From Pilot to Scale: What TOC Learned Through Active Futures

Between March and May, TOC took part in a series of online training sessions, peer-learning calls and impact-planning workshops as part of Active Futures, focused on one central question: how do we move from delivering brilliant individual sessions to building a genuinely sustainable programme?

For an organisation like TOC, ‘scaling up’ doesn’t just mean reaching more young people, although that matters too. Through the workshops, we’ve come to think about it differently: as building more frequent, more consistent activity, deeper relationships with the young people who keep coming back, and a stronger sense that TOC is somewhere they belong, not just somewhere they visit once.

Peer learning with other youth organisations facing similar challenges was, honestly, one of the most useful parts of the process. Hearing how other small organisations have navigated the same tension between growth and quality gave us practical ideas we’re already testing, from how we structure sessions to how far ahead we plan our calendar.

Active Futures has pushed us to think beyond the next session and towards what a stronger, more sustainable TOC looks like over the next few years, and we’re grateful for the space to do that thinking properly.