Bertha Board Report April - August 2024

Over the past five years, the work of Bertha Foundation has shifted significantly.

Where in the past our primary work was once focused on grant making, the bulk of our budget, human resources and energy is now spent on developing, nurturing and running Bertha Fellowship and Spaces programs, and activating our network through convenings and funds. While, at heart, we remain a global program deeply committed to rooting out injustice and creating healthy systems of power, our tools for doing this have shifted. It is important for the Bertha board to understand this reframe, and so we are sharing some of our internal branding and communications guidelines to emphasize this shift.

As this shift has manifested, we have found a need to report differently on our impact. While previous reports focused on telling our stories of working with and enabling grantees, we are now hoping to showcase to the board the significant work that is being undertaken to run spaces, run fellowship programs and implement creative and enabling criteria for our internal funds and our gatherings. We look forward to sharing updates on our ongoing impact goals alongside our work to build serious and effective programs while having fun doing so.

This year we want to
Achieve Financial Sustainability and
Meet our Revenue Targets

Bertha Spaces achieves first quarter Objective Key Results!

Revenue budget targets have been achieved and exceeded during the first quarter (March-May 2024) of the financial year. During this period, income achieved is just over ZAR 1.6m / USD 87.5K and tracks well ahead of budget by 18.78%. This stems largely from Bertha Retreat accommodation income, as follows:

REVENUE: YTD ACT Vs BU25
REVENUE	Bertha House	Bertha Retreat	Total
Actual YTD	USD 24,889	USD 65,132	USD 90,020
Budget YTD	USD 26,474	USD 49,312	USD 75,786

REVENUE	Bertha House	Bertha Retreat
ACT - PROJECT REVENUE % CONTRIBUTION TOTAL REVENUE	28%	72%
BU25 - PROJECT REVENUE % CONTRIBUTION TOTAL REVENUE	35%	65%

At the beginning of 2024 the Spaces management team rolled out sales, marketing and communications tactics to achieve this. Sales activities involved researching and targeting organizations in the human rights sector that have not used the spaces before, and nurturing relationships with existing partners and users. This also meant team worked towards another key objective: to be the most well-known space in Cape Town, South Africa that provides platforms for activists and organizations working to make the world a more just place.

Sales Activations

The above is as a result of our outreach efforts, for which we set a target of reaching 100 foundations and organizations to increase bookings and occupancy at the Spaces. Through Open Days, speaking at festivals and events, meetings, calls and emails we have researched and connected with over 120 organizations.

Sales activation: Showcasing Bertha Spaces at theHuman Rights Festival in Johannesburg.

Outreach outcome: We spoke to and connected with 40 human rights and social justice organizations.

Sales Activation: Showcasing our purpose and products by bringing people and organizations into our Spaces on Open Sales Days.

Outreach outcome: Over 70 participants were brought into both the Bertha House and Bertha Retreat Spaces.

Our Confirmed Bookings

We have secured five paid bookings from the Open Sales Days. Additionally Thembela Ntongana, Bertha Spaces Communications Director, has been talking to and working with Bertha House users to encourage and entice them to use Bertha Retreat for team workshops or even youth camps.

Connecting with Bertha House users in this way has been successful in bringing them to the Bertha Retreat.

Black Girls Rising, a Bertha House tenant and partner for a year, used the Bertha Retreat to host their youth camp, which ran for five days with 33 young people in December 2023; they have since held another youth camp and staff workshop at Bertha Retreat.

Green Connection, a Bertha House tenant for the last year, ran their team building with 23 of their staff members for three days in October.

Sexual & Reproductive Justice Coalition, a Bertha House tenant, has also made a booking for three nights in August for 30 people.

Marketing promotions

In June we launched a sales and marketing "book three nights and get one night free" promotional campaign in celebration of Bertha Retreat's one-year anniversary. This campaign has been prominently featured on Daily Maverick, a South African online news platform, as well as in newsletters distributed by Cape Town Magazine, a leading lifestyle travel publication.

iMenstruate - an organization that is working to eradicate period poverty in South Africa through movement building, awareness raising, education, advocacy and direct service provision - spent seven days at Bertha Retreat in June and Somatic Circle Women’s Retreat, have also already taken advantage of this offer.

We are continuing to work on and improve our customer relationship management processes to engage and tailor our communications with future partners and clients to establish a positive pipeline of our bookings.

These efforts mark significant progress in our sales, marketing and communication strategies, positioning Bertha Spaces favourably for continued growth and engagement within our target markets.

THE BERTHA CHALLENGE

April to August 2024

In 2024 we're actively creating opportunities for Fellows and potential Fellows to utilize the Bertha network to strengthen their work

The BC team successfully launched and held three online Q&A application events, with alumni speakers sharing their experiences of the Bertha Challenge.

Applications for the 2025 Bertha Challenge opened on 31 May and closed on 12 July 2024. We received 224 applications from 111 journalists and 113 activists. This year, for the first time, we ran a series of three online information sessions for potential applicants and host organizations that took place during the application period. Our intention was to use this space to provide clarity on the application process and Fellowship requirements.

For each call the Bertha Challenge team were joined by two Bertha Challenge alumni:

AnuOluwapo Adelakun (journalist, 2022) and Tharma Pillai (activist, 2023),
Sara Manisera (journalist, 2023) and David Kabanda (activist, 2023),
Brezh Malaba (journalist, 2023) and Greta Rico (activist, 2023).

Alumni shared their experiences of the Bertha Challenge and were able to offer useful insights on how the Fellowship functions, including their relationships with their host organizations, the amplification of their work, making use of the Fellowship cohort and sticking to deadlines and deliverables as per the Fellowship requirements.

Each session was approximately 90 minutes, with most of that time dedicated for Alumni and the Challenge team to answer questions from call participants. The most common questions that came up in the sessions were around the role and expectations of host organizations and how applicants should calculate the financial award in the MoU document that accompanies the application form. The questions underlined for the Bertha Challenge team the importance of our financial oversight of applicants, for example, requiring proof of salary ask from successful applicants.

Takeup for the sessions was high, with a total of 163 attendees and 650 registrations across the three calls. Those who registered for the calls came from 72 different countries, with the greatest number of registrations from South Africa (46), Nigeria (32), Kenya (24) and Brazil (23). This correlates with the countries that we have received the highest number of applications from in previous years.

Despite receiving 41% more applications than last year, we received fewer email enquiries during the application period, suggesting that the calls provided an alternative platform to address queries and concerns about the Fellowship and the application process.

As we embark on the selection process, we will be looking at how many call attendees went on to apply for the Bertha Challenge. We will also be seeking feedback from shortlisted applicants on how useful they found these calls in putting their applications together. We hope that this information will help us to further refine the sessions for next year leading to stronger applications in the years to come.

We were proud to produce the first Bertha Challenge alumni newsletter. Its purpose is to amplify work and strengthen network visibility, highlighting continuing relationships between alumni.

The alumni newsletter was sent out to our 69-strong alumni and Fellow network in May. The newsletter was the result of feedback we received following the alumni convening in February 2023, where alumni requested opportunities to build on the connections across cohorts. It aims to provide a platform for sharing news and the various evolutions of Fellowship projects after the end of the Fellowship year, as well as profiling active connections between alumni who continue to make use of the Bertha Challenge network.

Our first newsletter featured 21 alumni. These Fellow updates included eight examples of continued collaboration between alumni/ Fellows, including through Connect Fund projects, trips or in-person meetings, mentoring and informal conversations about work.

Some updates shared during the information collection process were new to the Bertha Challenge team, for example:

David Kabanda

Filed and litigated three cases for women on land lost due to illegal evictions during his Fellowship year, and has since supported a further 62 community cases using a similar litigation model in the space of just five months since the end of his Fellowship.

(Activist, 2023, Uganda)

Fredrick Mugira

Was awarded a 2023 National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications for his Fellowship work on the impact of plastic pollution on lakes in Uganda.

(Journalist, 2022, Uganda)

Mike Snyder

Mike's photographs showing the expected sea rise levels on the Chesapeake Bay were included in the U.S.’s Fifth National Climate Assessment - the U.S.'s premiere scientific report on climate change - shared directly by the White House. He is now working with school and college groups around the Chesapeake Bay to create their own versions of his project.

(Journalist, 2021, U.S.)

This information collection process has also contributed to
our work under our objective to capture the ongoing impact
of Fellowship projects.

Read the Newsletter here.

THE BERTHA

ARTIVISM AWARDS

April to August 2024

We've been working to maintain engagement with Bertha Artivists and showcase the Artivism program approach

2024 Bertha Artivism Awards cohort

The 2024 Bertha Artivism cohort is now eight months into their Award year. To maintain engagement and keep up with their work Bertha’s Grants Manager, Sarah Terrazas, and Bertha House’s Narrative Justice Coordinator, Luvo Mnyobe, set out to check-in with each Artivist during this quarter. They met with 11 out of the 12 Bertha Artivists individually, building relationships and getting updates on the progression of their Artivism projects. Below are a few highlights from the meetings and their Bertha funded projects.

To continue to engage and build relationships with and between the Artivists, a second online convening for this year’s cohort is also being planned. This will take place in September or October 2024 and will be an opportunity to introduce them to the filmmaker who will be editing the videos that document their Artivism year.

Michael Jabareen and Ramez Melhem have completed selections from a global call for artists to participate in The Terminal, a 6-event series that will take place at BUFA, Berlin from July to August 2024. The Terminal showcases the work and experience of artists from migrant, refugee, marginalized and discriminated backgrounds who face hardships and difficulties in travelling from their current geographical locations to places with artistic production capacities and audience, and would like to showcase their artwork (including visual art, video, audio and performance). Two of the artists selected to participate are living in Gaza.

Fundacion Afrojuvenil Matamba and Posá Suto held a national call for applications for their Juntanza Marica Afrofuturista - a space for collective creation for black queer artists in Colombia. Twenty artists were selected and will participate in eight digital gatherings on a range of topics, from Afrofuturism to practical training on financial management and marketing.

DePART Collective’s Bertha Artivism Award centers on their exhibition If All Ears Could Hear - Romani Archives of Tomorrow’s Resistance_, which ran for eight weeks at Budapest Gallery from 14 February to 7 April and was accompanied by a range of workshops delivered in partnership with community organizations. They use the practice of “active remembrance” to make visible the history of the Roma during the Second World War and promote the exchange of ideas with and in Roma communities. Through a (de)Archiving lab, DePART created space to shed light on common needs, to take an active part in commemorating the past, and to lay the foundations for a future that is more resistant to forgetting, and thus to oppression.

Our 2023 Bertha Artivists

One of our key objectives for the Bertha Artivism awards is to showcase the program approach and highlight how activists can use the power of art to galvanise support and inspire action within communities. In order to do this, the program provides funding to Artivists on top of their award to document their process and achievements. Bertha contracts a filmmaker to compile this into a film that is placed on Bertha’s website, which Bertha Artivists can also use to further promote their work. This quarter’s key results included finalization of the 2023 Bertha Artivism Awards films, these have now been completed and are available on the Bertha website.

Info & Comms

Grants and Data Management

Staff understand and use data to inform program strategy development.

We are continuing our efforts to help staff understand and use data to inform program strategy development. The focus remained primarily on Bertha Spaces, since it is the program with by far the highest volume and complexity of data within Bertha. Sarah and Bertha’s Communications Manager, Sammy, worked with the Spaces team to finalize a new reporting framework which was launched in June (reporting on the month of May 2024) and focused on three out of the program’s five key objectives: achieve financial sustainability; grow Bertha Spaces into the go-to space for activism and community and manage and grow global programs.

Connected to the work on data strategy, Sarah travelled to Cape Town for two weeks in April to support the Bertha Spaces team with business process mapping and development of a ‘user journey.’ This captures the experience of Spaces users from when they first become aware of a Bertha Space, through to post-event engagement and cultivating repeat visits and referrals. The aim of this was to establish standard operating practices that streamline workflows for the busy Spaces team, and improve the overall experience of those using Bertha House and Bertha Retreat. Ultimately the objective is that by improving the ‘user journey’, we will encourage repeat visits to our spaces and support partnership development.

The visit culminated in a workshop for key Bertha Spaces staff, with a follow up action plan developed to monitor completion of the changes to the bookings system that were required to implement the ‘user journey’. These were launched in alignment with the launch of the new Bertha Spaces payment tiers and fee rates in June 2024.

BERTHA FUNDS

Bertha Impact Fund grants support urgent opportunities for social justice.

IMPACT FUND

One of the objectives for this quarter was to refresh the membership of the staff committee that reviews Bertha Impact Fund proposals, the aim being to deepen staff engagement with the fund and encourage cross-team working. As a result, this quarter Gavin and Pearlie joined Sarah on the committee. As signatory of the fund, Laura retains final sign off on proposals that have been approved. Impact Fund committee processes have also been updated this quarter to take into account this final level of sign off, whereby an application summary is prepared with a supporting statement from the Bertha staff advocate for the request. Impact Fund grants awarded this quarter included:

USD 9,530 for Bertha Challenge alumni Brezh Malaba, to build on the momentum of his Bertha Challenge project by supporting the creation of a blog, Food for Thought, as a platform for lively public discourse on food security and agriculture in Zimbabwe, amidst massive hunger in which eight million Zimbabweans face starvation. The project will involve training young journalists on food security and agriculture.

FILM FUND

The application form for the Bertha Film Fund has been reviewed and updated. So far in 2024 a total of USD 133k has been awarded including:

USD 25k for the production of Rebel Without Applause, an exploration of what drives everyday people to political radicalisation through the story of Fusako Shigenobu, leader of the leftist Japanese Red Army, who was considered a “rockstar” freedom fighter in the Middle East and a wanted terrorist everywhere else.

USD 12k for post-production of Disarming Memory, which tells the story of Paloma who, thirty years after being forced to leave her country due to her father’s dedication to justice and peace, returns to Colombia to reconcile with him.

Board Update - July 2024

It is quite hard to believe that we have just wrapped up our third year of delivering the Ambassadors programme. Our first year post pandemic consisted of 150 young people across 6 schools and now, at the close of our 2023 - 2024 academic year we have worked with over 330 young people across 13 schools.

Our vision and goal, as always, is to have refined our offer, developed our curriculum and built up a strong enough teacher training package that any school across the country is able to sign up to the programme, send their teachers off for training and deliver the Bertha Earth Ambassadors programme in their school, ideally as part of the school curriculum, something that is already happening for the first time this year.

However, before we properly share that news, we just wanted to take a moment at the beginning of this report to celebrate (one of our key principles!) everyone who has been involved in our biggest year so far!

Reach Academy on Retreat at Jamie’s Farm, Lewes

Reach Academy on Retreat at Jamie’s Farm, Lewes

In numbers, this academic year, we’ve delivered:

13 Launch Days to over 1400 young people
Nature Connect: Taken 310 young people out for the day, to connect with and learn about our natural world.
203 Year 7 & 8 Workshops
3 Pilot Storytelling Days with Central Film School
10 Feedback workshops
13 Residential Retreats with Jamie’s Farm
…and 13 Celebration Events!

(Some of our facilitators, teachers and partners at our July’s 2024 Partner Retreat, Bore Place)

(Some of our facilitators, teachers and partners at our July’s 2024 Partner Retreat, Bore Place)

In July we held our third Partner Retreat, the largest and longest we’ve ever done, at the new location of Bore Place in Sevenoaks, Kent. Across a 5-day residential, we trained new staff and new teacher-facilitators and welcomed all of our partners and school leads. This wonderful team effort was a truly ‘all hands on deck’ affair, seeing 24 bespoke training sessions being delivered by our team and some of our expert partners. Even though it was only last week, initial feedback has been very positive, scoring a 9.2/10 regarding participants rating their ‘overall experience of the training days’.

As we go into the Summer holidays, we have 19 cohorts in 16 schools signed up for next year’s programme, including a significant increase to 10 of our schools being a part of our teacher training programme. To be ready for this, we’ve got some very promising new facilitators who’ve completed their induction: Bekah, Rae and Jordan who will all join us in September in a freelance capacity.

We loved seeing Bertha Foundation’s Objective and Key Results table, and it sparked lots of ideas about how we could generate a similar way of tracking and monitoring our internal goals, especially those beyond our Ambassador programme.

Impact & Evaluation
In collaboration with the Centre for Youth Impact this year, we’ve also improved and developed our approach to evaluation. We’ve significantly increased the quantity and quality of our surveys and feedback sessions, collecting a great sample of:

155 Youth Engagement Surveys
262 Comparable Nature Connection Index (increase from 80)
262 pre and post programme questionnaires (increase from 110)

Using this data, we’ve been able to dive deeper into how well our programme outcomes are landing in schools. One such example from our evaluation demonstrates how well the programme encouraged young people to consider their interactions with others and support them in forming better connections. On average, there was a 12% increase from young people scoring themselves 7.4 to 8.4 out of 10. We’ve also begun to analyse this data at a school level for the first time (the bar graph below is an example of this). We will be further examining this over the summer break, and able to share our full annual impact report in Q4, so watch this space!

In addition, we’ve received some wonderful qualitative data from this year’s ambassadors, sharing their reflections on the programme. Here’s a couple of examples:

In the marketing space, we’ve taken some time to crystalise the strategy behind Marketing ready for the year ahead. After some reflection on what’s worked so far and a reminder of our wider theory of change, we’ve agreed on the following goals to drive our marketing activity:

More joined-up storytelling - Moving to showing transformation rather than just capturing what’s happening.

Distilling our brand - Bringing the same Bertha Earthness to all our different spaces and making it feel cohesive.

Showing everyone who we are - Communicating the very special culture, ethos and vision that most people don’t get to see.

In the vein of showing everyone who we are, Damien and Harry have also been spearheading the drive to increase our online engagement through organic posting, with great results! Here’s a snapshot of the growth over April-June:

Exciting news!
We are finally really excited to share that we now have two schools (Reach Academy and School 21), who we will be piloting working with the whole year group, not just one class. Sam, one of our facilitators, will lead this new approach, and it will be an excellent opportunity to learn how we can embed ourselves even more in a partner school (Tony’s Trojan Horse!) and get closer to our vision of every school delivering the Ambassadors programme as a part of their year 7 curriculum. We still have a long way to go, but this is an exciting step in the right direction.

Bertha
Foundation
in 2024

April to July