This article is the third in our series on making strategy in social progress organisations.

Transparency International has been leading the global fight against corruption for the past 26 years. To continue to do so in the future, it is now looking at upcoming challenges and opportunities.

An international conference, now in its 43rd year and rotating to Bratislava, chose this theme and we’ll be sharing our thoughts about it at the conference on Thursday.

The world is changing fast, fundamental assumptions are being challenged, uncertainty is high and many describe tougher market conditions. Traditional strategic plans and tools are not helping them to address these issues.

At Firetail, we spend a lot of time thinking about how organisations interested in social progress should think about ‘strategy’.

Earlier this month the Royal Society of Chemistry published new research that shows why talented women are leaving careers in the chemical sciences before they reach their full potential.

Everyone knows mergers in the charity sector are rare. There are 168,000 charities in England and Wales, yet in the last year there were fewer than a hundred mergers. Firetail surveyed 39 Charity Chief Executives and senior leaders from across our network to understand why. We wanted to get a sense of why there are so few mergers in the sector.

Universities are often told by outsiders that they should go and learn lessons from business. They are almost never encouraged to learn from the experience of charities.

In the summer, we decided to rebrand Firetail, in order to refresh the way we talk about our work, showcase some of our incredible clients and introduce our great team.

After working closely with Cancer Research UK on their World Cancer Day initiative, Firetail published an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Philanthropic organisations are increasingly measuring the impact of their programmes, and tools and methodologies for measuring impact are developed and improved continuously.

In 2015 the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, an independent UK body that examines and reports on ethical issues in biology and medicine, commissioned Firetail to evaluate how successful the Council had been in meeting its strategic objectives.

Firetail has a long-term relationship with Agriculture for Impact (now Malabo Montpellier Panel), an independent advocacy initiative.

One of our clients includes the Public Service Broadcast Trust, for whom we conducted a strategic evaluation of Fixers, a programme that helps young people run their own social action projects.

Firetail has delivered several evaluations of the Migration Observatory, a research organisation based at the University of Oxford.

As academics think about impact, they can draw on some of the lessons and strategic approaches used by civil society and campaigning groups.

The Strategic Legal Fund supports strategic legal work which benefits vulnerable young migrants.