Business partnerships - Become a Placement Host | On Purpose

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

Interested in hosting an Associate?

Join our network of purpose-driven organisations shaping the leaders of tomorrow. Register your interest to explore how hosting an On Purpose Associate can add value to your team and help drive your mission forward.

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.

Timelines

We're always on the look-out for new and exciting organisations to work with. The year-long Programme runs with two cohorts annually, one beginning in April and the other in October. To secure Associates from our next cohort:

1. 1 Now
  Book a call with us here.
2. 2 March 2025
  Matching process
3. 3 April 2025
  First placement starts

Case studies

Better Society Capital

Better 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 Better 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

How to become a placement host

Find out more by reading our Placement Host Pack and register your interest to have a conversation with us.

FAQs

Placement Host FAQs

How much will it cost us?

Placements pay their Associates’ salaries (£27,010 on a pro rata basis for c.12 months), and a one-off introduction fee to On Purpose before the start of the programme (between £9,000 and £19,000 depending on the size and legal structure of the organisation).

If placements end up hiring an Associate full-time after the programme, they pay On Purpose a finder’s fee of between £9,000 and £16,500.

Why should I not just recruit someone as usual?

Put simply, because On Purpose Associates are exceptional. We spend a large amount of time attracting and selecting Associates from a large pool of potential applicants. They are always talented and motivated, with proven professional track records. Most of the time, they take a sizeable pay cut to be part of the programme.

In addition, as part of the On Purpose Programme, the Associates have access to a large and valuable support network, which means that they can start adding value to their placement organisations more quickly than a typical employee starting out.

Finally, we minimise the time and effort otherwise involved in recruiting high calibre employees or volunteers.

What do the Associates normally do?

Associates spend 4.5 days a week at their placement host. Every placement has a clear social or environmental purpose, as well as a commercial aspect. They interact with senior executives, contribute to both short and longer term projects, and quickly integrate into a placement host’s team.

Examples of previous placements:

Working on the business strategy for Mental Health First Aid England, to help them respond to a rapid increase in demand for their services
Developing a new Social Mission for the Ben & Jerry’s European Team
Designing a social impact measurement and management framework for Esmee Fairbairn
Running M&S through Oxfam’s Behind the Brands framework, which assesses the social and environmental policies and impacts of the world’s largest food and beverage companies

We are a charity/commercial business/public sector organisation. Can we still be a placement host?

Yes, many of our past and current placement hosts are traditional charities or commercial businesses.

However, the work On Purpose Associates do must combine social and environmental objectives with commercial ways of working.

This could, for example in a charity, be developing new earned revenue streams, or in a commercial business, improving environmental sustainability in supply chains, or providing services to otherwise excluded groups in the style of microfinance.

I need someone with a particular skill set, can you guarantee that?

No, we provide motivated and bright generalists. Many of them will have relevant skill sets that will be applicable to your placement and we will take this into account when matching Associates to placements, but we cannot guarantee a particular area of expertise. There is more information on how we match placements and Associates here.

“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

Better Society Capital

Interface

Ben & Jerry's