CEO Breakfast May 2017
The Agile Organisation: Charity CEO breakfast seminar 25th May 2017, London. As the landscape in which charities operate continues to change, many of us recognise the need for our organisations […]
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 […]
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 […]
The IP opportunity
Your organisation’s knowledge is probably the biggest lever you have for increasing income and impact, but all too often it’s an invisible and untapped asset, because most of us are like Canada…
The trust imperative
Apparently, public trust is at an all-time low. Since the advent of the digital age, our general level of trust in governments and politicians, corporations, charities and the media has […]
New models of charity funding
A few weeks ago, I was honoured to anchor a morning of keynotes and panel discussions on the new models of funding that are emerging into the mainstream for charities. Here are the five big insights I took away…
Putting a price on quality
Forget the old maxim “you can’t put a price on quality”. You can. In a commissioning environment that’s under increasing pressure to cut costs, it’s more important than ever that you do, and you’ll need three ingredients to do it…
Three keys to increasing productivity
One of the biggest challenges facing the UK is how we improve productivity across all the sectors of our economy, but it’s fair to say that it’s in the third sector where the pressure is most acute. How do we increase the productivity of an organisation? Well, it starts with you and me.
Two questions to accelerate growth
One of Michael Porter’s most under-used quotes is this: “the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” And it’s particularly relevant to charities right now when growing new income streams is at the top of most agendas…
Chairs breakfast April 4th
I will be hosting a small, select group of Chairs from major Charities for breakfast from 8:30am to 10:30am on the 4th of April 2017 in London. In an informal, stimulating and highly collaborative discussion, we will talk about the unique challenges facing Chairs in relation to mergers, acquisitions and sector consolidation.
A theory of engagament
A Theory of Change can be a powerful tool for all kinds of strategy decisions, whether the outcome you want is an end to tropical deforestation or a million highly-engaged volunteers…
