Spring Impact Spring Impact

Social Impact at Scale

Spring Impact Spring Impact

Can you scale impact without being everywhere?

How we helped School Food Matters as they pivoted from direct delivery to reaching hundreds of schools at once – and secured two years of funding to prove the model.

Lean Testing | Scale Strategy | Scale Model | Education | UK

School Food Matters (SFM) is a UK-based charity that believes every child should enjoy nutritious and delicious meals at school, and leave with an informed and positive relationship with food. Since 2012, its programmes have benefitted 300,000+ children – pairing practical food education and school food improvement with advocacy for better school meals.

But despite its success, SFM is still only reaching a fraction of the children across the country who suffer the consequences of a broken school food system where funding, quality, and access are inconsistent.

Challenge

Despite significant school-level impact through their flagship programme, Nourish, SFM’s proven model was primarily focused on direct, bespoke school transformation within London. 

To create change at scale, SFM needed a strategic shift: one that could both expand their reach across the country, and unlock the resources to reach hundreds of schools at once.

They worked with us to move from “How do we help more schools?” to “How do we enable the key system drivers to help multiple schools in an area or network?”

“ Spring Impact has skillfully moved team School Food Matters from bold ambitions for scale to an action plan to maximise impact. They made a complex task feel easy and I would highly recommend them.”

— Stephanie Slater MBE, Founder/Chief Executive

OUR PROCESS

Guiding School Food Matters through the strategic and operational shifts needed to reach hundreds of schools at once

1. Pivoting from depth to breadth

Workshops and research revealed that scaling Nourish alone – their intensive school-level intervention – wouldn’t achieve the impact needed. The team pivoted its focus towards a comprehensive offering for Local Authorities/Multi-Academy Trusts that could improve school food across entire regions – not just individual schools.

This strategic shift unlocked a pathway to impact at true scale, positioning SFM to work across the country without having to go to children in communities they could never physically serve directly.

2. Standardising for scale without losing impact

School Food Matters has refined its Nourish programme from bespoke, individual school engagement to cohort-based delivery with standardised components – including role-specific training, structured engagement waves, and adaptable tracks.

This will allow the programme to be delivered at scale beyond SFM’s current capacity – whether through SFM staff or trained partners – while maintaining quality.

3. Creating a flexible local authority offering

The team developed four levels of support: from light-touch consultancy helping authorities diagnose issues and create action plans, through to full delivery and training support for implementation, plus standalone services that authorities could commission independently.

This allows local authorities to engage based on their readiness, resources and needs, removing barriers to partnership and creating multiple entry points for collaboration.

4. Defining the right partners and partnership model

The team identified what partners would truly add value, and created clear criteria for ideal local authority partners – considering leadership commitment, operational readiness, policy alignment and ethical standards.

This clarity on partnership expectations and value proposition reduces risk and creates conditions for successful, sustainable implementation.

5. Identifying what needed validation

We mapped out critical assumptions underpinning each model. Would a market exist for school food consultancy? Would local authorities pay for these services? Could quality be maintained through partners? Who are the right partners to work with?

This created a focused testing agenda and strengthened their funding proposals, securing a grant to test different models, rather than scale blindly.

OUTCOMES

New funding secured: Our scale support was influential in helping SFM to secure two years of funding to test and refine the model.

Strategic pivot: SFM reoriented from bespoke school-by-school work to a systems-level model, with Local Authorities (LAs) and Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) as the unit of change.

Identifying potential pathways to impact at scale: Together, we developed three scale models with a structured testing plan to validate demand, delivery and sustainability: 

  • strategic partnerships, delivering consultancy nationally with local partners
  • cascade model, training local authority staff to deliver its interventions
  • branching model, employing regional project officers on fixed-term contracts

Team alignment: Aligned the organisation on an audacious goal to work with 100 LAs/MATs by 2035 – positioning SFM to impact millions of children, far beyond the 300,000 already reached since 2012.

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