STRONGER CHARITIES, STRONGER COMMUNITIES
From working alongside hundreds of charities every year, we know it is an incredibly challenging time for frontline organisations as they are under greater pressures than ever before. Charity leaders and their teams are working hard to respond to the increases in demands from their beneficiaries who need their services more than ever, while funding is squeezed and they’re experiencing workforce challenges with difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff and volunteers.
In this blog/series of blogs, Cranfield Trust shares its insight into the challenges and shares practical guidance and advice to help charities to know where to focus their time and efforts to get them through this challenging time.
First and foremost, focus on finances. During time of economic uncertainty controlling cash flow can become more difficult, but also becomes more important than ever because ‘cash is king’. If you don’t have a cashflow forecast, now’s the time to put one together. Make sure it extends beyond the end of your financial year – and look at some different scenarios for income and expenditure. Use a simple ‘red, amber, green’ income forecast to look at what you’re likely to raise, plotting this into your cashflow. Our Cash is King webinar, which will take you through a demonstration of practical suggestions, basic concepts and ideas that you can implement immediately.
With the rapid increase of inflation, it’s important to consider how to manage your finances in a high inflation environment, and think about how to forecast from a strategic point of view and practical standpoint. With everything moving so quickly it’s difficult to know what to focus on but the first place to start is to understand what can move, what can’t and what is in the middle. This will help you to forecast now and for the longer term.
At Cranfield Trust, we talk a lot about ‘investability’, which is an approach that goes beyond a funding strategy and can help you to create ways of attracting interest, investment and impact for your charity. In our webinar you’ll be taken through practical insights and ‘how to’ steps to learn to put your charity at the front of this approach.
Make the most of your fundraising time. Maximise your fundraising time by talking to funders before applying, where funders are open to this. Understanding funder interests and how likely they are to be interested in your work saves time and effort on applications which won’t work.
When you’re investing time in writing funding bids you want them to be as successful as possible. In our webinar, our volunteer Trevor Kitching, helps you to get into the minds of evaluators to maximise the score they award to your bid. By the end of the webinar you’ll have practical guidance and advice to follow when writing your next bid and finding application.
You may like to consider exploring new options for funding and income. The Charity Excellence Funding Finder Directory, includes hundreds of links to online charity funding lists and other free charitable grants directories. Many charities are finding it increasingly difficult to rely solely on grant funding and are seeking to diversify their income streams. We recently worked with Suzanne Waggett, Chief Investment Officer at Frederics Foundation to explain social investing and why charities might consider social investment.
Create or refresh your business plan. At Cranfield Trust we support charities to manage through change and to see beyond the immediate challenges they’re facing. Ensuring you have a business plan that it well understood across your team, being realistic about the future, and being ready to change your plan are all critical. Having a strong plan as a baseline helps you to feel that you’re clear about your ambitions, gives you the information you need to consider change and can position you well with funders.
Your business plan is not set in stone and can change and should change to adapt to your changing environment. Although the thought of revisiting your strategy and plans may seem daunting when you’re focussed on immediate pressures, we recommend you review and revisit your plans to get you through this challenging time and stronger for the future. Take a look at our short practical guide which takes you through the questions to ask when developing your charity’s business plan, which will help you to update an existing plan.
Having a strong business plan and sense of direction underpins good governance of your organisation. It helps you to know, and your funders and beneficiaries, that you’re doing the right things. Trustees play an important role in holding your organisation to account and can bring constructive and helpful challenge. Your strategy and plan can provide the framework for the focus of your board and scrutiny.
Addressing new problems requires new solutions and at times of crisis it’s necessary to implement solutions quickly, see what works and improves, of course with minimal risk. Ann Mei Chang shares some wisdom on how quickly we can iterate, feedback and improve. Watch our webinar on Lean Impact.
Don’t forget your own wellbeing. It’s hard to have a resilient organisation without resilient leaders and people. We are seeing high levels of stress and, in some cases, burnout, amongst leaders so it is important to also focus on your own wellbeing.
In our webinar, Chris O’Rourke a globally recognised COO and Certified Personal Trainer, takes you through the seven pillars of wellbeing. – social, emotional, spiritual, environmental, occupational, intellectual and physical – to help you navigate these changing times. Dr. Elouise Leonard-Cross has written a blog on Using the Circle of Influence to Support Resilience, when she talks categorising concerns and how to focus on the right things to build your resilience.
The relationship between Boards and charity leaders can sometimes be a challenge and can add to stress for leaders and managers. Working on improving governance and teamwork can be time well spent to develop a more positive and supportive Board.
We know that being a charity leader can be a lonely existence but it doesn’t need to be. Cranfield Trust’s free mentoring service provides mentors who are experienced, empathetic and can help support leaders achieve their personal development goals so they can better meet their organisational objectives.
As part of the ‘Stronger Charities, Stronger Communities’ programme and partnership, we are delighted to be offering critical management support for charities and community groups in the Pen y Cymoedd area. Through our network of highly experienced and skilled volunteers, we will provide tailored consultancy, telephone advice and mentoring to equip charity leaders with the skills and the confidence they need to navigate the current crisis. We will also work with charity leaders to help them develop their organisations and teams, so they can build their capacity to support people and communities in the longer term.