Time to shed the shackles
Anyone reading the press over the last year could be forgiven for thinking that working in the charity sector is like living through The Blitz. It feels like the sector’s […]
Finding the diamonds
There’s an old story about a Persian farmer that a lot of struggling charities might find extremely relevant. It was popularised by the 19th century Baptist minister Russell Conwell and it goes like this…
Doing good is not enough
Need is growing, funding is contracting, grants are turning into contracts, and the people who are giving them out are looking for ever more things in return. For charities on the receiving end, it seems that ‘doing good’ is no longer enough.
Mark Lever on commerce, excellence and the future of the sector
Mark Lever, CEO of The National Autistic Society talks about the sector’s most pressing challenges, and how business thinking is becoming increasingly important to its future survival
The Changing Face of Charities
Between 2001 and 2011 the charity sector’s income grew from £31bn to £41bn a year. Not through fundraising or grants, or legacies or investments, but through commercial trading. Public donations […]
CEO Seminars
Our Charity CEO Breakfast Seminars are extremely popular – the last one was fully booked two months in advace. As far as I’m aware, they are quite simply the only […]
What the future holds
There’s no point developing new services or products that are relevant to customers now, only to find that by the time they’re ready to launch, the audience has moved on. You need to skate to where the puck is going to be, in two or three years’ time, not to where it is now.
Merger or collaboration
Whether charities should be seeking more mergers or better collaborations seems to be a knotty question, but only because we’re looking at it all wrong.
A commercial coming of age
Three years ago I felt like something of a lone voice in championing the commercial opportunity for charities. Now, it feels like awareness and interest is definitely gaining momentum.
The charity entrepreneur
Ideas that look great on paper may not look quite so great to your potential customers. So how do you decide when to invest behind new ideas?
Why your people won’t all get along
A single, harmonious organisational culture is a myth. Subcultures are inevitable, but they don’t have to be a problem if you follow these steps.
A question of innovation
In any organisation there will be lots of people who have ideas as to how things could be improved, but how do you decide which ones to back?
When strategy and culture clash
If you don’t have the capabilities to deliver your intended strategy, you’ll fail. In the same way, if you don’t have the right culture to deliver it, you’ll fail. And the solution is no different in either scenario.
Transforming ideas
One of the biggest challenges for charities over the next few years will be how to bridge the gap between the money you can raise, and the money you need to spend, and there are just three ways to do that…
Stop looking for markets to enter
One of the interesting aspects of what I’ll call “the charity mindset”, is that we do things on a shoestring and if we can cover our costs, we’re good to go. That mindset leads to some very dangerous assumptions indeed.
Why meetings are a waste of time
If all you’re doing in most of your meetings is agreeing to carry on with the current plan, your time would probably be better spent elsewhere.
