Every year, for one intense week, the theoretical world of boardrooms and balance sheets collides with raw reality as Henley MBA students descend on Cape Town for the annual Reputation and Responsibility module.
‘It’s a frenetic few days and nobody comes out of the experience unchanged,’ says Professor Kevin Money, who heads up the John Madjeski Centre for Reputation (JMCR) at Henley Business School and leads the immersion.
As Money explains, the students are not there to observe, they are thrown into the deep end, surveying stakeholders, dissecting reputational risks, and building concrete strategies to unlock massive organisational impact.
‘This high-octane week requires students to gather rapid feedback, think on their feet, and deliver actionable blueprints so NPOs can win greater stakeholder support,’ says Money. ‘The NPOs walk away with sharp business insights to build more sustainable operations, while the students undergo a profound shift, experiencing the incredible energy and purpose of teams that achieve staggering results on a shoestring budget.
‘I don’t think any other MBA programme globally is able to match the experience we provide our students, nor the impact we’re helping to create on the ground,’ says Prof Money.
In almost 20 years of running the programme, more than 120 organisations and more than 700 students have benefited from this unique value exchange. This Mandela Day, we are celebrating the stories of just three of them: The Peninsula School Feeding Association, The Colleges of Medicine of South Africa, and Badisa.
For almost seven decades, the Peninsula School Feeding Association (PSFA) has fed hundreds of thousands of children across the Western Cape. Based on the simple but urgent truth that a hungry child cannot learn, the organisation feeds two hot, cooked meals a day during term time to 33,100 children across 138 schools, 235 early childhood development centres, six TVET colleges and three orphaned and vulnerable children’s programmes.
In 2022, after a challenging decade that had seen the organisation lose a government contract that kick-started a long process of reinvention that allowed it to grow its footprint and impact, the PFSA participated in the Henley immersion.
‘The timing of the Henley intervention couldn’t have been better,’ says Petrina Pakoe, Director of the PFSA. ‘They found an organisation with a strong reputation but some key vulnerabilities, and they were able to help us focus on what needed attention most urgently.’
The MBA team’s research focussed on stakeholder trust, sustainability risk, organisational alignment, and new avenues for growth, drawing up a five-year plan for the PFSA that would see it diversify its income streams, offload resource-intensive storage, and boost internal governance and performance – all while improving its service delivery.
‘The team developed a roadmap centred on three key themes,’ says Pakoe. ‘Growth, employee engagement, and operational excellence. It was a five-year plan. But we managed to implement it in just three years!’
Acting on the insights provided by the MBA team, the PFSA leveraged its recently launched subsidiary, Wholesome Supply Trading Pty Ltd, to take over some of the logistics of its operations, which has helped boost its investment income and expand its offering.
In 2025, these efforts were recognised with an Innovation Award for excellence from the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry. And the awards didn’t stop there. The PFSA also won a digital marketing award after following the MBA team’s guidance on how to improve its messaging and create online campaigns, helping it to strengthen its relationships with its donors and the wider community.
Today, PSFA and its subsidiary collectively support hundreds of institutions and millions of meals annually. PSFA alone now delivers more than 12.5 million meals a year and raises R31.5 million annually, while Wholesome Supply Trading supports nearly 30,000 learners and has created a number of employment opportunities.
‘We still keep in mind what the Henley team helped us learn. Which is that evidence strengthens courage, trust must be built before it’s needed, governance protects missions, and that institutions must outlive individuals. We are here to serve,’ says Pakoe.
The Colleges of Medicine South Africa (CMSA) has also been around for 70 years. It’s trusted, technically strong, and as the national custodian of postgraduate medical and dental specialist examinations, it is integral to the South African healthcare system.
But when Jerome Davies CA(SA) and the CMSA leadership team engaged with the Henley MBA team in 2023, they had to make an uncomfortable admission: although the institution had achieved so much, people just weren’t engaging with it, it was unclear what members and stakeholders really wanted. The CMSA had 24,000 members, over 12 000 active, but many didn’t quite understand what exactly the organisations did beyond hold exams and collect membership fees.
Very quickly, the Henley team hit the ground and began work on a membership retention study.
‘The results were incredibly interesting,’ Davies says. ‘What they showed us was that people engage with meaning. They engage with identity. And they engage with belonging.’
The Henley team proposed stronger digital engagement through a host of media: podcasts, member stories, member experience teams, networking platforms, and a bigger imprint across the healthcare system.
‘These recommendations aligned strongly with three major shifts,’ Davies says. ‘We had to move from service to purpose, from organisation to community, and from communication to participation.’
It was a major, structural rebrand around stakeholder engagement. But the CMSA had a perfect opportunity to make that change: its 70th anniversary. So, in 2025, the CMSA launched its renewal, announcing national conferences, regional ceremonies, public facing events and e-learning platforms including Learn@CMSA supporting specialist candidates across South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa; Examine@CMSA, focused on assessment quality.
It also launched the Journal of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (JCMSA), an open-access digital scientific journal launched in 2023, and a Young Specialists Forum, which aims to bring together the next generation of medical leaders into the CMSA’s governance structures, whether as examiners, members of the JCMSA editing board, or as mentors.
That 70th anniversary was as impactful as the Henley team predicted it would be,’ Davies says. ‘Now, we are targeting an ambitious plan to raise R75 million by our 75th anniversary. We ask ourselves every day: Are we running an organisation, or building something people belong to? A “Peoples College.”
Badisa is one of South Africa’s most expansive social service networks, with operations stretching across the Western Cape, Northern Cape, and Eastern Cape and providing social services that support the elderly, children, rehabilitation, disability services, and home care programmes. From 2024 to 2025, their work reached over 1 million people, but by the time they joined the Henley Reputation and Responsibility programme, they were experiencing a considerable lag on their operations.
‘For us, it was clear that our challenge wasn’t a lack of effort,’ says Badisa CEO Basie van Wyk. ‘We realised that we were running very hard, but not always in the same direction. We wanted to figure out a way to really turn our effort into impact.’
Cue the Henley team. After doing a deep dive into the organisations ecosystem, the MBA students helped the organisation rethink its approach to leadership, communication, and culture.
First and foremost: instead of focusing on best practice, Badisa had to embrace the idea of shared practice – learning together while continuously adapting. That change took many forms, but it began with communication. Instead of simply informing people, Badisa created two-way forums that encourage active listening and the sharing of experience across the organisation. This had a domino effect, as staff members found themselves getting to know each other better and thereby building internal trust.
‘That was a big thing,’ van Wyk says. ‘Among ourselves, but also among our clients, we learned that trust doesn’t just mean support in major crises. It means showing up through small, consistent acts of support and engagement.’
The Henley team also stressed the importance of innovation, van Wyk says. ‘Demand is increasing, resources are constrained, and it’s impossible to sustain yourself by doing more of the same. I think it’s safe to say innovation is a necessity, not a luxury. In that vein, we created a number of forums where best practices could be shared and developed further.’
Finally, Badisa also realised the value of clarity. Being simple and clear about what they do and why they exist has been a gamechanger, says van Wyk. ‘Because when people understand your mission, they connect with it.’
‘It sounds like significant change – because it was,’ he goes on. ‘But the Henley team helped us to structure it so that it was gradual, intentional. Careful shaping, we call it – like gardening.’