Uniform growth strategy: Lindsay Levkoff Lynn, Youth United Foundation chief executive

Last December, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles proclaimed his department's funding for uniformed youth groups as "the best £10m I ever spent".

Pickles made his comments at an event celebrating the achievements of charity Youth United Foundation, which by delivering 627 new uniformed youth groups in deprived areas had smashed its target of creating 400 by December 2014.

But surpassing the department's or Secretary of State's expectations for the work - known as the Supporting Inclusion Programme -was not the main measures of success for Lindsay Levkoff Lynn, the recently appointed chief executive of the foundation.

"The best day of the job so far was when we got back the data on sustainability because for me that is the key," says Levkoff Lynn, who took over the top job last November from interim chief Rosie Thomas. What that data showed was that 90 per cent of the new "units" created under the three-year programme are still running.

"You want a unit to run more than a year to prove its sustainability," Levkoff Lynn adds in her Tennessee drawl.

The foundation was established in 2012 by the Youth United network - 10 uniformed youth charities including The Scout Association, Girlguiding, Army Cadet Force, Sea Cadets, Girls' Brigade, Volunteer Police Cadets, Air Training Corps, Fire Cadets, Boys' Brigade and St John Ambulance - to oversee the distribution of £10m of Department for Communities and Local Government funding to increase the number of adult volunteers and young people engaged in 10 deprived communities across England. It does this by funding a "seed and support phase" of three-to-six months that sees a worker establish a new group, recruit and train volunteers and support them to become self-sustaining.

Its role was strengthened further in 2014 when it took on the running of the Cabinet Office's Uniformed Youth Social Action Fund, created to distribute to uniformed youth groups Libor fines taken from the banks.

The move gave the foundation a UK-wide reach enabling it to support four new organisations - Woodcraft Folk, Jewish Lads' & Girls' Brigade, Catholic Guides of Northern Ireland, and the Church Lads' & Church Girls' Brigade - and extended into exclusions and youth offending the types of issues it covers.

Of the new organisations supported, Levkoff Lynn says: "They operate similar models - they are volunteer driven and run, and progressive."

While she says other organisations that meet these requirements may be supported in the future, "I don't think we'll ever have hundreds of members".

The Libor funding is set to end in March 2016, by which time Levkoff Lynn predicts the foundation will have funded work by network organisations that engaged 38,000 additional young people. Again, this represents overachievement - its target was to reach 40,000 young people by 2020.

Highly praised volunteers

Levkoff Lynn attributes Youth United's success to its "fabulous" volunteers - "they are the lifeblood of making this sustained" - and its ability to take a more strategic approach to identifying growth opportunities.

"If you think of the Scouts, they would have traditionally grown organically. So, for example, they may have gone to a town nearby or established a younger unit where they had an older unit.

"We took the data for all 10 organisations and mapped it out across the country, figured out where there is not enough provision, and then said 'lets go to those areas and recruit volunteers'."

The foundation also helped the network members come up with creative ways to raise awareness of the benefits of their organisations, such as by arranging taster days at schools.

"The network found activities where you invite children and parents along together were successful," explains Levkoff Lynn. "The kids are having a good time, so you can talk to the parents about having this in their community - this is what the commitment would be, this is what it would look like, this is how we would help you with training.

"When you have a brilliant offer for young people, we found people stepped up."

Youth United has a duel role by being a funder and support delivery organisation. For the former, it has an open bidding process for various pots of cash that members of the network and other uniformed groups can bid for. But it is describing its support role when Levkoff Lynn really comes alive.

"We're not an umbrella organisation - we don't speak on their behalf. We don't sit above them - it's almost the other way around. We make sure they are fed and supported," she says.

"Over the next two months we will be bringing the organisations together and asking for all the data they have - none of us has a perfect picture of impact, I'm very excited about that - I don't think anyone has pulled together the small amounts of data that each has."

Another service developed by the foundation for use by the network and which illustrates its business support functions is the geographic mapping tool. This charts all the uniformed youth group units across the country so that network members can be more strategic in how they develop their own expansion plans.

Levkoff Lynn explains: "When they are looking where to grow, instead of saying 'I'm here, but I'm not there', they can say 'well actually others are there so why don't I go to this location because there's nothing there serving young people'.

"It is in the interest of all of them to have that data, but it's not in the interest of all of them to be gathering and managing it. That is where the collaboration hub is really helpful."

Levkoff Lynn says the very fact "10 of the biggest youth organisations have come to the table to work together" was the reason she took the job. But the organisations in the network are still separate entities and she admits it has taken some time for collaboration to fully flourish.

"For the first few years, from what I was told, it was a bit like 'we'll come because we've been asked to come'. It took some time. Now there are really strong relationships. They are saying they would want Youth United, both the network and foundation, to continue even if there wasn't the money. That doesn't happen in this sector every day."

Levkoff Lynn meets the network member's chief executives four times a year and holds monthly meetings at project level. She also refutes any suggestions that competition for volunteers or service 'territory' between uniformed youth groups should act as a barrier to partnership working in the sector.

"Just 10 per cent of the young people that could be involved in an organisation because they are the right age actually are. I don't know what market penetration should be - it's never going to be 100 per cent - but it surely is more than 10 per cent."

Levkoff Lynn, who has spent much of the past decade living and working in the UK and achieved British citizenship last month, attributes her passion for the uniformed youth movement to her time as a Girl Scout during her childhood in the US. "It taught me to leave everywhere better than when you found it. It's a bit cheesy, but that became my ethos."

Additional places

On the future, Youth United is close to finalising its targets for the next five years, with Levkoff Lynn expecting the network to aim for creating a further 40,000 additional places for young people by 2020. Future funding is also on the agenda, and she is already "optimistic" even though "we're at the beginning of that journey".

The charity has also recently "dabbled" with working with a council (Hackney) to help create new uniformed groups there, although Levkoff Lynn is still assessing how Youth United adds value in such arrangements. Instead, she wants to help the network members make the most difference they can for young people.

"We will never be a consumer brand. I've no interest in us being a helpful middle man, in empire building. I'm interested in getting lots of money for our network organisations. Our helpful role is in raising that awareness, getting that money for our network and managing that process well. We have got to be careful we don't become an extra cost layer for the sector - I've a strong moral conviction on that."

LINDSAY LEVKOFF LYNN CV

• November 2014 Chief executive, Youth United Foundation
• April 2013 Head of impact, Centre for Social Action Innovation Fund, Nesta
• November 2011 Head of fundraising, The Challenge Network
• 2009 Consultant, Bain & Company
• 2007-09 MBA, Harvard Business School
• 2002-04 Master of philosophy and politics, University of Oxford
• 1998-02 BA political science, University of Tennessee-Knoxville