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.
The best way to develop high value commercial income with genuine impact, is to find unmet need and to create new markets around it, but that means a lot of people inside your charity need to change their expectations.
When was the last time you stepped right back, took a really hard look at the true purpose of your organisation, your definition of ultimate success, the different end-games you could play to achieve it within the next few years?
Research has shown that paying people more money doesn’t improve their performance. But what it has shown, is that there are five other factors that make all the difference.
Scaling up a service to reach all of those who may need it can be a slow, expensive, often impractical route for charities. Here are six alternatives.
If a wealthy philanthropist offered to fund a 30% increase in the salary budget for your corporate centre indefinitely, how would you use that extra capacity?
Commentators have described Scope’s new strategy as radical, brave and showing the fundamental difference between charity and corporate sectors. None of those are true, but it should still be an example to us all.
Scale brings enormous benefits if it’s done in the right way. It dramatically increases the reach and potential impact you can have in the world. But it’s rare that charities put in the time, money and focus to actually bring it about.
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…
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…
