. Building a values-driven culture is a huge passion of mine. I truly believe values allow us to create, shape and drive the culture of a business.
The challenge is the same for all organisations - our values need to be deeply engrained into the very fabric of our operations; values cannot just be words on paper collecting dust.
With a strong buy-in from employees, I’ve seen firsthand the difference that shared values make to a healthy culture. I’ve especially loved seeing our employees add their flavour to each of our values - this provides the ultimate glue and adds a uniqueness that sets us apart from anything else. I love that.
As for what’s next, I will be investing more time in my newly formed venture, Tomorrow Mind, helping demystify mental health and providing practical tools and resources for mental well-being. As a teacher and with children of my own, I’m particularly passionate about the education sector. With lived experience, along with a number of connections I’m lucky enough to have, I feel it’s time to roll up my sleeves and pour energy into this field. If you work within this space, I would absolutely love to hear from you - we have a monumental battle on our hands, one we need to navigate collectively.
To all of our amazing members and the team at The Grants Hub, thanks for all of your individual efforts in making our world a better place!
Justin