Charities: we need to start with why!

“Oh, that sounds great! I’ll check it out!” You know how people are always telling you that you need to watch this enlightening talk or that hilarious clip, but you never get round to it? Well, I’ve made it easy for you here, because the TED talk I need you to watch is embedded right here. Watch it now and then I want to talk to you about its huge relevance for charities, and particularly for fundraisers. See you in a bit. Now, how do charities develop their strategies? So often, I've seen strategies that, if they focus on anything in particular, major on the how and the what. Can we be clear? This is not a strategy. It is an action plan. Nothing wrong with action plans. But can we stop calling them strategies, please? Worse still, there's a danger that charities do the process in reverse. We look at what we do and how we do it. And then we think about why we do it. We mustn't exist just for our outputs, the production of our charity widgets, if you will. Why are those widgets useful? Whose lives will they change? Which brings me to the importance of understanding and communicating the difference between outputs (the 'what' effectively) and outcomes or impact (the 'why'). (Let's leave the question of whether there's a difference between outcomes and impact for another blog. though.) I came across this lovely tweet recently, which explained it in reference to cake. Everything should be about cake. I always use this brilliant analogy for explaining inputs