Hi, it's Dan here.
How user-led is your organisation?
For the last few years I’ve been lucky enough to work as a trustee with a London charity called Unfold.
Unfold is a mentoring-based charity, helping those who face the most challenges get where they want to be.
I’ve learned huge amounts.
I’ve learned about what brings people to the UK and about what it takes to get up on your feet as an asylum seeker - into our healthcare system, into housing, into schools.
I’ve learned about the power of community and peer support groups.
I’ve learned about how charities work - and the commitment and talent of those who work in this sector.
Most of all though, I’ve learned about listening. Really listening.
Unfold has a fabulous CEO and she has driven a compelling vision for growth, such that we now help ten times more people than three years ago.
This vision is built upon a conviction that Unfold should listen to and be led by the people it serves.
We have therefore established both a Youth Advisory Council (YAC) and a Women’s Advisory Council (WAC) made up of volunteers from among our service users. These groups meet with the Operational team and with the Board multiple times a year. The sessions have been designed to enable feedback from our users on what they see as the most pressing needs for Unfold to address.
And it is now part of the Unfold constitution that both the Operational team and the Board are answerable to the needs of the WAC & the YAC. It’s become a requirement of our governance.
As marketers, we often talk about the importance of remaining anchored off the needs of our audiences - as a path to better product, better communications. And these days AI is enabling us to access these needs at previously unimaginable scale and speed. (BeenThereDoneThat has been working with an expert partner in the AI space on a concept called The Billion Person Focus Group - which tells its own story.)
However what if we, as marketers, radically committed to being user-led?
Not just as a tool for insight, but as a principle for governance.
What would that look like?
It's striking that while countless brands talk about being user-centric, almost none have taken the step of embedding users into their actual governance. In my time on the Dove business under Steve Miles, there were serious conversations about introducing young women into the governance model. But even Dove and the likes of Patagonia who are lauded for their progressive approaches haven't gone this far.
We've seen attempts: Facebook's much-publicized Oversight Board was created to give users a voice in content decisions, but without genuine power to influence platform governance, it became a fig leaf for business as usual. We've become skilled at gathering user feedback, at co-creation, at community engagement. But giving users genuine power? Not so much.
Of course, there are good reasons why. User-led governance is complex. It slows things down. It challenges established power structures. It requires genuine commitment to hearing difficult truths. And it demands that leadership teams are prepared to share control - perhaps the hardest ask of all.
But what if we went further anyway? What if a brand was genuinely accountable to its users - not just through focus groups or customer panels, but through constitutional governance? Where advisory councils had real power to shape direction and strategy. Where users weren't just consulted, but were decision-makers.
It might seem radical. But radical is a powerful point of difference. Just ask the young people and women who are helping shape Unfold's future - if you want to understand someone's needs, start by giving them a seat at the table.
The rest tends to follow.
Dan Gibson
Managing Director at BeenThereDoneThat
Further reading:
For more information on Unfold’s work and how to volunteer as a mentor, please see here.
