Saturday, 24 October 2015

The importance of 'how'

In a previous blog, I wrote about the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ (link below). But when attending New Philanthropy Capital’s NPC Ignites conference last week (link below), I was really struck by the discussions that related to the importance of ‘how’. Here are the points I noted:

· 70% of strategic plans don’t get implemented.

· Budgets support the status quo. The budget setting process is too long, too detailed and bottom-up. The whole organisation can become paralysed whilst it ‘does the budget’. Instead, start from the strategy and think what resources are needed to deliver it.

· Productivity matters – you are not just looking for impact but also at what cost this is achieved. (This resonated with me as a funder because I have to consider the cost of different interventions as well as their expected outcomes. But productivity would also be an important factor for charities deciding how best to allocate resources – some interventions may just cost too much.

· Effective implementation needs both a sense of excitement and dogged perseverance. You need to embed the mission into the culture of the organisation and ensure people hold it in their hearts as well as doing the ‘boring’ bits of implementation like planning and reviewing progress.

· Research has shown the importance of implementation: you can sometimes achieve more by implementing something well, that failed elsewhere, than by implementing a proven intervention badly.

Implementation is a poor relation when compared to the excited talk there was around digital and measuring impact . But if you don’t actually deliver what you set out to then you can’t bring about change. I was pleased to see its importance highlighted. ‘How’ definitely deserves its place alongside what and why.

http://emmabeeston.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-what-and-why.html

http://www.thinknpc.org/events/npc-ignites/

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. Services for charities include external perception reviews; bid reviews; training for fundraisers and non-fundraisers involved in bids. www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; emma@emmabeeston.co.uk ; emmabeeston01

Friday, 9 October 2015

Be more magpie

Research on magpie behaviour (link below) has shown they are not attracted to shiny things, as we like to believe, but instead they try to avoid them. It set me thinking about the lure of the shiny new innovative projects that can appeal to funders and philanthropists giving money to charities.

Charities do great work that changes lives and givers big and small want to support them to do this. But behind that great work is lots of far less interesting things that have to happen. Someone needs to do the payroll; insurance needs to be renewed; minibuses taken for their MOTs; risk assessments and plans written; databases need to be maintained.

Charities all say that it is hard to raise money for their core costs yet many grants exclude them. Full cost recovery and compacts try to address this but often charities have to find ways to package their overheads into their project costs to get them covered. Or they spend precious time away from the frontline to gather unrestricted funding from events and sales.

Similarly, charities bemoan having to find ways to change or dress up their existing work to look like new projects. What they do is working well but lots of funders won’t consider supporting it as they want to back something different and innovative.

As our understanding of magpies has changed, maybe we should learn from this and be more magpie. Rather than just funding the attractive work that gives us those shiny case studies. Perhaps we should find reward in funding what the charity wants and needs. More funders and philanthropists should willingly fund the photocopier service contract, the admin worker or the office cleaner. Or be proud to fund the continuation of existing work that is needed and getting good outcomes. They might be a little less shiny but they are vital.

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_406690_en.html

Friday, 2 October 2015

The what and the why

In a TED talk classic (see link) Simon Sinek tells us that “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. ” and for charities there has been a welcome focus on ‘the why’ in making strong cases for support. For example, you don’t donate to the British Heart Foundation because of their research projects but because you share their vision of a world in which people do not die prematurely.

But recently, I have started to question if ‘the why’ has gone too far. When reading though applications and websites, I often read impassioned claims for the difference a charity has made, and will make, and their impact on society. But I can still get to the end of the application form and not have the faintest idea ‘what’ exactly it is that they are going to do with the money. I also recently advised a philanthropist who had named a charity in their will because of what they thought they did, which was a wrongly held assumption based on their ‘why we exist’ and not based at all on what they actually delivered.

Of course, the why matters. I would hate to go back to reading through a list of activities and finding myself thinking “so what?” But when deciding who gets the money, the tangibles have to come into play. If everyone is claiming to make the world a better place then you need details to weigh up their likely practical contributions. I need to make a judgment on whether ‘what’ you actually deliver will bring about the outcomes you state. Is a weekly football club more likely to build confidence in young people than a peer support group or counselling or music therapy? (They will all be valid, but funders have to make a choice).

There needs to be a clear logical flow in any funding application e.g. £A pays for B to deliver C which leads to D. Both the what and the why are in there: the what predominantly appeals to the rational head and the why to the emotional heart. Both have their place in a good application.

https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en