Susannah Hardyman reflects on her journey from founding Action Tutoring to leading Impetus, sharing how charities can move from helping thousands to shaping systems that support millions, by engaging with policy and building coalitions.
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Most of us join the charity sector because we want to make a difference. It’s a powerful feeling: I’ll never forget what it’s like to see a pupil you’ve tutored secure the GCSEs that will unlock their future, setting them on the path to further education, employment, or training, and a fulfilling life.

I founded Action Tutoring, a tutoring charity for young people facing disadvantage, to create more of those moments. I watched it grow from a South London start-up run by a volunteer team to a nationwide organisation serving more than 6,000 young people per year.

But even with good growth, no single organisation can solve systemic problems. Government policy on the other hand – that can reach millions.

The third sector is ideally placed to demonstrate to government what works, detailing the precise barriers facing young people and the interventions that can effectively overcome them. If a charity wants to improve outcomes for all young people regardless of background, engaging with policy isn’t optional – at some point, it becomes integral to achieving our mission.

My advocacy journey began at Action Tutoring but expanded when I became CEO of Impetus, Action Tutoring’s longest-term funder. Just last month, I spoke on a panel at Labour Party Conference about the attendance crisis in England’s schools, alongside Helen Hayes MP, Chair of the Education Select Committee, whom I first met when she visited an Action Tutoring programme in 2018. As well as highlighting Impetus’ new research with Public First on the drivers of school absence, the panel offered policymakers tangible, evidence-based insights from some of the incredible organisations in Impetus’ portfolio which are working to tackle this issue.

As CEO of an impact funder, I get to see pioneering non-profits giving young people the support they need to succeed, even with odds stacked against them.

Impetus’ partners work with young people at every stage in the journey from school to work, so we see how disadvantage compounds disadvantage across a young person’s life.

Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are twice as likely to be persistently absent from school and five times more likely to be permanently excluded. If they're not in school, they cannot learn, which risks holding back a group of young people that are already 40% less likely to pass GCSE English and maths than their better-off peers. And without GCSEs, young people are twice as likely to be neither earning nor learning in adulthood.

But these outcomes are not inevitable – there are countless examples of third sector organisations that have broken this cycle. They have honed their interventions, built an evidence base, and developed solutions. It’s crucial these insights reach key decision-makers.

Unfortunately, it’s rarely as easy as waiting for the Government to knock. The onus is on us to start the conversation.

At Action Tutoring, we started small and local. We invited MPs to visit our programmes in their constituencies, asked them to share our call for volunteer tutors, and requested introductions to local schools.

Building these relationships meant we were top of mind when they needed expertise: at the beginning of the pandemic, Action Tutoring was invited to give evidence to the Education Select Committee, and we later became a founding delivery organisation for the Government’s original pandemic catch-up plan, The National Tutoring Programme (NTP). Then, as the NTP got under way, a coalition of tutoring organisations came together to influence the shape of the programme and to campaign for its extension.

We learned how we could help each other – collaboration spurs better ideas and increases our collective influence.

For example, the Who Is Losing Learning Coalition, comprised of Impetus, The Difference, IPPR, and Mission 44, worked together to research the post-pandemic rise in absences and exclusions, drawing on insights from across the sector to develop solutions. Now, over 30 organisations have joined forces to back our call for Inclusion for All – asking Government to prioritise early identification, prevention, and support in their upcoming Schools White Paper.

Charities are a powerful voice in the policy sphere, but this journey to influence takes time. To become a trusted partner to policymakers, a charity must first develop an evidence base and prove their impact – no easy feat in itself. But in the long term, policy work is how charities can go from making a difference for a few thousand young people, to transforming the system for millions.

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