A bold new direction for Lumos, designed from the inside out

Lumos is an organisation that works around the world, transforming care and protection systems for children so that growing up in a safe and loving family is a reality for every child. For more than 20 years, they have worked with governments and partners to change the lives of children who are separated or facing separation from their families due to issues like poverty, violence, displacement or limited access to inclusive services.

As Lumos looked towards their next decade, they set out to increase their impact while deepening the partnership-led approach already central to their work. Through their 10-Year Ambition, Lumos will:

• Enable 500,000 children in care to return to family-based care; and
• Prevent 10 million children from experiencing family breakdown and separation – so that they can thrive in their own families.

Here I Am partnered with Lumos to translate this ambition into a practical partnership and operating model for delivery. Working across leadership, the Board, country teams, functional teams and external stakeholders, we helped develop clear delivery pathways, supporting tools and a more flexible operating model that broadened and clarified how Lumos could work through partnerships to support locally led, sustainable systems change.

As Lumos became clearer about the organisation they wanted to become, their external identity and digital experience also needed to evolve. Working alongside communications partner Ravel and brand partner Never Know Defeat, we helped translate that new direction into a brand refresh and website redesign, creating a clearer voice, more distinctive identity and digital experience built around Lumos’ future role.

Before designing Lumos’ future, we needed to understand the organisation as it existed today and the wider system it was working within.

We carried out a deep Discovery phase, speaking with leadership, functional teams, country teams and external stakeholders across the care reform ecosystem. Alongside those conversations, we mapped Lumos’ existing operating and business models to understand where the organisation was already strong, where change was needed and how ready different parts of the system were to deliver the 10-Year Ambition.

This participatory approach was important from the outset. Rather than disappearing to develop a new operating model and returning with a finished answer, we brought people through the process with us, using interviews, workshops, co-creation and regular decision points to build alignment and shared ownership as the direction evolved.

The work was deliberately broad at first. Through an agile process, we synthesised evidence as it emerged, shared ideas early and refined them with Lumos as we went. This led to 25 transformative design ideas, which we then prioritised together into two work streams with the greatest potential, creating a shared evidence base and clear design priorities for the next phase.

Discovery included:

• Leadership, functional and country-level interviews
• External ecosystem interviews
• As-Is operating and business model mapping
• Alignment around the 10-Year Ambition, targets and strategic principles
• 25 transformative design ideas
• Prioritisation into two core workstreams, alongside the emerging brand workstream

With a clear picture of the current organisation and the opportunities ahead, we moved into operational design. The challenge was to rethink how Lumos could operate in order to influence care reform at a much greater scale. That required an innovative approach: exploring different ways to increase reach and collaborate with partners, without compromising safeguarding, technical quality or the integrity of Lumos’ expertise.

We developed seven potential delivery models and worked with Lumos to collectively prioritise these to four. Those models became the foundations of the Lumos Partnership Model, a flexible approach built around four complementary pathways: Lumos Delivers, Lumos Builds, Lumos Bridges and Lumos Shapes.

For example, the Lumos Builds pathway enables Lumos to share its expertise with local organisations, strengthening their ability to lead and sustain care reform in their own contexts. This creates opportunities to extend Lumos’ reach while building lasting local capability.

Together, the pathways enable Lumos to work at different levels of the system, from demonstrating and delivering reform in practice, to building local capability, convening actors and influencing how care reform is financed.

Design outputs included:

• A simplified Theory of Change aligned to the 10-Year Ambition
• Innovation scanning and benchmarking
• Support with ROI modelling
• Seven potential delivery models, collectively prioritised to four
• Four detailed operating model blueprints
• Definition of the new 'Lumos Partnership Model'

Together, these outputs turned the 10-Year Ambition from a broad strategic direction into a clearer operating system for how Lumos could create, support and scale systems change.

We translated the four pathways into simple frameworks and tools that Lumos teams could use, test and continue developing themselves. Operating Model Playbooks brought the operational aspects of each pathway to life, while value propositions were developed and tested with external funders to see how well the new model was understood beyond the core team. We also began shaping the Investor Prospectus through a collaborative process across Lumos.

Adoption was designed into the work, rather than added at the end. We worked with teams to identify practical next steps, brought the wider organisation into pathway co-creation and gradually shifted responsibility from Here I Am to Lumos. The aim was to make sure people understood not just what had been designed, but how they could take it forward.

That transition was a key part of the project: success meant Lumos no longer needing us at the centre of the process, because the strategy had become something the organisation could own, use and continue evolving.

To support adoption, we developed:

• Operating Model Playbooks for each pathway
• Value propositions for the new delivery models
• External testing with target funders and friendly partners
• An Investor Prospectus structure and content framework
• A three-year roadmap for activating the pathways
• A prioritised first month of activity and Kanban board for ongoing delivery

As the 10-Year Ambition took shape, it became clear that Lumos’ existing brand no longer reflected the organisation they were becoming. We developed the brand from the same strategic foundations, combining audience insight, stakeholder input, landscape analysis and co-creation with Lumos’ leadership and teams.

Together with our communications partner Ravel, we worked through Lumos’ Brand DNA, clarifying its vision, mission, values, positioning, narrative and tone of voice. The refreshed brand needed to reflect a significant shift in how Lumos saw its role. Partnership was no longer simply one way of delivering its work, but central to how the organisation intended to achieve systems change. That thinking became embedded in the Brand DNA itself, with a Brand Mode framework that would help Lumos communicate appropriately, depending on the role it plays.

Next, working with brand partner Never Know Defeat, we developed a new visual identity. The refreshed logo is a modern evolution of Lumos’ brand, carrying forward the recognisable rays of light from its previous identity and introducing an arrow to signal collective momentum. The wider graphic system builds from those forms through pathway icons, patterns and hand-drawn elements, giving Lumos a distinctive identity that can make complex systems feel clearer, warmer and more human.

Alongside the brand, we redesigned the website. The aim was not simply to apply a new visual identity to the existing site, but to rethink the digital experience around the organisation Lumos was becoming.

We began with a detailed UX audit, user journey mapping and a review of the existing site structure and content to understand where audiences were experiencing friction, where accessibility could be improved and where Lumos’ partnership proposition could be made clearer. From there, we developed a new information architecture, wireframes and responsive interface design.

The new website brought together the thinking developed throughout the project, translating Lumos’ strategy, tone of voice and visual identity into an accessible, intuitive online experience that made the organisation’s new direction easier to understand and engage with.

As the project concluded, the final stage focused on making sure Lumos could confidently take ownership of the brand. We developed practical tools for day-to-day use, including PowerPoint and Word templates, accessible, multilingual typography and colour guidance, communication principles and detailed brand guidance. We then ran brand training with the wider Lumos team, helping colleagues understand not only how to apply the identity, but the thinking behind it. The sessions explored consistency, accessibility, tone of voice, Brand Modes and the practical use of the templates and assets across everyday communications.

From strategy and operating model to brand and digital experience, the project created one connected expression of the ambitious organisation Lumos is becoming.

If your organisation could benefit from a strategic consultation, rebrand, or website redesign, we'd love to hear about it. Drop us an email at hello@hereiamstudio.com.