By Glen MannersFleur Donnelly-Jackson achieved more than she could have hoped to on the International Day for Persons with Disabilities on 3 December 2020. She spoke at 3 separate events with audiences in the UK, France, Brazil and Russia. We placed Fleur in her role as Senior Disability Business Partner at the Disability Business Forum 11 months ago. I was delighted to catch up with her and learn about the impact she has made in her new role. Tell us about the Business Disability Forum, and your role there?Business Disability Forum is a not-for-profit membership organisation, with over 350+ Members and Partners. We exist to transform the life chances of disabled people, working through and with business to create a disability-smart world. We provide our members with a wealth of practical advice and support, thought leadership and networking opportunities so that they can share what works – and what doesn’t!We bring business leaders, disabled people, and government together to understand what needs to change to improve the life opportunities and experiences of disabled people in employment, economic growth, and society more widely.My role is as a Senior Business Disability Partner. I work with partners drawn from both the public and private sector, to provide them with tailored support and advice on their journey to become disability smart. I carry out Disability Smart Audits and consultancy such as recruitment or workplace adjustment reviews. I’m also invited to speak at awareness raising events, for example to employee disability networks, and chair the BDF Employment Taskforce.How have you and the team found working remotely during this last year of being in and out of lockdown? Do you think this will change the way you work in the future?Business Disability Forum as a disability charity already had flexible working arrangements in place, including some staff working from home, so the transition to home working during the first lockdown happened fairly smoothly. For me, joining just after the first lockdown started in 2020, it has been a new way of working. I have worked from home in a role in the past, but then I was not expected to use online platforms to stay in touch with my team. I suspect they hadn’t been rolled out then. One of the big and welcome changes for me has been not having to commute through London, and also having the company of my dog during the working day. In future I probably will continue to work from home, with possibly 1 or 2 days a week in the office.It’s been 11 months since you secured the role there, what has been the highlight during that time?I have really enjoyed being able to hit the ground running and being given large pieces of consultancy work to take on soon after joining. I’ve carried out several whole business Disability Smart Audits, and whilst they’re a big piece of work for all involved, it’s incredibly satisfying to be able to provide a business with a comprehensive report on how they are performing and where they may have areas of practice that they can look to improve. It feels like a substantial, rigorous report to hand over that you hope will be foundational to that organisation’s future plans on disability inclusion.What are you most proud of during your time with BDF?Business Disability Forum had to move it’s programme of in person events online due to the pandemic. As a result I’ve taken part in many more online video meetings than I ever anticipated. I’ve spoken at BDF network and taskforce meetings, presented to employee networks, and been invited to join panels of speakers for awareness raising days. On 3 December in 2020, which was International Day of Persons with Disabilities, I’m proud that without moving from my desk in my living room, I spoke at three events, with audiences based all around the world in the UK,  France, Brazil, and Russia. I also played a role in asking the Football Association to light up the arch at Wembley Stadium, purple to celebrate purple light up, on the same day. The whole day felt like a real achievement!What is the biggest lesson you have learned along the way?The biggest lesson for me is a growing confidence in the depth of my own expertise. Working across businesses from incredibly diverse sectors, means that I can spot trends, and apply experiences. When someone comes to me with a specific query I will have other examples to draw on, to advise them.What has been the most challenging part of your role there? (and how have you overcome that?)On occasion I have had to give critical or challenging advice to a member or partner about an aspect of their business or service, and about how it could be made more inclusive to disabled employees, or service users/ customers. It’s important to do so with tact to make sure that the trust in the relationship is maintained. My role is to be a critical friend and point out the pitfalls of a course of action, and also what the positive benefits are of making sure you have included disabled people. What carries me through these interactions, is the fact that I’m part of a wider team and we have a clear sense of mission, to improve the life opportunities and experiences of disabled people whether in employment or as customers/ service users of businesses and organsiations.Finally, what are the team’s plans for the future?There are a number of exciting projects in progress here at Business Disability Forum which will enable the organisation to continue to drive positive change across the membership we support.  We will be launching a new framework to help organisations measure and improve their disability inclusion performance, this will also see a number of resources developed to support this framework.We have our first global symposium scheduled for April 2021 which will see us host a week of events for our global Members, the symposium will also see the launch of our global data research and our global workplace adjustment guidance.We will also be carring out a significant research project this year exploring the experiences of disabled customers and helping businesses understand how to enhance the experience of disabled customers, a crucial piece of work aimed at supporting the retail and hospitality sector in its recovery from the impact of the pandemic.​

by Stuart MillinerAs a former Grants and Institutional Fundraiser myself, I really have a deep understanding of what makes a good Trusts and Foundations Manager. I also take time to get to know the organisations that I'm working with - learning about their ways of working and getting to know the teams to help find the right additional team members when needed. When it came to recruiting Kev Mounce for the Starlight Children's Foundation, I already had a relationship with the charity and a great understanding of their work. At Charity People we believe our role doesn't end when we place a candidate. It's important for us to continue to be there to support charities and the people we have placed with them. We placed Kev in his new role in April 2020, I wrote a blog about the work of the Starlight Children's Foundation in September 2020 and recently had the pleasure of catching up with Kev to see how he's getting on. Here's what he had to share: Tell us about Starlight Children’s Foundation, and your role there?Starlight is an amazing charity that helps children experience the joy of childhood. Thanks to our brilliant supporters, we use the power of play to improve children’s experience of treatment in hospital. We do this through our hospital play and distraction services, wish-granting and Starlight Escapes programme. We help children and their families to escape the routine and reality of treatment.I originally started in April 2020 in the role of Trusts and Foundations Manager, following some interim fundraisers who had done a brilliant job at keeping things ticking over. I was excited to build some long-term relationships and raise the ambition level. I’ve since been promoted to Head of Partnerships and Philanthropy, which encompasses Major Donors, Corporate Partnerships and Special Events.How have you and the team found working remotely during this last year of being in and out of lockdown? Do you think this will change the way you work in the future?I think, like most people, there are pros and cons. The organisation adapted brilliantly at the start of lockdown, as a charity that was predominantly office-based to go totally remote wasn’t without challenges. I think we have missed the natural “making a cuppa chat” – that moment when you run into a colleague in the kitchen and find out they’re working on something really exciting you otherwise wouldn’t know. Communication is a challenge and some people miss that social connection. But people have saved time and money on commutes, and lunches! I think things will change, in that most people won’t return to the office 5 days a week, and there will be increased flexibility.We are approaching a year since you secured the role there, what has been the highlight during that time?There have been a few! We have quadrupled Trust income from last year, largely due to covid-relief emergency funding, thanks to the strong case for support we have developed - being an organisation supporting seriously ill children. The real personal highlight has been being voted by colleagues as Most Collaborative at an awards ceremony that was part of our Christmas party. To be awarded something like that after only being here 8 months was lovely. To know your colleagues see you as collaborative, and on the whole enjoy working with you, is probably the best thing you can be told in your work life, isn't it? Or maybe I’m just biased!What is the biggest lesson you have learnt along the way?In a word… Empathy. Such an underrated quality in a leader, colleague, and person. You never know what is going on in a person’s life and how issues may be exacerbated during COVID. Working from home has allowed for more 1:1 conversations in private. It is, in some ways, it is a privileged position to be welcomed into a colleague’s home, even via camera. You have to respect that. I think (hope) I’ve done that, and built a level of rapport and trust with colleagues quickly. I would like to think my empathy has helped that. Intuitively knowing if a colleague needs some space. Or actually needs a call to check how they are. Doing so could be the best part of their day – and the best part of yours.What has been the most challenging part of your role there? (and how have you overcome that?)No one thing has been a major challenge. There have been a number of things concurrently that have proved challenging; a few new members of staff trying to embed into a new organisation remotely. The demand for our services during COVID has meant that we have all worked flat out. Communication is a challenge – the right people knowing plans at the right time. We have overcome that by being kind and respectful to one another; understanding we’re working in probably the most challenging circumstances we have faced in our working lives.My new is role is vast, covering a lot of areas (and a lot of income!) whilst still having my own personal income target. I think that will be a challenge in the future. The best and most important decisions I make will probably be what I choose not to get involved in.What are your plans for your team in the future?To build long-term, strategic partnerships. We have such a strong cause. Our services are needed more than ever. We know people want to help. It’s important we recognise which relationships can have most impact for the children we support and that we’re a great partner for the people who choose to support us. Demonstrating the impact our incredible colleagues have. Every day.​_________I couldn't be happier for Kev and for the Starlight Children's Foundation. Kev is clearly inspired and motivated by his role and values his colleagues highly. His stand-out performance on income generation and collaboration have meant so much to Starlight through these difficult few months. I'm looking forward to continuing to support the Starlight Children's Foundation and keeping in touch with Kev to find out what he has in store for his second year with them. Congratulations Kev.

by Amelia Lee and Ellen DrummondContact is the charity for families with disabled children. They understand that life with a disabled child brings unique challenges, and they exist to help families feel valued, supported, confident and informed.Charity People is proud and privileged to be supporting Contact to find two brilliant new trustees who will sit at Board level, playing a crucial role in setting the future direction of the charity.For details on the two positions and to apply:Seeking a trustee from Scotland from a diverse background with skills in fundraising, individual giving or philanthropy; Digital, communications and marketing; service delivery or legal. Seeking a trustee from a diverse background with skills in fundraising, individual giving or philanthropy; Digital, communications and marketing; service delivery or legal.What is it like to be a trustee at Contact?We asked one of Contact’s trustees and parent carer Angela Kitching to tell us more about the role:How long have you been a trustee for Contact?I've been a trustee since June 2018.  What made you become one of Contact’s trustees?Contact helped my family with information when my son was little, before his disabilities were fully diagnosed, but they really backed us up when we were fighting for his respite centre to stay open. It showed me that Contact were prepared to be there for families, to help us campaign for the things our children need. So, I applied to be a trustee to help Contact reach and support other families like ours. What do you do as a trustee?I go to four Board meetings a year help make decisions about the strategy that Contact should follow to best support families like ours. I'm also on a subcommittee of the Board that meets four times per year, we focus on Governance, Strategy and People. You need to put some time in before each meeting to read the papers so you are ready to comment or ask questions. I also help out with one off tasks like talking to trusts or businesses who might fund Contact's work or recruiting senior staff. I am always supported by Contact staff members when I do this. My role is usually to bring the parent's perspective, so being willing to talk about what families like ours need is important. How do you fit being a trustee in with your caring role and job?Parent carers are great at juggling, so you've got the skills! I work part time, I also care for my young son and his sister. I talked to my family and my work place about how and why I wanted to fit this role in. They have supported me with the extra care time I need and some flexibility around my working hours. It is so rewarding to be a trustee that it is worth doing it. What do you get out of being a trustee for Contact?I know that I am supporting a charity that is making a difference to families like mine. My views at meetings are taken seriously and Contact is stronger for having parent carers at the heart of what it does. I have developed lots of skills as a trustee that are useful in my working life. Being a parent carer can be frustrating at times, health, social care and education services don't always listen. I feel that through volunteering with Contact I am supporting a charity that is challenging and improving the organisations that work with families like mine. What would you say are the most important attributes a trustee should have?You should be prepared to share your views and be willing to listen to other people's point of view. You need to be reliable, turning up (even when they're online!) to meetings when you've said you will. It's a good idea to be prepared so you need to be willing to read ahead and come up with the questions you want answering before the meeting. Don't be afraid of asking 'the stupid' question, the chances are everyone else is thinking it and you are likely to get to the heart of the issue by asking it. Would you recommend becoming one of Contact’s trustees to other parent carers – and if so why?Yes, with bells on! The closer you get to this fantastic organisation, the more you can see how hard it is working for families like ours. You have something important to share: your real experiences of life as a parent carer. By being a trustee and sharing that perspective, you can keep strengthening Contact to reach families sooner in their journey, give them great support on the right issues, and campaign for improvements in the services that touch our lives. It is really rewarding and you will meet some great people along the way! If you would like to have a conversation about the trustee roles, please contact Amelia Lee or Ellen Drummond

​By Philippa RandleImagine a sector where imperfections are celebrated and authenticity is encouraged.A place of work where you’re freed from your fear of failure and inspired to try new things, creatively problem solve, and move forward with new ideas.Imagine feeling confident in yourself and your abilities as a fundraiser because you know it’s ok to fail, learn and keep innovating to meet your goals. Failing doesn’t feel goodI’m not going to lie, embracing failure and admitting to the monumental f*ck ups of my career (and there have been several) in front of anyone is not something I find easy.  In fact, last year, as a team, we all wrote blogs about failure and I even failed at that. I kept my head down, too embarrassed to show up, share in a public forum and learn from my mistakes. But spurred on by the need for innovation in the face of the pandemic and a growing understanding of power of learning from c*ck ups, I’ve decided 2021 is all going to be all about embracing failure and using that vulnerability to build, learn and keep growing as a wife, mum, fitness fanatic and recruiter. Why embrace failure?“Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.” - Robert T. KiyosakiMany of us are innately scared of failure and struggle to embrace it. It’s counterintuitive to us as we grow up celebrating success. Who wants to be a loser? We naturally want to feel good about ourselves and failing at something feels bad. But the fear of failure can be hugely limiting both personally and professionally. How do you know if you can win a new corporate partnership if you don’t get in front of prospects to pitch? You might be a superstar at pitching, but you won’t know if you’re too scared to try it out. Failure in the Charity Sector As a sector, we’re in a space where there’s a real need to innovate, particularly when it comes to fundraising. The pandemic and lockdowns have meant that some areas of fundraising such as community and events have been a huge challenge.  There’s a need to think of exciting, fun and compelling ways to engage with audiences and combat creeping donor fatigue. It’s probably worth admitting now that finding new ways to raise funds is going to involve a lot of failed attempts and if you’re going to succeed you may want to take a look at how you and your team approach failure.I was lucky to chat with two incredible Directors of Fundraising who were brave enough to share their stories of failure: Richard Lee, Director of Fundraising at Crisis (his story made me laugh out loud, sorry Richard!) and Vanessa Longley, Director of Development at YoungMinds, whose story will relate to so many of us struggling with the juggle right now.Richard Lee, Director of Fundraising at CrisisRichard has been successfully leading fundraising teams for a number of years now and I know his current team will vouch for him as an excellent manager, and his income growth figures speak for themselves. But it’s not always been that way. Starting out in his management career with the Royal Mail, after just 6 months of training and still wet behind the ears, Richard launched himself wholeheartedly into his new role as a manager. During one of his first meetings with two of his team, and admittedly faced with difficult attitudes – line reports packing up at 4:57pm every day, no matter what, we all know that feeling - he felt himself getting increasingly frustrated. But Richard didn’t inhale, exhale, count to ten. No. He didn’t take a step back and reflect on what to do next. Instead, he let rip, full force and SHOUTED AT HIS TEAM. Proper frustrated, angry shouting. And he can still remember the looks on their faces, wide-eyed and shocked saying, ‘this man is completely insane’. And he still to this day feels sick, almost has an out of his body experience, when he thinks about it. Luckily for his more recent teams, he’s come leaps and bounds since that day and has learned to harness his emotions and bring out the best in his team through coaching and empowering, and creating a psychologically safe space for them to try, fail and learn, all sotto voce. Vanessa Longley, Director of Development at YoungMindsFor those of you who are lucky enough to know Vanessa, you’ll know she’s a live wire in the fundraising innovation space. Fully committed to empowering her team and finding new ways to ensure YoungMinds has the funding needed to continue to grow their reach and help even more young people. But she’s not always found that work-life balance easy to hit.Vanessa viewed the prospect of pregnancy and motherhood, as so many new first time mothers do, myself included, through rose-tinted glasses. She planned to learn another language during pregnancy, so she could bring up her child bi-lingual. She was also convinced that having a baby would help define her work/ life balance, imagining it would be easy to flit between being a successful fundraiser and superstar mother. Needless to say, pregnancy hit her like a truck, and she was so badly affected by morning sickness that she struggled with the day to day let alone learning French. Fast forward a few years to part-time working/ part-time single-parenting, and a day in the park when her little girl grabbed her ringing phone and answered said, ‘hello this is mummy’s phone, she works at Mencap,’ and you guessed it, Vanessa had unwittingly turned her 4-year-old daughter into a PA. Vanessa admits that at that stage she realised she was failing at the work-life balance and has learned that it’s less of a balance and perhaps more of a flow (I know some of us could think of other words to describe it right now). She points out that she finds it almost impossible to create artificial division between our work and home lives, particularly if you’re bringing 100% to both. Rather than separating being a mum and Fundraising Director, she brings what she’s learned as a mum to work: multi-tasking, using her playful side and learning.  She also brings things she’s learned from work to her home life.Being brave enough to tryThe most impressive candidates that I speak with are those brave enough to try new ideas and manage their fear of failure.  They believe that there are endless opportunities to try, fail, learn and succeed.  It’s an idea that is really starting to take hold across the sector thanks to brilliant events like Pizza for Losers - the failure-inspired learning event.We are delighted to be sponsoring Pizza for Losers on 28th January 2021.  Hope you can join us to hear from our Founder, David Lale, at 2:30pm and you’ll also have the chance to chat with me or Alice Wood throughout the afternoon. Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pizza-for-losers-online-tickets-78512293383​

by Nick Billingham​I feel very strongly that the purpose of our work at Charity People is to help charities to have better impact by supporting them to create high-performing teams.  This means that our work doesn’t end after we place a candidate in a role. It’s been two years since we placed Tom Dixon in a senior leadership role at Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity - time to check in with him and see how he’s doing.__________Tell us about Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity and your role there?Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity provides specialist nurses and support for seriously ill children. Roald Dahl believed in the importance of children and in helping them overcome life's toughest challenges. He was one of the world’s most imaginative and loved storytellers and we are part of his marvellous legacy. My role is Head of Fundraising and Communications, which, as a small charity means I am involved across the whole organisation. My main focus is fundraising, but I do a lot of comms strategy and support as well as stakeholder management, event creation and finance modelling. It’s a fun and varied role with the added magic of Roald Dahl’s stories to get involved with.How have you and the team found working remotely during this last year of being in and out of lockdown? Do you think this will change the way you work in the future?Working remotely has actually been a good thing for our organistion. As a small charity of 10 staff, we were previously pulled all over the country for meetings and events. With no travel and fewer distractions, we have been able to cover a lot more ground, build new relationships, develop funding partnerships and create a more stable and focussed organisation. Of course there are draw backs with the team being more distant from each other, but it has been helpful to have a more strategic focus. It will definitely change the way we operate in the future and we have already downsized our office to a much smaller and cheaper building that only accommodates around half the team. That means home working will be a feature of our future, but it means we have been able to cut our office and facilities overheads by around 65% which is huge.One down side is that we can’t go and meet the nurses that we work with or the children that we support - It is so motivational to hear the impact of our work first hand. We have been able to arrange some video calls, but It’s not quite the same.It’s been two years since you secured the role there, what has been the highlight during that time?We worked really well as a team to launch a nurses funding appeal and a COVID emergency appeal last May. It was a lot of hard work but we secured celebrity support, some good press and lit up London Picadilly with our key messages, including one of our case studies and nurses. Not only was it a successful period for us, but it also showed how we could operate as a high-performing team to have maximum impact for our beneficiaries. ​​What are you most proud of during your time with the organisation?The point where we are now in January 2021. Having weathered some strategic and stakeholder storms in the past two years, built up a stable team and had some good success, it feels like we are in a great position to launch ourselves forward over the next few years. It’s an exciting feeling, especially as we’ll continue to put ourselves into a better and better position to help more seriously ill children and their families than ever before.What is the biggest lesson you have learned along the way?Coming in new to the role, I focused too much on strategy and not enough on quick fundraising wins. It took a while to gain traction and success, and I feel I could have done that earlier. Also, the focus that the pandemic has brought is a lesson for any time. Prioritising the important tasks over the urgent ones, seeing them through to completion and then moving on. It’s difficult to constantly have a lot of plates spinning at once. What has been the most challenging part of your role there? (and how have you overcome that?)Stakeholder management is difficult for an organisation like ours with a lot of history and a lot of expectation. I think fundraisers are naturally great at relationship management and we have focussed a lot of effort on strengthening key relationships. It has paid dividends and made the job really enjoyable. And what are your plans for your team in the future?We will continue to focus on our core roles and bed-in a lot of our new plans and processes. We are still in the forming phase and will begin to really perform once we have delivered on more of our plans. Keeping the team together is a big part of what our senior leadership team wants to achieve so we will ensure that the team are well supported and are still able to make time for learning and development to ensure they continue to grow in their careers. Keeping motivation levels up is important and ensuring that we get access to cause related stories and content is crucial._________As Tom suggests, ensuring long-term satisfaction in a role is crucial to retaining staff, consistency in performance and the ability to have an impact. There is so much for us to learn a couple of years on about the charity and the person we have placed with them. It’s really satisfying to follow the journeys of the organisations we work with and support the careers of the people we place with them.  ​​

​Join us on January 20th at 7.30pm, when we host the launch of She Leads for Legacy - a brand-new organisation focused on black female leadership, founded by a visionary mother-and-daughter combo – Sharon and Afiya Amesu. Register to attend existing or aspiring Black female leaders and allies.The launch will feature special guest speakers:Abigail Irozuru, a track and field athlete, specialising in long jump, who has competed at Olympic and World Championship level.Dion Johnson, multi-award-winning Women's champion with the re-powerment of women at the heart of her workDiversity journeysNew Year is always jam-packed with intention setting and resolutions.  Letting go of the things that are working against you.  Holding on to the things that are working well to ensure they continue.    One of Charity People’s proudest achievements of 2020 is continuing its commitment to racial diversity in recruitment. It’s become one of the most important priorities on our agenda and we are continuing to learn and be part of real and lasting change in the charity sector and beyond. You can read more about our journey here and there’s more to update you on soon.  An exciting new development is our partnership with She Leads For Legacy to support their launch later this month.  She Leads For Legacy is a brand-new organisation focused on black female leadership, founded by a visionary mother-and-daughter combo – Sharon and Afiya Amesu.  Both are legal professionals; Sharon a former criminal barrister turned leadership coach and equality and diversity consultant and Afiya an aspiring barrister currently studying for her Masters.  Propelled into action by the realisation that, on racial diversity, not enough progress has been made generationally from Sharon’s early career to Afiya’s current experience.  They don’t believe in waiting for change to happen; they believe in accelerating it together.  And so, She Leads For Legacy was born. She Leads For Legacy is a community of individuals and organisations – both Black women and allies – working together to reduce the barriers faced by Black female professionals aspiring for and currently working in senior leadership and executive Board positions.  It’s a membership organisation that will amplify Black female voices and create opportunities for Black females to develop their leadership skills.  She Leads For Legacy will connect Black women with each other and with allies, as well as providing learning opportunities, training and a peer support forum. Black female leadership and the recruitment processAs a specialist recruiter in the charity sector, I’ve seen a shift in awareness around Black, Asian and ethnic minority representation and the need to increase racial diversity in leadership positions, largely thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement and organisations like CharitySoWhite.  That’s not to say there isn’t still a huge amount of work to be done turning that awareness into action.  In 2020, Charity People supported a number of organisations to increase racial diversity on their trustee boards and staff teams.  I have noticed that recruitment processes with a focus on racial diversity often attract more Asian candidates than Black candidates.  I have no doubt this is a Charity People and wider charity sector issue.  Having not connected with those communities and candidates the way we should have in the past, we find it challenging to reach them now.  We’re tackling this in a number of ways, including collaboration with Black organisations and individuals who can support us to increase our reach.  We recently signed up Malcolm John’s brilliant Action For Trustee Racial Diversity campaign as part of our on-going action plan to widen our reach and networks.  This was the conversation I had with Sharon Amesu late last year.  We discussed how important it is that Black women don’t get left behind when it comes to representation.  That’s how Charity People came to be involved in the launch of She Leads For Legacy.  We would love to see more Black women represented in leadership and Board positions in the charity sector.   This is your invitation to join us for She Leads For Legacy’s launch event – whether you’re a Black female or an ally – 7.30pm on Wednesday 20th January, 2021.  Expect awesome speakers and a virtual room full of current and future change-makers. ​

​By Anna LudemanMy husband has a hidden disability. He has been living with it for the last 7 years and it’s been 5 years since he had a life-saving operation. He has had quite a journey to get him to where he is today and it is a place that is a lot more flexible, open and understanding than the one he left all those years ago. Flexible working should be available for everyoneAs a parent of four and one-year-old girls, flexible working is something I’m passionate about.  As a recruiter, I get true satisfaction when I place part-time candidates, because I know how much flexible working will enhance their ability to do the best possible job for their employer.“Overall, a flexible work environment is beneficial to both employers and employees. Employees have more freedom to work in an environment that is conducive to increasing their output and work rate, while employers can benefit from a happier and harder working workforce.” thehrdirector.comI’m excited about the future of flexible working in the charity sector, but I still find myself despairing of the lack of progress at times. Most of my conversations centre on women (mostly mothers) who are seeking an understanding employer that will embrace the knowledge and experience they can bring to a role, rather than the hours they might clock on a timesheet. I would love my conversations to start including more men, dads, young people, people with disabilities, nearly pensioners. But while flexible working continues not to be seen as the norm, it so often falls onto mothers to wave the flexible working flag.  “40% of women work part-time compared to only 13% of men” via Mother Pukka My husband Dexter’s Flexible Working JourneyAt the age of 19, Dexter joined the busy world of estate agency, a male-dominated industry often associated with money, sales, banter and long hours. He enjoyed the fast-paced environment and the nice commission scheme! He steadily climbed the ranks over the next 8 years. In a highly pressurised sales industry like this, employees are often encouraged to work longer hours to ‘look’ like they are doing more and leaving early or taking leave is often seen as ‘slacking’. Part-time hours were laughed at, home-working was incomprehensible.  At the age of 27, Dexter realised what an inflexible industry he had joined.  Working long hours in an office became almost impossible. Dexter became unwell, in fact, he became incredibly unwell. First, he had aches and pains in his limbs, then he developed skin lesions and started dashing to the loo every few minutes.  Soon he was unable to leave our home or go to work. He was too weak to see his friends, play sport and on his worst days, he was unable to walk. After months of clinics, observations, referrals and trips to A&E, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease; an incurable inflammatory bowel disease.Life was tough and Dexter was unrecognisable To see someone you love so dearly deteriorate so quickly was truly the worst thing we have experienced together. It was touch and go whether we would be able to get married, something we were so looking forward to. Thankfully a course of steroids and new medication enabled us to have the day we hoped for (although Dex still hates the photos of himself, even though he looks as handsome as ever). Steroids enabled him to go to work for short periods of time, but it really highlighted how poorly set up his industry was to support flexible working.  Dexter’s working hours were 8am – 6pm, 6 days a week where he was expected to be at his office or out and about in the local community. For someone with Crohn’s disease, this is your absolute worst nightmare. Having to be out of the house early in the morning, travelling around without a loo in sight is torture.There was no working from home option, there was no change in his set targets and no change in his working hours, so he simply struggled through. In many industries, long hours are rarely negotiable, working 6 days a week is commonplace and excuses such as ‘poor health’ are not met with understanding or creative thinking about adaptations to support employees needs. A turning pointAt the age of 29 things got so bad he was admitted to hospital and eventually had emergency surgery where he was fitted with a colostomy bag which he will have for the rest of his life. It was a dark time and it was beyond awful to see this proud, charming, quiet, funny man change so drastically in such a short space of time.I am so thankful that the surgery worked. In fact, ‘Bilbo Baggins’ his wonderful, lifesaving colostomy bag was the best decision. Dexter still has his issues and relies on daily drugs and monthly infusions, but the bag brought my husband back. He started to be able to leave the house, see his friends and he now has the energy to play with our two children. I will always be thankful for the life-changing surgery that he had. Having a hidden disability is something that many people face and is something that Dexter still struggles with mentally to this day but I am so incredibly proud of the way he has battled through. He is an inspiration. However, having a disability from an employees perspective is not easy and he found that without the right support, it was impossible to stay in the same job, which he had enjoyed for so long. A lack of flexible working options means losing the ability to attract and retain the best peopleDexter’s employer tried to understand and offered support as much as they could but they still expected Dexter to work 8am-6pm every day. There were no changes to his hours, no changes to his targets and he found his mornings were still filled with anxiety and worry. They had a sales meeting at 8.30am every morning, Dexter was expected to give presentations and as the most experienced member of the team, he continued to do all the external appointments. The stress and the worry that Dexter faced was horrendous and he eventually had to resign.For the employer, this meant losing one of their top salespeople. Someone who was at the top of the leader board every single month before he went on sick leave. Dexter didn’t have the confidence, the knowledge or the strength to push back, ask for more flexibility and offer solutions as to how they could have helped make his daily life better. He had never seen anyone else in the industry work flexibly before and the only option available to him was to quit. There is so much more that they could have done. Flexible working options that could have been considered:staggered start timesswapping responsibilities with other staffsome home-workingjob sharingMornings were the hardest for Dexter so maybe they could have offered a staggered start time, asked another member of the team to do the morning appointments, had the option of some home working. Sadly at the time, an alternative way of working was just not considered and he had no choice but to leave and set up his own estate agency from home.Another way...Dexter has created a new type of estate agency which has been met with such positive reviews. He has scrapped the idea of an office, which he thinks is unnecessary, expensive and outdated and has instead focused on developing his social media presence, ensuring he is one of the most followed, liked and recommended estate agencies in Surrey. Working from home has enabled him to be more agile, chatting to his clients at all times of the day, nipping out to show an interested buyer a property at the very last minute and providing a much more personalised service. He is also close to a loo, can choose his working hours, can go to the hospital when he needs to and can help with the school run! He can give the girls a kiss, look at what they made at nursery that day and then go negotiate a deal on behalf of his vendors. He determines his own time. His physical and mental health has improved, he gets to watch his children grow and he feels the benefits of a truly agile working environment. He can also be a real person; a warm, chatty, personable person to his clients, someone who really knows his stuff but someone who his clients can relate to. I wonder how many people out there have a hidden disability and have been struggling every single day of their career? How many people are scared of seeking a new role as they are worried about how understanding a new employer would be? ‘How many loos do you have here’ is not something that you really want to ask at interview but it might be an incredibly important question to ask. Don’t we all need to work differently?Flexibility is not just for mothers. It is for everyone. We all have lives, we all have needs, some more complex than others. When we look for a new job, we should be working in partnership with a potential employer, seeking a way to make life less stressful whilst ensuring the needs of the role are met. This year has been one of the toughest yet but I am thankful for one thing that it has brought us and that is more flexibility. It has opened up the possibilites of flexible working for most sectors and long may it continue. Dexter’s last employer lost out on a talented, committed and ambitious member of staff who never wanted to leave.  Thankfully it has all worked out for the best. What could you be doing differently to retain key people, ensuring you are providing a workplace which is inclusive for all?2020 has made us all think differently and I hope that I will recruit in a more creative and imaginative way in the future. Until then, I am just thankful that Dexter is home, he is happy and his health continues to improve. Our daughters Lily and Betsy are pretty chuffed he is around too. ​

​By Meg Raybould, Young Trustees MovementThank you to everyone who attended our event on 'why and how to recruit younger trustees to your board. My colleague, Mita Desai and Charity People's Philippa Randle were in conversation with:• Neil Berkett- Chair of the Board at NSPCC and the Guardian Media Group• Alice Rath- Trustee for Crohn’s & Colitis UK• Precious Sithole, ACA FRSA- Founder/CEO Beyond SuffrageWe had such interesting questions and lively debate about the important role that younger trustees can play on our boards. Here's a clip of Charity People's Philippa Randle talking to Crohns and Colitis UK Trustee, Alice Rath: There were so many interesting questions from attendees that we weren't able to answer them all during the event. Here are the answers to the questions we missed:Where can I find young trustees, I have advertised and had no applications?The Young Trustees Movement has a Digital Hub with over 800 members - the majority of our members are young trustees. You can register here and share your opportunities on the hub. We can also advertise your vacancies on our webpage, here. You could also reach out to specific networks or groups such as local university students’ unions.I’m a small organisation who is already pushed for resources. How can we have inclusive opportunities through training, recruitment and mentoring, when we don’t have the budget. What places can support this?There are lots of places to look for free or affordable training, here’s a couple to look at: NCVO provides some free and paid training. They have recently launched an e-learning course which is aimed at being accessible and affordable for all charities: take a look here. Setting up a mentoring/ buddy scheme is a cost-effective way of providing training, as is shadowing staff members. Watch our Q&A with Precious from Beyond Suffrage to find out more. Where can I advertise to attract applications from younger trustees?You can advertise your roles for free through the Young Trustees Movement Digital Hub (register and post the opportunity) & webpage (submit this form). We’d also recommend using social media to help (Twitter and Linkedin are best). If you tag @YoungTrustees we can share your posts with our networks.  There are various other websites you can use to promote the opportunity. We’ve included a list below, some are free and others you need to pay to advertise: Do it.org’s Trustee FinderGetting on BoardNCVO’s Trustee bankReach VolunteeringStep on BoardTrustees UnlimitedThe ForeSmall Charities CoalitionTrustees UnlimitedInspiring Governance (for schools)You could also search for your local volunteering centre and ask to advertise there and Charity People can help you with targeted searches for trustees and senior leadership roles.What do young people get from being a trustee?There are lots of reasons you might want to become a trustee and plenty you can gain from it. I think some of the main benefits are to:Develop skillsGrow your networkLearn about governance and understand how the charity sector worksMake friendsGive you a sense of fulfilment  (that warm feeling)Read the full blog from the Young Trustees Movement on this here. What practical action can you take with your board or subcommittee to encourage inclusivity?The Young Trustees Movement run a one hour training session on how to reflect on your practices as a board or committee and address any assumptions or practices that might be a barrier to working inclusively. Members of your board can book onto a training via this link. By the end of the session, attendees will: Understand the power of young trustees Have a framework to understand how to approach board diversity.Plan practical next steps.What happens when your young trustees get older and you no longer have young trustees? The short answer to this is setting term limits! Having terms limits can be a useful way to ensure that your board develops over time and that new ideas and perspectives can be brought in. You can read a blog from Bill Yuksel - who stepped down from his role as Young Trustees Movement Ambassador with the hope of creating space for younger people to lead the movement and amplify their voices. Find out why he thought this was important here. --------If you would like to view the full recording of the Charity People and Young Trustees Movement session on 'Why and how to recruit younger trustees to your board or find out how Charity People can help with your trustee search, please contact Philippa Randle on philippa@charitypeople.co.uk​

​by Glen Manners​On Tuesday 24th November 2020, I hosted four expert panelists to share their experiences of moving to exclusively digital membership through the pandemic:​• Sheetal Girdhari, Head of Marketing & Membership, Institute of Hospitality• Abby Wright-Parkes, Director of Membership & Marketing, FSRH• Jennifer Sowerby, Data and Digital Lead, ACEVO• Sarah Clark, Head of Membership, CharityComms​We talked about a wide range of topics, including digital steps to improve member experience and learnings from the lockdowns.  In this clip, Glen talks to the panelists about how to go digital on a shoestring budget:​Top tips include:Taking advantage of free or low-cost, cloud-based solutionsUpskilling your team by encouraging those keen to learn to take advantage of the free training available. Collaborating and co-producing with other organisations to learn from them. Ensuring that when you are recruiting, you are recruiting with digital skills in mind. If you would like to find out more about the webinar or have a conversation about the current trends in membership, please contact Glen Manners at glen@charitypeople.co.uk

​By Tanya WhiteAccording to a survey [1], 35.19% of people feel that their mental health has been negatively affected by Covid-19.For vulnerable people, not knowing where to get help could prolong the stress and anxiety, possibly causing more serious mental health issues in the future. A shocking 11.6% of respondents reported that they have mental health problems now but didn’t have any before Covid-19*. With more of us feeling anxious and stressed, the need for wellbeing support from employers is even greater.Remote working can be difficult without the presence of your teammates. Gone are the days of reaching over to a colleague to ask what they are eating for lunch or deciding which Spotify playlist to put on to suit the office ambience for the day. Having been furloughed for almost 6 months, and then returning to work (from home) I have come to realise just how important team wellbeing support and continuing to build staff morale is when you have a team of 20 scattered across the whole of England. Long days at home in absence of these familiar things and office comforts can lead to feelings of isolation and disconnect.Supporting your charity’s employees with wellbeing:Offer assurance – One of the many things I can praise Charity People for is their complete transparency on the company forecast (although much of it has been unpredictable) for the year. Having open regular communication and feedback from the Senior Leadership Team is greatly received particularly during a time of uncertainty, and in doing so you are building trust and employees value the honesty.Open communication – It’s easy to feel isolated when working from home so creating a culture of openness with regular two-way communication will encourage employees to open up about any concerns they have. At Charity People, to help people feel more connected to their teammates, we encourage conversation by phone or Zoom rather than email, which can be impersonal. Weekly check-ins with your team and fortnightly senior leadership team meetings with business updates over video calls work well for engaging with team members and motivating them.Access to mental wellbeing support – Offering access to professionals who can help prevent stress and anxiety turning into a long term mental health illness is a good way to support your employees. Here at Charity People, we are consistently reminded that we have access to a confidential telephone counselling service, and we can talk to a trained counsellor about any worries that we may be having about the impact of coronavirus whether work-related or not.Clear signposting – Having a mental wellbeing representative at the forefront of your employees minds so they know who to turn to at work, is essential for all staff. At Charity People, we have devised a new platform called The Support Squad, which is available for all staff to call 24/7 if they are feeling anxious, down, or just need a good old vent about recruitment or life in general. Two of our consultants, Neil Hogan and Tatiana Ambrose, have promised that at the end of the line there will be a friendly, non-judgemental voice simply to listen to or even to offer advice or support.Being mindful – Everyone needs to be considerate of the different circumstances affecting each team member during the pandemic. Employees may be looking after children at home, or have responsibilities caring for elderly relatives, and may need additional flexibility to help them cope with working and home-life at the same time. Flexible working hours may help others too. At Charity People, we encourage staff to be flexible with their time (without it necessarily interrupting business operations). For example, taking a slightly longer lunch break to go for a long walk could do wonders for your wellbeing and massively help productivity levels. This kind of flexibility may help to reduce additional stresses taking hold for the individual and increase loyalty towards the company.Work/life balance - When working from home the lines between work life and home life are easily blurred, with staff members feeling pressured to work harder than before, leading to extra stress and burnout. At Charity People line managers will encourage conversations between line managers and team members around current workloads, encouraging them to “switch off” at the end of the day to look after their physical and mental wellbeing.Case Study: University of the Arts London (UAL)We spoke with Vicky Fabbri, the Enterprise & Events Team Manager at UAL, who co-designed a wellbeing plan with her wider team of 20 when she felt that the second lockdown was having more of a negative effect than the first. Vicky felt that it was important to have an open discussion about people’s wellbeing, the support they needed, and how they were personally affected by the lockdown. What also came from that meeting was an impressive list of 12 work and non-work related actions and approaches that they could use during this time. Examples are a team weekly ‘happy hour’ diarised for all, where individuals spend time doing something that makes them happy. Activities so far have included Lino printing, yoga, reading, making clothes and long walks. Vicky who is a run leader herself is also in the process of starting a run challenge with her team. With weekly running sessions planned the team aim to run 5K by Xmas, 10K by February, and will be applying for places in a half marathon taking place in May. What has also been a real success is their team WhatsApp group which has a strict ‘no work talk allowed’ policy. It is a place to share outcomes of the happy hour activities, and to build team morale.Ideas from Charity PeopleFor Charity People carrying on the tradition of work socials is a must even when working from home. Consultant Stuart Milliner has been kind enough to take the lead in creating regular and creative activities for the whole team to take part in. We’ve had a show and tell video social, played our own version of Room 101, got creative in “Drawasaurus”, and taken part in plenty of general knowledge quizzes (with the latest involving finding the strangest thing in your household and getting team members to guess who it belongs to). Other activities have involved pumpkin carving competitions, film and movie club, book club, yoga hour and wellbeing weeks in which staff members are encouraged to take time out during the workday to do something positive for their wellbeing.Director Nick Billingham also highlights the importance of wellbeing… “In the future we will all look back on the year of 2020 as the time where everything changed. In my opinion, anyone leading a team or organisation has a duty to recognise just how monumental this year has been in all of our lives. The need to look after your staff has never been more prevalent and whilst we’re all making this up as we go along, it is every leader’s duty to try and keep their staff engaged with their work and the wider organisation, but more importantly their duty to support their team as individuals with their wellbeing. I can’t say we have got all of this right at Charity People but I can promise it has played a big part in a lot of our decision making, during what we all remember as a turbulent year”. Charities should be doing as much as possible to safeguard the wellbeing of their staff during this period of disruption to normal life, and a collaborative team approach is important when figuring out the optimal arrangements for your team and the individuals within it. Having open conversations asking what can be done to help or assist can reduce employees’ stress levels and also builds trust within the company. With honest communication, practical support measures and enjoyable shared activities, everyone feels like a part of the team - no matter where they are working from.[1] by Beneden Health on 2,415 UK residents about the Impact of Covid-19 on Mental Wellbeing

​It’s a tough time to enter the job market or to transfer from one sector to another, but I have pulled together some advice and resources to help you make the transition into the charity sector.I interact with scores of people searching for new jobs and am often approached by people who are looking to get into charity sector.  Recently there have been more enquiries than ever! So many people are recognising that they want to make a difference in the world and to find a role which offers more meaning, with a sense of purpose and enjoyment. Getting into the charity sector takes perseverance. Historically, volunteering or taking on temporary assignments were a good route. However, the truth is, there aren’t many temporary jobs at the moment and charities are less likely to take on someone who has no sector experience for a permanent role. What we also have to consider is that it is a candidate rich market and therefore very competitive. That said, we do expect the temp job market will pick up again in the new year as teams will require support to manage with pressure and workload.But what can you do in the meantime? Here are some tips and advice…A SWOT analysis is useful in many situations, and this is one of them. Think about your transferrable skills, your strengths, what kind of working environment do you want to be a part of, what are your passions. Thoroughly investigate your reasons for your career pivot and what would you like to be doing during your working day. Don’t forget to review areas of weakness, what’s holding you back, then you can assess how to overcome the obstacles and what actions to take.  Keep a note of opportunities to gain experience or skills as they arise and be mindful of threats within the sector that may impact your search - keeping an eye on the sector press such as Third Sector, Civil Society, UK Fundraising and the Charity Comms blog may be useful.Build your network; connect with and speak to as many people as you can who are involved within the charity sector. This could be trustees, staff, volunteers or suppliers. Asking for a 15 minute virtual coffee for advice may be a good place to start.   Manage your expectations, it can take 6-12 months to make a transition, even longer if it involves studying or training. Ask yourself, ‘What are you willing to invest to change your work life/career for the better’? A quote comes to mind ‘never stop learning, because life never stops teaching’.We have put together detailed guides below for new charity sector candidates to explore further: maximising your social media presence, job-seeking tactics and presentation of CV’s and cover letters play a major part in your job search. If you need any additional advice please get in touch and we will connect you to the specialist consultant that is most relevant to your job search. We cover Finance, HR, Fundraising, Marketing, Data, Digital, Communications, Projects, Office Support and Senior Appointments.Job seeking tips during lockdownHow to maximize social media when job seekingWriting a winning CV and Cover Letter

​By Philippa Randle - Senior Consultant, Senior Fundraising.As part of Black History Month, we would like to shine the light on the incredible work of Malcolm John, addressing inequality in charity boardrooms and the lack of racial diversity at the governance level.Research shows that 9.6% of trustees in major UK charities are from Black, Asian and other minority backgrounds and just 2.9% of trustees in the sector are women of colour when around 14% of people in the UK are from racially diverse backgrounds. Malcolm founded Action for Trustee Racial Diversity (ATRD) to promote practical steps charities can take to address the significant and longstanding under-representation of people from Black and Asian backgrounds on charity Trustee Boards across the UK.The campaign is supported by ACEVO, Association of Chairs, NCVO and Getting on Board and at Charity People we support and have collaborated with ATRD on our diversity search programme.   We asked Malcolm for his insight into the racial diversity journey in the charity sector:Do you think there has been a shift in thinking around racism and racial diversity in the charity sector during 2020?Yes, I think that there has been a shift of thinking within the predominantly white charity sector this year. A recognition that, overall, the sector needs to be much more racially diverse at board and senior management level than it is currently.  I don’t doubt that this has come to the fore because of the disproportionate impact of COVID on Black and Asian communities, the Black Lives Matter movement and the horrific murder of George Floyd in the US.  However, a shift in thinking - whilst welcome and long overdue -  will have no impact unless it is strongly underpinned by SMART actions starting from the top of organisations and strongly influenced and shaped by Black and Asian staff, trustees, volunteers and most of all service users. What have you witnessed as barriers to undertaking trusteeships in charities for people of colour?Through the Action for Trustee Racial Diversity campaign, I’ve been able to research and evidence the barriers to achieving racial diversity on trustee Boards from the perspectives of recruiters and aspiring Black and Asian trustees.  My own campaign volunteers from Black and Asian backgrounds have highlighted to me their own disappointing experiences of applying for trusteeships and their hope to understand more about how to overcome the hurdles they have faced by volunteering for the campaign.  The key barriers which we’ve identified are:the overwhelming perception of the charity sector by people from Black and Asian backgrounds as “not for me”the eternal question of “where are people like me” at decision-making levels.   charities themselves need to do much more to sell themselves as organisations which would benefit hugely from more diverse trustees bringing the skills and experience that charities need.charities must also promote the benefits that being a trustee brings to individuals.charities need to rethink and rewrite their, generally prohibitive and exclusive, trustee recruitment criteria. For instance, don’t ask for prior trusteeship or senior management experience which many aspiring Black and Asian trustees might not have.After acknowledging the issue, what sorts of first steps do you advise organisations take in addressing racial diversity on their boards?Be honest about your previous failings to achieve a racially diverse trustee Board and publicly set out your commitment to address this and the actions you will take.  Be clear about the skills and experience your charity needs though a diversity and skills audit and recruit for those skills and experience.Don’t just decide to recruit only one Black or Asian trustee; too often, perhaps mistakenly, seen as tokenismPrioritise and make the time and put in the required effort and resources into engaging and attracting trustee applicants from researched and targeted Black and Asian networks and organisations; use the Action for Trustee Racial Diversity unique database of Black and Asian network organisations across the UK.Ensure that your charity’s culture and environment is supportive and inclusive for new Black and Asian trustees so that they stay. How does having a racially diverse board benefit charities?For me, the key benefits to charities are that a racially diverse Board: enables the charity to draw from a wider talent pool of potential trustees than it has traditionally.  gives the charity greater diversity of thinking and experiences to improve its creativity and decision making.  gives the charity’s service users and wider communities, if they are also racially diverse, more confidence that the charity is representative of them.  helps them to attract and recruit a more racially diverse team of staff and volunteers.   Can you give us an example of an organisation you’ve worked with that you would describe as a bright spot for overcoming a lack of racial diversity on their board?I wouldn’t really want to pick out one specific organisation that I’ve worked with as part of this campaign.  I’ve been very encouraged by the range of organisations that have approached me for help and advice - large and small and from all parts of the UK.  The best ones for me are those which realise that recruiting Black or Asian trustees alone is not enough but that they must develop and sustain inclusive practices all throughout their charity.  Such charities also realise that the process of engaging, attracting and winning the confidence of potential trustees from Black and Asian communities and organisations needs to start well before they actually need to fill their trustee vacancies!More information on Malcolm and Action for Trustee Racial Diversity (ATRD):Recruiting trustees from Black and Asian networks – it really isn’t rocket science’You can support their work by donating here.

​by Stuart Milliner - Trusts, Statutory and Institutional Fundraising specialist  We have already seen some significant, dynamic shifts from funders to address the rapidly changing environment that charities are operating, but what do senior managers in Trusts, Statutory and Institutional funding think the future holds for their funding streams?Emergency funding Emergency funding was made available almost instantly after the announcement of lockdown. This was crucial for charities to gain income at a critical time where huge amounts were lost from  Community, Events and Corporate fundraising. ‘After all the incredible emergency funding that was made available so quickly in response to the  pandemic and lockdown restrictions, the biggest challenge as I see it, is how we fund the recovery  period and what role trusts and statutory bodies can play given they brought forward so much  funding’ – Senior Trusts Manager – National Youth charity Budgeting for this emergency funding is a hard task, especially when looking into next year. For those charities that received a good amount from funders, it’s realistic to consider that the same may not be available in the next financial year. It’s a concerning feeling to know that you have weathered the initial storm of COVID and now have a task of making up the funding that won’t be available next year, given that we will likely still be in the quagmire of COVID at that time.  ‘I am anticipating a dip in the funds available from trusts and statutory funding pots over the next  financial years, as we have 'borrowed' from future years to create emergency funds to take us  through the last six months’ – Trusts and Grants Manager – Children’s Mental health charity Relationship Management The main focus for TSI fundraisers moving forward is relationship management. Naturally, this was a  common practice prior to lockdown, but sector experts believe that this is going to be more important than ever before.  There won’t be as much money available for new funding opportunities, so the focus will be on the funders that are already committed to your charity and ensuring those relationships are as strong as they can possibly be.  ‘Our emphasis, also our success, has come from working with those funders who have given to us previously. We have found through COVID that our closest funders have been more generous than before. We have simply been very clear and honest with our position; the response has been  tremendous’ – Head of Trusts – Children’s welfare charity Transparency in the sector has been incredibly important in recent years in light of some negative media attention. Numerous ‘Heads of’ have spoken to me about the incredible success they have had with warm funders. Being completely open and honest about the current challenges their charity is facing and the likely impact on beneficiaries has led to successful asks for additional support.  Some great advice shared with me on this topic includes: making interactions with funders more personal; using case studies; being memorable and making sure you stick to your time frames.  The extra bits you can be doing to strengthen these relationships will have more of an impact in the current climate, particularly as there will be more competition now than ever before.  ‘More one-to-one dialogue with funders (albeit virtual) and closer relationships, collaboration and engagement between trusts and charities. Greater competition will require more impact data,  business planning and evidence of need in applications. I suspect the most vulnerable communities  will attract most funding.’ Karen Ruskin – Head of Trusts and Foundations – Teenage Cancer Trust  Diversifying funding and applications During COVID, funders have widened their goalposts and been open to more applications that may have fallen outside of their criteria previously. They have also been more open to digital applications.  ‘The biggest change I’ve seen is funders becoming more flexible e.g.: allowing charities to use  grants in different ways when projects have had to be cancelled, broadening their application  criteria, and more trusts accepting digital applications rather than paper postage, which was  essential when working from home during lockdown’ Faye Gunton – Trusts and Statutory Manager  – Asthma UK Considering how we have all had to adapt to a different way of working, it is safe to make an assumption that funders may permanently change how they receive applications. In much the same way as we have adapted to home working and flexible working, funders are becoming accustomed to primarily receiving digital applications.  As well as the style of application, there is increased diversity in the organisations being funded. Historically, charities with strong reserves have missed out and charities with strong applications and without significant reserves have been prioritised. However, many charities have now had to dip into the reserves to stay afloat. Funders are aware of this and are now more inclined to fund those charities with reserves as this pandemic has outlined the importance of having that pot available.  ‘Previously, funders would potentially be more closed off to those charities with higher reserves.  Since the pandemic, funders have become more aware of the need for charities to hold reserves, to overcome crisis such as this, and therefore more open to offering funds to charities whose reserve  levels may have been deemed too high in years gone by. This is something that may continue in the future’. Kev Mounce – Trusts and Foundations Manager – Starlight Children’s FoundationIt has been a good period to see funders being more open to how the money is used at charities.  With a huge amount of programmes coming to a temporary end, allowing charities to spend their money with more flexibility has been important.Regardless of the status of your funds or the style of your application, there are two things that are of primary importance to funders - case studies and clarity.   I spoke with a Grants Manager who has been in a very hectic role throughout COVID, his charity has been screening applications more frequently than ever before. He told me that case studies cannot be undervalued. There are some incredible stories about organisations adapting to meet their beneficiaries needs through COVID which should be heard. Working closely with your internal teams will only strengthen your work when putting together compelling applications. There is much to gain from regular communication with your programme teams, as they are the ones on the frontline with the benefactors of the charity’s services, and will be your source for case studies. Changing financial targets to KPIs At Charity People we work towards financial targets rather than KPIs. Given that there has been a downturn in income, it’s a difficult time to budget and set financial targets. KPIs are an alternative to setting the financial target for the year. It’s hard to predict a quantitative target at the moment and many organisations, like Charity People, have found other ways of  assessing performances.  Should we continue to set financial targets for the short term or move to KPIs? It’s been a great question to put forward to a number of senior managers who are actively making this decision. ‘We have changed the way we view success. Rather than risking the team falling short of targets,  we have created a method of assessing performance through such things as, quality prospects,  strengthening warm prospects, new business and more’ - Head of Trusts and Statutory –  International Development charity  The worst thing at the moment would be to set fundraisers in your team unrealistic targets. Basing targets on the charity's spend simply shouldn’t happen. There should be a conversation with them to come up with something that is achievable. It may be worth looking at KPIs instead, some  examples could include: - How many new funders have been contacted? - Were there any solid prospects engaged this week/month? - How many warm funders have you spoken with? - What are you doing out of the ordinary to engage new or existing funders? It’s something worth considering as it can be a tool used for motivation as well as building confidence.  Lastly, you should feel comfortable discussing your target with your line manager. It can be a tough conversation, but it’s particularly important to do so at this time. However, you should go into those meetings with evidence when re-assessing your targets. Ensure that the pipeline is clear and that future prospects are accounted for when speaking to your line manager. This may not apply to many, but for those who are in a situation where they feel the target is too ambitious at this time,  it’s worth considering.  Moving forwardI was fortunate to speak with so many talented fundraisers from the sector when gathering this information. After hearing from these professionals, I have no doubt that we will come out of the other side of this stronger.  I hope you find this information useful and encourages you to have further conversations with your peers.  If you would like to share any of your experiences or insights with me, please do not hesitate to get in touch.  A big thank you to those who set aside time to speak with me and share their knowledge with all of us.Stuart Milliner: LinkedIn, Charity People

​I should start by saying, the answers that follow are my views on the sector as a whole and as such, the sector is treated homogeneously. However, there are always outliers; some organisations that are leaders on something and some that don’t do it at all. These are my personal views – I don’t expect everyone to agree and indeed would be surprised if they did! Unlike some in our sector, I do not view charities as being the answer to all the world’s ills, nor the way to solve all its problems. I do get annoyed sometimes when some in the sector act as if all knowledge and experience lies with us and we should be the ones to do everything to help those we seek to support. I don’t believe that is our role at all – I believe we are there to help when others won’t, or can’t and to bring a user perspective where perhaps it is seldom heard. I believe it is our role to drive up the levels of service our beneficiaries (another word I don’t really like!) receive and expect – not to seek to supply all services ourselves.So here are my views on a few of the many, fascinating, questions that you posed – as I say, I don’t expect everyone to agree but hopefully they might spark some discussion. How do you think the sector is doing on digital transformation?Cr*p in many cases. If I hear one more charity CEO (or worse Chair) rabbit on about how they are digitally transforming their organisation and discover they mean they are getting a new website, I shall scream! In most cases I don’t believe the sector knows what digital transformation actually is – you can tell that by two things; a) the number of organisations who “get in a consultant” and believe that’s how you digitally transform and b) the number who believe it is about tools and gadgets, many of which are expensive and therefore “we can’t afford to do it”. You don’t digitally transform by bringing in a consultant and it isn’t about gadgets – it is about processes, systems and more importantly, thinking differently. The latter is probably why many in the sector aren’t keen on it.Digital transformation is about your entire organisation – everything about it – and taking a long, hard look at what works and what doesn’t. It has to be led – not by consultants - but by the CEO and the SMT. If it isn’t, it is highly unlikely to get traction and after a few brief gasps will sink down the agenda never to be seen again. I think the reason many in the sector find it frightening is that it requires you to say “we don’t do this well” or even “we are appalling at this” and it is often in our most established systems with long-serving staff where this occurs. We aren’t very good at facing and admitting failure – just look at how many annual reports sound as if they have solved the world’s problems but seldom admit what didn’t work. I think Covid has made many organisations do more digitally – ourselves included. We have had little choice. But I doubt many have genuinely “transformed” – most have digitally adapted and changed, which isn’t the same thing. The latter is a reaction to circumstances imposed from outside, the former is an intentional move to change. The pandemic has started many of us on the road to digitally changing, it could lead to digital transformation but on its own, it won’t. If you don’t lead the process as the CEO and if you aren’t willing to have honest conversations – difficult though they may be – then you may change, but you won’t transform.  If you earn £100K+ are you comfortable with that, considering when people donate £5, £10, £15 they think it will make a difference to the actual services that people receive?Ok, I do earn more than £100K! I really wish the sector would stop beating itself up over this and tying itself into knots. Salary should be paid according to:the organisation’s size its complexity as a business (and yes, we are a business – stop pretending otherwise)  performance. It should also reflect the charity’s aspiration for the future, or current situation. The sort of salary that CEOs (in general) are on isn’t that different from Head Teachers across the country and is below what the civil service pays its leaders. Unlike either group we have to raise the funds to keep the whole show on the road and that (as anyone who has employed a leading fundraiser knows) comes at a premium.We are running a fairly significant size of business, with a multitude of demanding (and often conflicting) demands and expectations and we are growing organisations which are satisfying and delivering for their stakeholders. So we should be paid accordingly. If we aren’t doing those things, then our own performance (and jobs!) should be on the line. If you are a CEO earning £100k+ for crying out loud stop being so defensive. If you believe you are worth it and your organisation agrees, then you can justify it. If you aren’t performing or you don’t think you are worth it – then do something about it.What's the optimum size for a charity? Can a charity be too big?This was my favourite question, though maybe not for the reason that you might think. Thank you to whoever asked it – it is genuinely interesting and has had me thinking whether there is an optimum size or not. I think there is – but I suspect there is no algorithm that we can use to determine it. I absolutely think a charity can be too large. Sometimes a charity – for all the right reasons – can get so large, or dominant (depends how you wish to interpret “large”) that it can suck initiative and innovation out of that part of the sector. It becomes in effect a monopoly and few would regard monopolies as being innovative or quick to respond to change in the environment they exist in. It is one of the refreshing things over the last 10 years or so to see new charities burst out of existing sectors and really capture the public imagination and support. I can think of examples, particularly in the armed services and mental health sectors, where a newcomer on the block clearly got traction with the public very quickly in a way that their more established sister charities weren’t. However, I also think charities can get too small. Where you have a plethora of small one & two person organisations all in the same space it dilutes the funding and support available and makes it unlikely that any of them can grow particularly easily. There was another question asked about how larger charities can support smaller charities and I think this is an area where they could. Smaller charities could come under the wing of larger ones and still be distinctive. They could still have their own boards and operating models but by working under a larger one, they could save themselves cost and establishment costs. But it would require both sides to show goodwill and a willingness to “let go” a bit. I am not sure how often I genuinely see that willingness in the sector. Do you seek to make your charity obsolete by fundamentally addressing the root causes of the issues you address?This is such a deep question and it requires us to think beyond the “here and now” and to almost wave a magic wand.  The answer is you absolutely should, but the reality is I can’t think of a single example where it has happened.There are lots of practical reasons for that – we often find ourselves dealing with the “here and now”, the everyday effects of our cause on the people we seek to help; those with cancer, the homeless, refugees whatever group it happens to be. We are so busy with the immediate need it is really tough to allocate resources and effort away from that and use it on the root causes – whether that is research or awareness. Indeed in tough times like this it is usually research & awareness raising that are the first under the knife. Yet I would argue that they – and income generation are the very ones you need most when times are tough.I say this for two reasons – on fundraising one of my directors in a previous role found himself sitting next to John Caldwell at a dinner many years ago as the country was entering one of the recessions. He was the Director of Fundraising and was about to face a difficult Board meeting the next day. He asked the founder of Car Phone Warehouse what effect the recession was having on his business. “Simple” came the reply “I double my marketing spend, then double it again”. The reason? Everyone else was cutting theirs and this was his chance to grow market share. And he did.On research and awareness. Again, an anecdote – again a true one. Again, one of my directors used to work for a very old benevolent charity which hadn’t been particularly known for innovation until a new team began to chase research and media opportunities. They were highly successful and from being unknown the charity was often on BBC news and running major policy campaigns. The new CEO was utterly perplexed as to why he should authorise money being spent on research and media which could go towards grants instead. He only got the message when my colleague told him “If you are walking along a river and there are bodies floating down, you can spend all your time pulling them out or you can send someone up stream to see what’s causing it. They might find the bridge has fallen down and be able to stop people going on it and ending up in the river.” He got it – but he never really wanted to do it!  What does best practice look like when empowering and developing your middle management/succession planning?Your biggest investment as an organisation, by a long way, are your staff and the difference that a motivated and empowered senior and middle management make is disproportionate to their cost. Put simply, whatever you want for your organisation in the future is unlikely to happen if you don’t have the right Directors and Managers, motivated, on-side and empowered. Get that right and your chances of success are massively improved.In my organisation this is an area that has come right in the last few years and you can see it in everything the organisation does – from its interactions with funders and supporters to the way people talk to each other and behave. It makes coming to work an increasing joy. So what made it right?First have you got the right people? If you haven’t, no matter how difficult it may be, you need to move them on. Your chances of changing behaviour at senior management level is limited – no matter how brilliant a mentor and coach you think you are. Don’t kid yourself. If they aren’t the right people for the task you owe it to the organisation and to yourself to move them on. If you don’t, then you are failing in your role.Second, work out what you want for the organisation or from it. What is it you actually want for the future and keep it simple; growth, consolidation, more income, more focused service offering, whatever. Don’t over complicate it. Then share it with your key team – don’t be restricted by titles when you do this. Compile in your mind a “coalition of the willing” – the people in your organisation (and maybe even those outside it) who you think have the willingness, the skills and the capacity to make what you want happen. Share it with them and listen to what they have to say – that is one of the advantages of keeping it simple; you let them fill in the details which means they are more likely to achieve it.Then – and here is the crux - et them get on with it. Don’t micromanage, try not to interfere or fiddle with what they are doing and give them the time and (where possible) the resource to succeed. You lead – but don’t put them on a lead. Let them earn their money, you focus on the bigger picture or on putting out the inevitable fires that will spring up. If you do that and set a realistic time frame you have a chance of success.      How do you look after your own wellbeing, as well as your teams?At the present moment I think this is probably one of the most important questions you could ask. Thank you whoever asked it. The last few months have shepherded in home-working in a way that I had never dreamed possible. Without a doubt it is here to stay and that presents every manager and every organisation with a real challenge – how do you run a staff team when you can’t see them in person and how do you ensure their wellbeing. It is a learning curve for all of us and one that still has a very long way to go until we know the answers.However, in my view the key to this (as to so much else) is communication. It might not ensure wellbeing in and of itself but a lack of it will certainly not help wellbeing. Staff need to know you care, they need to know they aren’t alone or forgotten and they need to know they are valued. During lockdown I wrote a card to every member of staff who was furloughed telling them they were appreciated and we were looking forward to having them back. When staff returned from furlough I wrote to all those that hadn’t been furloughed and said how grateful we were and how I appreciated all they had done to cover for staff who were on furlough. The cost? Probably £20 – the effect, enormous. It shows you are thinking of them as individuals and shows them you care. It tells them they are wanted – and that is hugely motivating. A weekly blog telling people what you are doing personally – your first meal out after lockdown, your first weekend away, your first BBQ with friends – as well as what is going on in the organisation all engenders a sense that we are in this together. You would be amazed how effective such things can be.There are other things you can do at minimal cost – we recently created “well being days” for staff which are days they can take off at short notice to do something that means a lot to them – volunteering, caring for family, going for a long walk with the dog, whatever it is that counts to them. It doesn’t really cost you much but just the fact they know they can have some time to themselves is hugely advantageous. A final thought – I doubt we will be having many Christmas parties this year. Send your staff a small present at home, arrange a zoom call for everyone to have a glass of wine and a mince pie together. Send them a note in a card and on it – say thank you! You’ll be amazed how much it is appreciated. ​

​Guest blog by Jane Curtis, The Charity Event SpecialistsEvents Fundraisers are a resilient bunch - if we don’t get enough sign-ups for an event or the weather has its own ideas about our plans, we have a plan B.  The problem with the current situation is that continued, rapid change means having a plan B, C, D & E!  We also shouldn’t underestimate the public and our supporter’s acceptance of change and adaptability.  We’ve seen huge take-up of virtual events and millions raised by individuals with an idea and a passion for their cause.   This isn’t the first time we have had to face change and it definitely won’t be the last. Who remembers the Millenium Bug, smoking bans, the introduction of chip and pin, the arrival of the internet even!"This shake-up to the way we do things did need to happen"I started working in charity events in 2000 and honestly, in 20 years, there hasn’t been much change to the types of events we work on.  Meanwhile the world has undergone massive change, so this shake-up to the way we do things did need to happen. Wouldn’t it be amazing if, rather than thinking about 2020 as the death of fundraising events, we think of it as the year they were reborn?I would love to see charities grasp this opportunity with both hands and propel events fundraising into 2021 and beyond.  Vision for the futureHere is my vision for the future of charity events:Collaboration becomes commonplace and is actively encouraged.  Collaboration with other teams, with other charities, with the for-profit sector.  It happens regularly and is completely ingrained in the way we do our business and the way we plan our events. Fundraising Teams will bravely pilot event ideas and test out a variety of on and offline activity.  There’s no such thing as failed events, everything is a learning opportunity to hone, tweak and adapt for better results.Charities will support their DIY events participants as they increase in volume and sophistication using digital tools.  It is commonplace for Millennials and Gen Z’s to support causes they feel passionately about in their own way.  Charities are set up to properly support them in doing that.Investing in new activity is just that, an investment, not a cost. Charities will be proud to invest in their products, activities, and staff to ensure the best returns.   Event committees are overhauled and are no longer filled with an unrepresentative panel of people who have been involved for many years. Volunteering with an event committee is considered a valuable, career-building activity, diverse representation is prioritised and recruitment supported internally. Annual event calendars are abolished in favour of 3 year calendars.  A longer-term calendar would take the pressure off events teams, allowing for more testing, insight and feedback, learning, improving and growing.  A more sustainable programme. Events are no longer created or treated as fundraisers in their own right.  They are a tool to long term support, they open doors to a wide variety of income and raise awareness of the charity and the beneficiaries it serves.  Fundraising is not the main driver. All of these things are achievable and possible.  Will it take an appetite for change and risk? Yes.  Will it take a sector-wide cultural shift?  Yes.  But nothing happens until something moves.  It just takes all of us to be intentional about taking action and moving forwards, no matter how small those steps are. Events will come back.  Some will look very different.  But quite honestly that needed to happen.   Fundraising events pre-COVID were not perfect.  Old fashioned concepts that had run year after year with vast time and energy spent organising them, were not sustainable.  Certain stakeholders had too much power in decision making which made change close to impossible.  Events Fundraising Teams often got a bad reputation across the rest of the team as being ‘expensive’ so the true ROI was rarely reported. All this can change - let’s take the opportunity to make it happen. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the change in Events Fundraising right now, you’re not alone!  You may be worried about cancelled and postponed events and feeling uncertain about what the future holds.  I am offering a six-part FREE training experience called Doing Events Differently.  It will leave you feeling calm and confident and with absolute clarity on where to focus your time to ensure you have a robust events programme which is raising more money.  Places are limited so get your name on the waiting list now!​

​On Tuesday 29th September, we hosted a webinar on the future of regional fundraising. We were joined by almost 100 Regional and Community fundraising managers and specialists from the sector to hear from Charity People's Ellen Drummond, Amelia Lee and our expert panelists:Emma Douglas, Supporter Care Manager, BBC Children in NeedDee Solley, Head of National and Regional Fundraising, CrisisPaul Watkins, Director of Fundraising, Leeds CaresOur panelists talked about lockdown fundraising successes, challenges and opportunities, but also each gave a predication for the future - here's what they said:​​Charity People continues to champion the amazing work happening in UK regions and nations. If you would like to have a conversation about regional fundraising trends, changing skills requirements for regional and community fundraisers or your recruitment needs, please contact our Regional Directors Amelia Lee (Amelia@CharityPeople.co.uk) and Ellen Drummond (Ellen@CharityPeople.co.uk).

​We’ve heard a few interview horror stories over the years and I know from personal experience the weird and wonderful techniques that interviewers can use. I’ve been part of a process that lasted 6 stages for a graduate role I was applying for, one charming interviewer asked if I’d been too busy chasing boys at school to get better grades and I’ve been interviewed by someone in bare feet.It’s all part of the job-hunting process and we just have to accept it. Right?Wrong. We know that interviewers and interviewees want to improve the experience and we really care about improving recruitment practices in the sector.An interview for many of us is a daunting, unknown prospect, filled with trepidation, nerves and anticipation. What an unnatural situation to put ourselves in; meeting complete strangers across a table from us who catch us off guard asking complex questions and expecting the very best of us to shine. Then you add a socially distanced, virtual interview into the equation and it all just feels too much!What boggles my mind, is that we have all been there! All of us have attended an interview at one point or another. We all remember what it is like to write a CV, complete an application form and be offered an interview and we know the amount of preparation it all takes. Never mind the amount of time we take to pick out an outfit, iron said outfit, ask our partners whether it strikes the right tone, spend hours researching the organisation, preparing our answers, buying a train ticket and taking the day off work after coming up with a very awkward excuse. It is all exhausting!Interviewing is a two way process. The candidate needs to leave feeling engaged, excited and impressed too. They need to hear why you love working there, be shown round the office (virtually), describing what the environment is like, who sits where and what the coffee tastes like! It is also imperative to talk about the benefits that you offer including holiday allowance and parental leave - these things really matter to people.We have heard some wonderful interview stories too, which I’ve summarised as six tips in the hope that we can all learn to do this better.A coffee chat with the hiring manager or someone in the team. I love this idea! A really informal chat to hear more about the role and organisation. In a perfect world, this would be a real-life latte in a real-life coffee shop but we might have to settle for a virtual coffee at the moment. Don’t let this stop you though, after a couple of minutes you’ll forget that you’re not in the same room together and the conversation will flow. This could be conducted 30 minutes prior to the formal interview or it could be prior to a candidate even applying – either way, it puts a candidate at ease and humanises the entire process.Sending the interview questions in advance. (What a game changer!). We all know that we don’t tend to give the best version of ourselves when we are caught off guard or we are trying to ‘wing it’ so why are we intent on making candidates do this at interview? Surely a well thought out answer with lots of useful information is a better use of our time? I think this demonstrates a huge amount of respect for the person coming to meet you.Two-stage interview process only. I think this is enough, I really do. I mean what else are you trying to learn from someone and how many more hoops do they need to go through? I’d suggest using the first stage as a more formal meeting; finding out all the qualities that make a candidate suitable for the role and the second stage could be more informal; a way to find out what makes them unique and special, looking at what they can add to your organisation rather than how they can be a carbon copy of the person who was in the role before.You are being interviewed too! Sometimes interviewers can take on the role of interrogator, asking question after question with little or no sign of liking what a candidate has to say! Candidates can often leave thinking ‘I’m not sure if that went well’ and not really being sure whether they want the role anymore. It’s a good idea to leave lots of room for them to ask you questions and make the process more conversational rather than confrontational.Smile. Make eye contact, nod your head, listen intently and encourage a candidate to flourish. If a candidate feels comfortable, they will perform so much better. This is even more vital when interviewing remotely; you’ll need to work even harder to engage a potential recruit and build that rapport.Feedback, Feedback Feedback. There is NOTHING more important than this. Providing feedback demonstrates that you respect candidates as individuals, is testament to you as a person and as a hiring manager and reflects on your organisation as a whole. It can feel awkward to give someone feedback, particularly anything negative but as long as you give this constructively, it is the most important thing that you can do for someone. It may be their first interview, it may be their 50th, but they will never improve if you aren’t honest with them. Take the time to provide detailed, constructive, supportive feedback to every single candidate that you meet.Job-hunting is never easy but we can do our best to provide a warm, welcoming and supportive environment for a candidate to really shine.Be kind has been the motto of 2020 and at a time where redundancies are commonplace across our sector, it is even more important to be kind to each other through the interview process.

​During furlough I celebrated 10 years of working at Charity People. Whaaaaat, I thought!?!?! How did that happen? And it made me wonder what personal experiences I’d had during this time, so I reflected and realised that like a good anti-virus software, Charity People had been running in the background while some pretty significant stuff had gone down in my life. I’d gotten married, had two kids, lost a parent, wrote a book, and circumnavigated the globe; each a significant experience in its own right. And Charity People had really looked after me during these 10 years of life changing moments, which I am massively grateful for. As recruiters we love numbers, so crunching it up I also wanted to know what those 10 years had consisted of work-wise. I worked out that I’d completed 282 train commutes a year (yep, nearly 3000 over 10 years), had been mentored by 4 excellent line managers (David Lale, Carla Miller, Ed Percival and Nick Billingham), had 2 sabbaticals of 2 months each, been to over 400 Socials (give or take, could be closer to 600) and drunk around 4500 cups of tea and coffee (that’s a heck of a lot of liquid). Underpinning this is always a voice saying, ‘Are you doing the right thing with your career?’ And my gut feeling is that yes, I’m pretty sure I am. I specifically wanted to work with not-for-profit organisations 10 years ago, and I still do. It deeply motivates me to get out of bed in the morning knowing that I work with some of the most dedicated, selfless, interesting, holistic and kind people that I’ve ever had the chance to work with. I’m really proud to say that during the last 10 years I’ve helped over 300 inspiring people into positions in the Not-For-Profit sector (or one whole large organisation if you want to see it a different way). Sure, like all jobs it’s had its ups and downs, but working at Charity People has been a life changing experience for me and one I will always be grateful for. So I doff a cap to my employer of 10 challenging, fun and inspiring years. I truly am grateful for the opportunity to work with the Not-For-Profit Sector and look forward to placing more in the years ahead. Now for cuppa 4501… ​​

​We have all had to adapt to the remote, virtual world. Not being able to see friends and family as regularly has meant that most contact has been through computers and laptops. For charities delivering critical face-to-face services, this has been a significant challenge. In this blog, I'd like to share the story of the Starlight Children's Foundation's fast and creative adaptation of their services to provide emotional support and fun to children in hospital. A brave 10-year-old's virtual escapeStarlight have been supporting a 10-year-old girl with a severe illness which meant that from birth, the milk she was receiving from her mum went straight to her lungs. It’s a terrifying illness that needed immediate treatment. 10 years on and she is a vibrant child, but still struggling with respiratory illness. She makes regular trips to hospital, sometimes in an emergency, because she has to be resuscitated when the cartilage in her windpipe isn’t strong enough to keep her airway open, but also for regular periods to monitor her health and to update her equipment, such as her gastronomy button, which enables IV feeding. She's spent a lot of time in hospital, apart from her friends and COVID-19 has meant that she has seen less of family too. In a creative adaptation of their face-to-face services, Starlight were able to send her a ‘Starlight Boost Box’ which included cards and many other things for her to play with when she wasn’t able to interact with friends and family as much as normal. She learned to play a number of different card games and was able to show them off to the nurses. She also joined a Zoom call with Captain Fantastic for a ‘virtual escape’, along with some other children and her brother - which really special because it was an opportunity for them to do something together despite being apart. Not only has she received this life-enhancing treatment, but she has been able to raise over £1000 during COVID for other children in a similar situation to hers. Be more StarlightWe cannot underestimate the value of charities this difficult time: Charities like Startlight providing an opportunity to play as a contributor to successful treatment and healthy development for children with serious illness; Charities fighting to meet the needs of the millions of people worldwide in increased financial, physical and emotional hardship as a result of COVID-19. Stories like this make me and my colleagues at Charity People even more determined to support the sector as it adapts to meet new challenges. I have had the privilege to get to know many of the Starlight team over the past year - this story and the organisation really struck a chord in me. I would encourage you to find out more about Starlight and to even donate by visiting starlight.org.uk. Stuart Milliner – Senior Consultant

​We believe in fairness and equality and we fully recognise that when it comes to diversity and inclusion, the charity sector and much of what lies beyond has been found wanting. A fair, equitable approach to diversity and inclusion is the right path, morally and ethically, and one that will benefit the charity sector and everyone we serve.  Organisations with higher-than-average diversity have 19% higher innovation revenue than their competitors.  Full BAME representation could be worth £24 billion annually to the UK economy.  75% of the workforce by 2025 will be made up of millennials who want to work for innovative and diverse organisations (source: watchthisspace.co.uk).  Inclusive recruitment practices are a fundamental part of creating a diverse workforce and it falls to charities and recruitment agencies, like Charity People, to keep reimagining recruitment and make charity sector organisations and roles welcoming to everyone.  Change starts with becoming comfortable with discomfort...We’re taking a long, hard look at our approach and commitment to diversity and inclusion, particularly when it comes to race.  We’ve been on this journey for a while and we’ve recently come to a crossroads: carry on down a familiar path well-trodden or be bold and brave by stepping out of our comfort zone. If we’ve learned anything from the Black Lives Matter movement and the spotlight it justifiably shone on the charity sector through Charity So White, it’s that our aspiration as a team is to be bolder and braver.  We’re not yet where we want to be as an organisation and we’ve certainly made some mistakes.  We need to address BAME representation in senior leadership positions internally.  In considering tone and messaging we hesitated with our BLM statement and in hindsight wished we’d put it out earlier, although we’re proud of what we shared as a true reflection of our values.  We need to connect with more people of colour (POC) and BAME organisations to be able to provide the diverse shortlists that meet our aspirations. Now we’re on a path heading clearly and deliberately towards change. We’re learning to become comfortable in our own discomfort because we know that’s critical to taking action, learning and growing.  We’re proud to collaborate as a collective – black colleagues, Asian colleagues and allies together – to drive change both internally and externally.  We’re becoming better recruitment consultants as a result of that and our Diversity and Inclusion (D+I) Committee’s activity makes us positive and hopeful about our future.  The journey so far...Our D+I committee initially came together in early 2019 and we hosted our first diversity event on the topic of BAME representation in fundraising that summer in Manchester.  We acknowledged a need to address internal representation and our senior leadership team agreed to make diversity a recruitment priority for us going forward.  BRAP delivered a brilliant unconscious bias and diversity training session for our team in November 2019 and we created our Diversity and Inclusion Charter in December 2019 to empower and enable our consultants to:Support charities, through briefing, to ensure their job communications are inclusive; actively challenging specifications that exclude individuals or groups, which includes support for the #nongraduateswelcome campaign. Explain the benefits of stating a salary band in preventing unequal pay from being perpetuated and insist on including one in all job adverts.Encourage charity partners to consider transferable skills and ensure interview and assessment processes are set up inclusively for candidates with transferable skillsets.Have greater understanding of the part communications plays in attracting and excluding.  We introduced a diversity and inclusion statement on all external adverts. Share and agree communications before publishing to combat unconscious bias.Anonymise CVs and applications and remove protected characteristics for all exclusive roles. Monitor and evaluate performance by ensuring accurate reporting on our database. As a recruitment agency, our ability to reach diverse talent pools can either enable us to drive real change or see us perpetuate the problem.  One of our biggest opportunities to add value is tackling ‘substitution’ recruitment, which describes a tendency to only consider candidates with the exact same experience at a comparable organisation.  If we can begin to fish outside our predominantly white charity pools, that’s a good place to start. We have identified trustee appointments, marketing and communications, digital, corporate fundraising, individual giving, community and events, HR, finance, data and administration as job roles we regularly recruit with opportunity to explore wider talent pools and transferable skills from other sectors. We actively encourage our charity partners to seriously consider the benefits of transferable skills and how to change their interview practices to reflect this if they genuinely want more diverse shortlists.Alongside the day-to-day, we’ve been involved for many months now in getting a fledgling diversity project off the ground working alongside some of Manchester’s biggest and brightest Arts organisations.  Its aim is to raise awareness of fundraising in BAME communities and specifically provide opportunities for BAME fundraisers to enter, be supported and retained within the Arts sector.  Watch this space! COVID-19 setbacks...It felt like we were beginning to gain momentum when CV-19 hit; we’d made tangible changes and diversity was now high on the agenda for us as an organisation.  Having recently had a change in leadership with our Managing Director, Ed, retiring and Nick taking the reins we planned to re-evaluate our core values and make changes to our team structure.  When lockdown happened, we had to take advantage of the furlough scheme and were forced to quickly put a new structure in place to enable us to face the challenges ahead.  Real structural change takes time and our temporary senior leadership team isn’t as diverse as we want it to be longer term.  Rather than appoint permanently during this time with a team that doesn’t reflect our values and vision for the future, we’ve put 12-month interim contracts in place to allow us to navigate the current situation and hopefully rebuild after the full impact of CV-19 is better understood.  We have committed to our team to make the necessary changes for a more diverse future and during the next 12 months, we plan to engage a D+I expert to support us to achieve our goals.  Through lockdown, we offered everyone the opportunity to attend Fundraising Everywhere’s first ever BAME conference and found the content echoed our own experiences and reinforced our desire for change.  The journey continues...With the extra time created by recruitment freezes during lockdown, we launched a pilot project in Manchester to engage BAME individuals, networks and communities.  Aware of the issues surrounding the term BAME itself and the potential pitfalls of a blanket approach, we reached out independently to Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups.  We joined Greater Manchester BME network, linked up with the Institute of Directors North West who are already engaged in positive work in this space and have planned conversations with smaller groups and organisations.  By working collaboratively with BAME professionals already in our network, we’re reaching new individuals and communities.  It’s early days, but we’re pleased with the results so far and are now rolling out this approach in London too.  We’re proud to say we’ve got our first diversity-specific searches under our belts, so we’re building a blueprint of what a successful search looks like.  Teaming up with our social enterprise partner, Good Jobs, we’re hosting a free BAME recruitment clinic in November to share our learning with charities.  Our mission statement for the future:Charity People will actively reach out to diverse networks, groups and organisations to widen our talent pools. Charity People will work to overcome unconscious bias by ensuring the whole organisation takes part in continuous and ongoing diversity and inclusion training. Charity People commits to addressing internal issues of BAME representation at a senior level within the next 12 months.In a world where creativity and adaptability are so desperately needed, diversity becomes not just a moral and ethical issue, but a survival mechanism for the future.  We plan to be bolder and braver and would love to talk to individuals and organisations who feel the same.  Together we are stronger.In love and solidarity,Charity People

​Tuesday 18 August, 11 am 1-hour online clinic REGISTER NOW Whether you are looking for new staff, volunteers or trustees, your recruitment may now need to work in a different way. This free 1-hour clinic for small and medium sized charities is to help you think about how to change your systems and processes to get the most out of recruiting remotely.Recruiting and selecting without meeting in person can be a daunting experience for both recruiter and applicant. How you design the process is key so you get the most out of it. The session will include how to:write and share ads which stand out onlinemanage the shortlisting application process remotelyhold effective interviews online or by phoneuse virtual assessment toolsinduct and on-board new starters virtually.There will be opportunities to ask questions before and during the interactive session. You'll be given clear joining instructions for using our platform and resources will be made available afterwards.The platform will also give you access to other free courses Utopy has live.SIGN UP TODAY. Places are limited. The session is being designed in partnership between GoodJobs, Charity People and Utopy.This is a repeat of a session we ran in June.​

​Where do I start? It’s so difficult because returning to work from maternity leave is always fraught with such conflicting emotions…. when you add a global pandemic into the mix I mean…. mind blown! If I had to sum it up I would probably say it’s a mixed bag of: Sadness -  recognising that both me and little Freddie have moved into a new phase of our lives. Excitement - to be back at work, speaking to grownups about grown-up things and remembering that I actually love my job and my work family here at Charity People!Uncertainty - can I even remember how to do my job? I have 12 months of career moves and organisational change to catch up on! Fear - a very healthy dose of it! Are there any roles for me to actually recruit for!? Change - How do I support the people I am working with to find roles and the organisations who are currently in the midst of recruitment freezes and redundancies? Our sector, like so many others has been well and truly tested by Covid 19 and its far-reaching effects.Some things never changeWhat a different world we find ourselves in 2020! I can safely say things could not be more different than when I skipped out of the home office at the end of June last year. The way we work, the way we socialise, most aspects of our lives have changed dramatically in one way or another and everyone’s experience is different. What I do need to remember amidst all this is that in the wise words of Princess Anna of Arendelle (if you know you know), “some things never change.” Our connections to each other are still what drives the business of recruitment, so I plan to listen to what you need and keep being there to support you achieve your goals.  I also want to make sure I give a mention to my colleagues who lived every minute of this and made sure there was a job to come back to, the people who stayed and kept working even if it did feel a bit like being on the travellator (you know Gladiators… the bit at the end … a bit 90’s??) To you Amelia, Nick and Stuart thank you for weathering that storm it cannot have been easy! To my colleagues who have been and still are furloughed who found themselves thrown into this situation, I am so looking forward to having you back!Feeling gratefulIf I had to settle on one feeling, it would be gratitude. I am grateful for my job, grateful for the warm and supportive conversations I am already having with you. More than anything, I am grateful that I get to share and experience all of this with an amazing supportive bunch of people here at Charity People. An extra special thank you also goes to my job share/work wife Amelia who has been there every step of the way…. Yep definitely gratitude!

​My brother, a friend and I (maybe one other), are doing a 100,000 step challenge on Saturday 25th July 2020. It works out to be 80km across rugged Cornish terrain, which combines nearly all the walking I did in a week, into one day. We are starting at 05:30 in the morning and should finish around 22:30 at night.To put it into perspective, my wonderful partner and I did coastal walk two Sundays ago. We did nearly 19km and we finished almost like zombies. Completely drained. So we are attempting to quadruple that effort in one day. White Gold CornwallWe are Fundraising for the charity White Gold Cornwall. This is a charity that I worked for, for nearly 5 years and it is run by my Dad. White Gold Cornwall work one to one with disaffected and vulnerable children and young people from all walks of life. They intervene to offer support on a broad range of issues from challenging behaviours in school, to some very serious domestic and sexual abuse cases. Fundamentally, White Gold Cornwall are there for children and young people when they are most needed.Against the odds, through the lockdown period, they have been able to continue working with 31 children and young people who have difficult home lives with online and socially-distanced in person support. These few paragraphs can't do justice to their life-changing work - you can find out more via their website:https://www.whitegoldcornwall.co.uk/ Follow our journeyWe are fundraising for this charity so they can provide more to the people that they help. The money raised will be ring fenced for the children and young people. Below are the links to the actual walk and the Fundraising Page. Our new target is £1000. https://www.facebook.com/events/628724407737486/ - The walkhttps://www.facebook.com/donate/273477690608821/ - Fundraising pageIf you do not have Facebook:https://localgiving.org/donation/whitegoldcornwall?emb=8FCPzeLVxS Please do have a look at the links and it would mean the world if you can contribute. For a small charity in Cornwall, the money will go a long way. Genuinely, whatever you can chip in will be hugely appreciated. Thank you all so much :)

​For working parents, as school summer holidays begin, the reality of another six or seven weeks of juggling work and child care is beginning to set in.   With the usual summer childcare facilities cancelled or operating at reduced levels and hard decisions to be made about if and how grandparents can help, the next few weeks do not look straightforward.  Charity People’s Associate Director (Temporary roles), Zelda Leader says,“It has now been months since most parents and carers have been forced to fit their working day around their dependant others – I am one of those, and needless to say it has been tough! Flexible working for many now actually means juggling their day to cram in work, look after their loved ones, do school runs, home schooling… the list goes on. Everyone has their story to tell, and most have really needed extra support whether it be at home, or at work. Now, with restrictions easing we can start the build our home life support networks back up, but for many staff in the sector we will could still be working at home for months.”Supporting ParentsNow is a good time for organisations to check in with staff who have parental responsibilities and reconsider whether they are being supported.Here are a few questions to consider:When was the last time your senior leadership re-visited the topic of supporting working parents?Are managers continuing to ask their line reports - how can I support you with balancing work and family?Do your existing policies really support families?  Perhaps they were hastily amended at the start of the crisis, but do they need updating as the situation has changed?Are you actively encouraging staff with childcare responsibilities to prioritise their self-care by taking regular breaks, working flexibly in a way that is manageable for them and accessing any counselling or other additional support available to them through your organisation?How Charity People can helpHave you considered taking on temporary staff to help support parents and cover annual leave taken through the summer period?Zelda Leader says,“After several years spent recruiting for the charity sector I can confidently say that in many cases a team’s work pressures can be reduced by hiring a temporary worker. Engaging a temp at this moment in time has brought about a new set of benefits which would really help staff who have childcare responsibilities.” If you would like to consider hiring a temp, please reach out to Zelda (Zelda@charitypeople.co.uk) for a conversation.  She has a range of trusted and valued candidates who have been placed through Charity People before, and could start asap.Resources from within the third sector for this blog:https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/support-for-parents/coronavirus-parents-working-from-home/https://www.unicef.org/coronavirus/7-ways-employers-can-support-working-parents-during-coronavirus-disease-covid-19

​Nicola Bott (Senior Major Gifts Fundraiser – Evelina London Children’s Hospital)​Moving jobs is always a stressful business. You aren’t sure whether it’s the right thing to do and writing applications and preparing for interviews is quite frankly a bit of a pain. But when you throw a pandemic into the mix, it all seems a little more stressful!Anna Ludeman, Lead Consultant (fundraising) had the pleasure of working with Nicola Bott to secure her wonderful new role with Kings College University specifically raising funds for Evelina London Children’s Hospital. The entire process from her very first interview to starting her new role, all took place during lockdown so it might be a useful read for others going through the same experience.Here is Anna and Nicola's Q&A:How did you find interviewing remotely and do you have any tips for candidates with upcoming interviews?I found interviewing remotely a very positive experience. I’ve always been very comfortable using Skype, which was really helpful. I don’t feel there’s a huge difference in interviewing remotely; I always do my research on the role and charity beforehand, prepare for possible questions and dress smartly to make sure I’m presentable. I think approaching a remote interview like it is a face-to-face meeting is the right attitude to have and sets the right tone. I would say that you do perhaps need to be extra animated and engaging so that you can demonstrate the real you and ensure that energy carries through the laptop. On the plus side, interviewing remotely can be really convenient and you can have lots of notes around you without them seeing! Was there anything that you did miss from the usual style of interviewing?The only thing that was really missing was the office feel. You get a real sense of energy and buzz from walking into an office and seeing who works there; you can even find out how great their coffee machine might be! It can also make it more difficult to visualise the cause as the office usually brings so much of this to life. The interviewers however were fab at describing their cause and vision and I guess a tip for interviewers is that you need to work even harder to engage a potential recruit and get them excited about the role. I had 3 interviews each lasting 2 hours, which enabled me to really delve into the wonderful work of the Evelina fundraising team. Still, I can’t wait for the day where I can visit the Evelina London Children’s Hospital and meet the clinicians and patients who are so imperative to our fundraising efforts. I am however taking ownership for my own learning and am ensuring that I read and watch everything available to me to really understand the cause and develop the passion needed to be a successful fundraiser. Once you secured this dream role, how did you find handing your notice in and saying bye to your wonderful team remotely?I was really sad. It was a lot harder than I was expecting. After 5 years at Teenage Cancer Trust, I had made so many friends and really loved my team and the organisation as a whole so having to say goodbye was a really tough thing to do. Handing my notice in over the phone was probably a little easier than it would have been face to face but it is always a daunting prospect! Thankfully my manager was so supportive and agreed it was a really exciting step for me. The plus side of my last day being at home was that I didn’t have to stand in front of hundreds of people saying a tearful goodbye, although I did do plenty of crying writing my goodbye emails. I’m already looking forward to a time when we can eventually have leaving drinks together! So, on to your wonderful new role as Senior Major Gifts Fundraiser; how did you find starting a new role from home?Well starting a new role is always a little daunting when you are learning the ropes and understanding who does what. The same goes for starting a role remotely but I guess it is even trickier when you can’t physically see the office, the notice boards, the branding or simply see teams sitting together, which all helps you piece together the puzzle, particularly in a large fundraising team like they have at Kings. When you are in an office, you naturally absorb a lot of knowledge just from sitting with your colleagues and hearing their conversations. Working from home, there’s none of that.The first few days can be a little lonely; you aren’t quite sure what you are doing and you don’t know anybody yet so be prepared for this. When you are in an office, you naturally feed off the buzz in the room, which is very motivating, but working from home it’s just you and a computer screen. To combat this, I would say make a huge effort to talk to people. Be proactive and make this happen by chatting to everyone you can and join any clubs that interest you. For example, I joined the Culture Club and started working on an entertaining virtual event straight away. It will feel nice to have some meetings in the diary to keep you stimulated and you will gain knowledge and insight from these conversations too. Ask for an organogram on your first day and just start booking in meetings. It’s great how well you can get to know someone working remotely! I’ve already found a handful of people that live near me and we’ve suggested meeting in the park for payday drinks (socially distanced of course!)There have been some difficulties in getting my new work laptop up and running, which can be frustrating so I’d definitely say to anyone hiring, that you need to make sure IT and phone systems are working and ready to go! This will just help to make sure new starters have a smooth transition. Fundraising is looking a little bit different nowadays and everyone is having to find new ways to adapt. How are you able to engage donors now that you are unable to meet them face to face? Well again, communication is key and we are using the phone and video conferencing tools now more than ever. In some ways, it has become even easier to connect to donors as we all have something in common; experiencing lockdown! It is definitely a conversation starter and it’s been nice chatting to donors and simply getting to know them. As a fundraiser, you can learn a huge amount from your donors so it is so important to build these relationships using as much creativity and innovation as you can to secure more funding. How have you been finding things in life during lockdown?Well, I guess I am feeling the same as a lot of other people. Half of me is filled with anxiety for the economy and people’s health. The other half of me has really quite enjoyed the experience – I’ve spent a lot of unexpected quality time with my husband and puppy, which has been wonderful. We’ve been renovating our flat, we’ve gone for nice walks, had our lunch in the garden and appreciated the more simple things in life. I’ve been trying to keep myself positive throughout this time and have been trying to stop my thoughts spiralling out of control - limiting the news has really helped with this! I do however understand that a lot of people have had an incredibly awful time and I want to be mindful of how lucky I am, and respect that everyone is being affected in different ways and everyone has different opinions.​

​On Wednesday 1 July, we hosted a webinar on the future of digital marketing for charities. We were joined by around 70 senior leaders, communicators and digital marketeers from the sector to hear a fascinating discussion between Charity People's Ben Garner and four of the sector's leading experts:Emily Casson, Digital Marketing Manager, Cat's ProtectionAsim Lone, Senior Digital Marketing Manager, The Royal Air Forces AssociationAntonia Murray, Digital Marketing Manager, MencapCraig Hayward, Director of Digital at National Citizen ServiceOur panelists described the significant changes that have occured in online behaviour through the coronavirus crisis including a swing away from mobile as the dominant and growing device used to get online, spikes in digital fundraising and significant changes in the times that people are online. At the close of the discussion, we asked them to look to the future and give one key prediction. Here's what they said:​1. Making use of new technologies allowing more charities to create, for example, bespoke online donation journeys using GiveWP, a free Wordpress plugin. Asim Lone2. Re-visiting your user personas. Everything we thought we knew about our audiences has changed. Taking the time to learn what has changed for your audiences and sketching out new personas for them would be really powerful. Craig Hayward3. Growth. Digital fundraising will continue to grow. Don't confuse it with Individual Giving, think across the piece including shops, community and events. Think big and start small. Test and grow. Emily Casson4. Integration. Data is increasingly important and data from digital marketing and fundraising can be used across the organisation to benefit colleagues in services, communications and other areas - greater integration of digital is the future. Antonia Murray​Digital marketing and fundraising is an area of opportunity for charities. If you would like to talk about how to find the best digital talent in the sector, please contact Ben Garner at BenG@charitypeople.co.uk

​Charity People's Associate Director, Glen Manners, talks to Julia Worthington at Amber Consulting about building stress and resilience as a fundraising professional. Listen to the full interview below. Julia WorthingtonAmber Consulting was founded by Julia Worthington, who has been working for the last six years as a coach for fundraisers & development professionals. For the previous 25 years, she was a hands-on fundraiser.Exclusive Discount on Wellbeing TrainingJulia has partnered with Charity People to offer a discount on her Stress and Building Resilience course. Use the code stresscp15 at check out.​​

​It felt like there was some unfinished business with this blog because lockdown has completely scuppered my tried and tested routine as an experienced homeworker. I’ve been diligently following my own advice and trying to take each day as it comes, but it’s not always that easy. Here is the next chapter – warts and all – attempting to ride the rollercoaster of life on lockdown. Thanks to being involved with @CharityNikki’s deliciously titled event Pizza For Losers, I’ve laid some solid foundations for success being turned unceremoniously on its head. I’m now somewhat of a failure fan. I know all the theory and science behind why failure is healthy for growth and development. And thank goodness for that! All the successes of last year seem like a distant memory and it feels like I’m finding new and novel ways to fail everyday. The recruitment market is quiet – understandably so – as charities fight to find their feet navigating unknown, rocky terrain. Many of our charity partners are dealing with the impact of lost fundraising and challenges to their service delivery. Right now, success for Charity People doesn’t necessarily look like advertising lots of shiny new jobs. I’ve started a simple list of things I've achieved during lockdown and it looks very different to the one I’d have written last year. I’ve been a listening ear for worried, anxious candidates and been brave by co-hosting my first webinar. Although I haven’t placed as many candidates into new jobs as usual, I’ve supported small charities to adapt their recruitment practices for a virtual world. On the days when I feel like a loser, the list reminds me that I'm doing the best I can under difficult circumstances and that success just doesn’t look the same anymore. I’m a big fan of yoga and meditation (my husband often refers to me as a stretchaholic) and it’s been my lifeline during lockdown. Over the years I've listened, but not always heard my teachers when they talk about connecting with your self and listening to your body. On lockdown it finally makes sense; probably because I'm not jumping out of bed and dashing straight out into the world at helter-skelter pace. My dad commented that it’s lovely to talk to me when I’m not rushing through a train station. I don't have to strain my ears to listen; my body is chit-chatting to me all the time now. What I'm hearing is that drinking makes me anxious. I was developing a new habit of relaxing with a glass of red wine, so I know I need to take regular booze breaks. Sometimes I'm absolutely shattered in the afternoons. Naps (or siestas on the days when that glorious sun is shining) are the way forward. If my body needs to rest, I give it an hour and wake up feeling fresher and ready to give it a go again. I try not to feel guilty for taking those breaks because I’m working hard. My biggest revelation is the power of fundraising. I've taken on a couple of charity challenges on lockdown: an oldie, but a goodie with the ice bucket and a front door to Everest challenge climbing the 8,848 metres in just over a month. In the charity sector, we know the capacity of fundraising to power an entire organisation and drive change that makes the world a better place, but its secret superpower is in what it does for the individual. It's more than just the warm fuzzies (although goodness knows we need those right now). It gives people agency and purpose and motivation and relevance and hope. On more than one occasion, getting out of the house to complete the challenge was the difference between a good day and a bad one. So much so that I’ve taken on a new fundraising challenge now that I’ve conquered Everest. Not for any altruistic reason, but because fundraising has vastly improved my mental and physical health and I need that support right now. This blog is an emotional and heartfelt shout out to all the phenomenal fundraisers making a magical difference to people's lives today. Thank You. You’re all just awesome. ​

​Charity People's Associate Director, Glen Manners, an expert in the membership and education sectors, talks to Richard Gott, Network Chair at Memberwise about the future of membership. Richard answers questions from membership professionals in the sector, submitted to Glen and tells us that membership organisations that have been able to switch to digital channels quickly are the ones best weathering the pandemic. Richard GottRichard is one of the leading membership and association thought-leaders/sector champions in Europe.Rich has worked within the sector for over 20 years and has held senior leadership roles within high profile member focused institutions including the Royal College of General Practitioners, British Dental Association, The Law Society, College of Optometrists, Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors and the Royal College of Psychiatrists,His role includes overseeing the direction of the network, ensuring content meets the needs/requirements of the UK/EU membership and association sector and providing expert consulting services to a number of leading membership organisations/associations.​Listen to the interview here:​

​Furloughed, Not Forgotten  In our third instalment of the Charity People series “Furloughed Not Forgotten”, we hear three very different stories from our colleagues Alice, Tanya and Zelda.  We were keen to learn what changes they’d made to make their new lives away from work, that much more manageable.  Hopefully offering you some useful tips, on how to better cope with life aboard the good ship Furlough, or at least, if you’re also on furlough, to see that you are not going through it alone. Alice Wood After initial pangs of unease and uncertainty, Alice has discovered a newly found sense of serenity.  The most significant shift for Alice has been spending so much quality time with her 3 year old daughter, who would usually be at nursery.  Alice explains, that aside from an official sabbatical, this is a rare occasion that has allowed her to embrace a less hectic and simpler way of life.   Alice has also been keeping herself busy, successfully landscaping her garden and is now on to sewing her daughter a new quilt cover.  When Alice has an off-day, she takes herself off foraging, apparently Cow Parsley is her new jam (see pic). I’m now imagining Alice’ house, floor-to-ceiling with vases full of the stuff! Hehe.  If you have green fingers and are looking for similar inspiration, Alice points you to these guys - https://www.floretflowers.com/Tanya WhiteTanya’s story is a little different; she was just three weeks’ in to her new role here at Charity People, before lockdown.  Tanya is someone who likes to plan, usually at least 12 months ahead, so this has well and truly scuppered her personal master-plan for 2020.  Luckily, Tanya is way more in touch with herself than most of us.  She is really passionate about her wellbeing and says maintaining a routine has been key. Tanya is up early, most mornings, for a combination of either Meditation, stretching, reading or Hit exercises.  Combined with a daily walk, for a vital hit of vitamin D, which helps her feel great in body and mind. Tanya also trained herself to not look at her phone, for the first couple of hours of the day. Something we could all benefit from.   Tanya and her partner have been apart seven weeks and that’s been tough for both of them.  Aside from regular video-chats, they have bonded watching BBC’s Normal People, simultaneously.  Enabling them to live through the characters portrayal of a tricky relationship.  Link to BBC’s Normal People here: https://bbc.in/2ZpUU6m Zelda Leader Zelda has had an eventful couple of months, just a week prior to our lockdown announcement; she flew to Sri Lanka, to get married.  Unfortunately due to lockdown restrictions there, they couldn’t hold the ceremony and were forced to cut short the trip.  The virus also brought significant change for Zelda at home, both parents (pictured above) have Dementia, which always has its challenges.  Zelda opted to reduce their care plan to minimise risk and now delivers much of that care herself.  Zelda is someone with an ability to see the funny side of virtually any situation.  A rare quality that enables her to work full time with us and balance the needs of her parents on a daily basis.  She jokes - “On the up side, at least my parents don’t have to worry about the pandemic, they’re having a great summer, blissfully unaware of the mayhem around the world!”Zelda is a big advocate for Geocaching, her family take walks in the beautiful Kent countryside, combined with a treasure hunt, what’s not to love! Link: www.geocaching.com/playZelda made an interesting observation about furlough life.  She highlights, had I reached out to everyone during April with similar questions, I would have likely received a very different narrative.  Throughout the first month of furlough, everything was new and levels of fear and uncertainty were at its highest. Nobody knew how bad things would get, or how long they would be away from work. It took most people the first four weeks to adjust and adapt.  One of the routes to finding their groove was by completely switching off from worrying about work and replacing it with a bespoke routine.  

​Virtual RecruitmentThis is the first in a series of free online support resources for recruiters. Places are limited. Please sign up today.Title: Switching to virtual recruitmentDate: Tuesday 16 June, 11 amDescription: 45-minute online clinicWhether you are looking for new staff, volunteers or trustees, your recruitment may now need to work in a different way. This free 45-minute clinic for small and medium sized charities is to help you think about how to change your systems and processes to get the most out of recruiting remotely.Recruiting and selecting without meeting in person can be a daunting experience for both recruiter and applicant. How you design the process is key so you get the most out of it. The session will include how to:write and share ads which stand out onlinemanage the shortlisting application process remotelyhold effective interviews online or by phoneuse virtual assessment toolsinduct and on-board new starters virtually. There will be opportunities to ask questions before and during the interactive session. You'll be given clear joining instructions for using our platform and resources will be made available afterwards. The platform will also give you access to other free courses Utopy has live. Sign up today Places are limited.The session is run in partnership between GoodJobs, Charity People and Utopy. This session is running as part of Small Charity Week, on #BigAdviceDay.  ​

​Furloughed, Not Forgotten  Continuing our series sharing our colleagues lives on furlough, we hear from Ben, Berthe, Philippa and Anna.  We hope that offering you this glimpse in to their new normal will help you see you’re not alone.  You may even pick up some useful tips, on how to better cope with life aboard the good ship Furlough….  Ben GarnerBen’s wife has been working full time and is busier than ever, this means Ben is now more hands day to day, with his 3-year-old daughter. This has been a unique opportunity to treasure for Ben.  Living out in Oxford means their morning walks are more picturesque than most, Ben loves being surrounded by the stillness of nature and says life could be so much worse. Ben did not think he needed a break from work, at least not until now anyway.  The imposed sabbatical, (can we call that?), has allowed Ben time to reflect on every facet of his life.  Ben is currently brushing up on becoming a better consultant (but we all know you can’t improve on perfection!), with a myriad of online self-help resources.  If Ben has a bad day or is feeling flat, he picks up his guitar or immerses himself in his other passion – Astrology.  Ben says that focussing on our universe, andbeyond, helps distract him from the stresses found on our own planet.  We have shared a link to one of his favourite Astrology videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoW8Tf7hTGA Philippa BryantLike so many of us, Philippa has good days and bad days. She’s limiting the amount of news she consumes, whilst not wanting to feel completely out the loop. The current state of the charity sector also weighs heavy, as does uncertainty around the future of the global economy.  Philippa’s plans to marry her partner in September are very much up in the air, as is her daughter’s move to Edinburgh, to start University, as I write this, it sounds like she may have to start remotely from home. On the up side, Philippa feels more connected to her family than ever, enjoying regular zoom chats, they would have previously never had.  Philippa loves the freedom to spend more time in the kitchen. She has been working her way through Chef, Yotam Ottolenghi’s cook-book “Simple” which you can buy here - https://amzn.to/36jXs7FPhilippa tells me she is able to switch off most of the time, but not always at 3:30am, when she might wake up, with her mind ticking on overdrive.  To be expected, we agree.  In conclusion, Philippa tells me that their life has become both more wholesome and more simplified which is lovely to hear. Philippa is still missing life in the office – especially the rhythm and routine it provides. Philippa is not alone, many of us crave that in-person interaction with colleagues. She misses the infectious energy generated by her colleagues.  Which I can see now, most of us took for granted.  The ironic thing is, its Philippa’s effervescent personality, that the rest of us in the office would feed off of. Interesting to learn Philippa sees it the other way round!  Haha.   Anna Ludeman Anna and her partner are discovering that furlough life brings all sorts of welcome revelations, relating to their two young children (one and three).  Anna explains to me that their weekends, before the pandemic, were always full of eventful days out. Planned to maximise on the two days, in which they can all spend time together, as a family.  However, with the restrictions to stay home, Anna has witnessed her kids bonding like never before.  They are now never more content when making mud pictures in the garden.  Simpler pleasures, that Anna reflects are similar to her fondest memories when she was a kid. Any number of inventive garden-based activities (mud seems to be the common denominator!) are just as exciting, if not more so now, than an expensive, busy and often stressful “FUN” family day out to Peppa Pig World.It’s not all been unicorns and rainbows for the Ludeman household, Anna’s partner is an independent Estate Agent, so obviously not an easy time.  Finding a balance between child-care for two - and work commitments - minus their usually ever-present support network has been pretty tough.To off-set the stress, Anna and her partner start the day by joining the nations favourite cockney calorie-burner Joe Wicks for his daily workout:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAxW1XT0iEJo0TYlRfn6rYQThey also make sure they stick to their routine of a daily family bike ride – see pictured.(Anna, if we had a competition for cutest furlough photo - I think you just won 1st prize!) ​Berthe Biyack Berthe has been busy home-schooling her younger sister, an unusual scenario and one she never had imagined.  Berthe jokes that her new role as Tutor has helped her develop a new level of patience that she never knew existed! Hehe.  “Challenging, but fun” she says.  Berthe is making the most of the situation, especially on the days when she is teaching Art, an area Berthe is particularly passionate about.  Not all of Berthe's new endeavours have been as successful as her new role as Teacher. They’ve also recently turned their hands to baking.  From the look of the photo of her cookies, I think it is a good idea for Berthe and her sister to stick to the Art!  LOL.   However, joking aside, Berthe tells me it was a great bonding experience for the two of them.  Who cares that the results looked frankly inedible, right?  I’m sure next time round they’ll be just perfect – so please don’t let my poor excuse for humour put you off making more!  Berthe belongs to a local book club, which is now virtual and she is currently reading “House of Stone” by Novuyo Tshuma.  Berthe has also enrolled in a couple of courses via Harvard University – if you would like to browse their short courses, you can find the link here - https://online-learning.harvard.edu/catalog/free      ​Glen MannersE: glen@charitypeople.co.uk

​Furloughed, Not Forgotten  It’s Mental Health Awareness week.  It got me thinking about my colleagues who have spent the last seven weeks on furlough.  I wondered how they’ve been feeling day to day and how their wellbeing has been impacted from not working.  So I reached out and I’d like to share their stories and experiences with you.  Hopefully offering you some useful tips, on how to better to cope with life aboard the good ship Furlough, or at least for some of you to feel like you’re not going through this alone…. Neil HoganNeil’s a philosophical dude, well-travelled and so often the go-to guy when a CP colleague is in need of advice.  With his wife working long hours, Neil has spent the last 8 weeks being mum and dad during the day to his two young children. Like so many people in his position, Neil has a new found respect for any stay at home parent. “It’s hard work” he says. Neil is relishing his new role, again the rare opportunity of spending quality time with his kids, when he’d usually be in the office. But Neil admits he is really missing adult conversation and finds he doesn’t have as much time for himself. Neil and his wife set themselves a challenge and have been working out every morning to Jillian Michaels “30 Day Shred” They’re both feeling the benefit already, so much so, they may stick to it beyond the 30 day programme!  If you’re feeling inspired you can join in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdVhWXGxngA   Neil was already a pretty fit guy and avid runner, but he’s found improving his core strength has done wonders when picking up the kids.  Neil has also discovered keeping busy with chores is therapeutic and can be found most evenings improving his painting skills by redecorating the house / garden fence (See pic above) or just about any other flat surface available to him! Georgie HawkinsGeorgie relocated to London just four weeks before the lockdown.  Thankfully, her house share is full of like-minded souls, all of which are now Georgies’ firm friends.  (1, 2, 3... “Ahhhh”)   They don’t have their own outside space which, whilst frustrating, has meant they are spurring each other on to keep fit. Georgie now runs most days, or works out with her housemates.  Her partner is based in Bristol, not an easy set up before this all happened. They chat every day now, way more than they would have before. But she says no number of video calls can replace meeting in person. Georgie is doing all the right things, sticking to a routine and staying active, all of which do wonders for her wellbeing. But this doesn’t eradicate the concerns she has for her loved ones who are most vulnerable. Georgie ponders “Will life ever feel the same again?” and “Could furlough last even longer?” Aside from exercise and daily calls to her Mum (again, way more frequent than usual!), Georgie has been improving her skills via series of short online courses, including one on Coding and Modern Psychology (well la de da!), all absolutely free, see link here: https://www.coursera.org/Lucy Bottrill “When Life gives you Lemons...” Lucy bakes lemon cake!  Partnering with her local Chinese Takeaway and wider local community, Lucy plays a key role with the “Helping Hands” group. A fantastic initiative that provides food to local COVID wards, cancer wards, the elderly and vulnerable.  Her charitable endeavours don’t stop there, Lucy and her two young daughters have created “the Doorstep Fairies”.  Knowing the shift patterns of a few local nurses, who are also friends, allows these innovative “Fairies” to deliver care packages to their homes, in secret.  For example, a nurse may return home after a long night shift, to discover an uber-posh breakfast on their doorstep.  Lucy – you are a superstar.When Lucy isn’t busy baking, she’s learning how best to balance schooling her six year old daughter, whilst also keeping her three year old entertained – no easy task!  But sounds to me like Lucy is doing a stellar job.  Pre-lockdown Lucy was still homebased for work, as she’s based in the North, so no major change there. But Lucy says she is really missing some adult conversation, something I’m sure allhome-based parents can relate to. Lucy says the key to spinning so many plates and staying positive is a heady mix of Palates, Yoga and Youtube exercise videos.  Lucy’s baking skills are another level, if you’d like to see where she finds her inspiration look no further - www.janespatisserie.com______________ There has been one common thread that runs through each of my colleague’s stories - a shared hope that they can retain some key elements of their furlough life, once they return to work. My colleague Georgie put it best, “...we’re all itching to return to work and normality, but we should be making sure that we’re returning to the right things...”  The idea being, that whatever good habits or behaviours our colleagues have picked up during this period, they manage to hold on to and maintain for years to come.Glen       

We are all lucky to work with amazing organisations and people that make up the Charity sector. All have been impacted by Covid19 and we wanted to play a tiny part in supporting the sector to get through this challenging time. Having spent a week internally debating the pros and cons of “physically demanding challenges” vs “make a fool of yourself” challenges, we have decided to try and do a mixture of both.Staff members of Charity People will take on various challenges whilst observing social distancing and we hope we can inspire friends, colleagues and partners to support the sector in any way they can.​As we have such close relationships with a number of incredible organisations, we couldn’t choose to fundraise for just one. As such, we have decided to support the BBC’s Big Night In – money raised will be distributed across a variety of charities. We’ll be providing updates on team members challenges through our social media channels. If you see something you like or would just like to show your support for our Fundraising efforts then please visit our justgiving page - https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/charity-people​We all really hope that everyone reading this is keeping safe and well.

​How to manage worry and anxiety: I’ve always been proud to label myself an optimist and someone who regularly reassures colleagues, friends and loved ones that we should never worry about the things that are out of our control. However, confession time - the recent turn of events has rocked my once reliable, inbuilt, optimistic default setting. I’m still firing on all cylinders the majority of the time, but I’ve experienced days where I struggle to see beyond the worst case scenario. On these darker days, I catch myself worrying about the economy, the welfare of our front line workers or more personal concerns, like what purpose do I have in the working world, with fewer vacancies to fill. I’m grateful that in today’s society, men discussing our mental health and wellbeing is no longer taboo. At least drastically less so, compared to yesteryear, when we would be expected to grit our teeth and suffer in silence. It’s this progressive change in attitude that has allowed me to share my struggles with you in this blog, without fear of too much judgement. We all know what we need to do, in broad terms, to maintain a positive mind during these difficult times… keep to a routine, maintain a healthy diet and get plenty of exercise. But what happens when our darker thoughts speak louder to us, than our internal voice of reason? More so than going for that walk, having another glass of wine or sharing my fears with others, (all of which I can highly recommended) are great tools, but I found the attached document an invaluable aid. The 11 page document, written by a pair of phycologists from PsychologyTools enabled me to understand what worry and anxiety actually is, why I’m suddenly experiencing it and how best to manage it. Most importantly, all within the context of our current situation with Covid19. Page 7 specifically, provides so many great tips on keeping our mind active with far more positive endeavours than my most recent preoccupation of trying to predict how much worse things will get, before they get better. I’d like to recommend anyone who has experienced similar “wobbles” to myself to take a look at the Activity Menu and if you like what you see, take five minutes out of your day to digest the rest of the document. It’s a really good read. As always, if you’d like to share your story, or seek advice on the current world of recruitment, please do get in touch. PDF Link: “Guide to living with worry and anxiety amidst global uncertainty”: https://bit.ly/2VuDNNt Keep safe and healthy​Glen

​I’ve been Furloughed – what next? There are many people now working from home, with some on Furlough or completely laid off work, it is important that we make the most of what might be perceived to be a bad situation. If you have some time on your hands and are looking for other ways to enrich your day that doesn’t include exercise, baking, gardening, looking after kids and other fun activities, perhaps enrolling on a course isn’t such a bad idea? There is a plethora of free online training available on the world wide web, to suit every need (literally everything)!In this instance, I’d like to focus on Human Resources. The importance of gaining both HR qualifications and hands on experience is key, my clients frequently request a CIPD qualification on job specifications when recruiting for HR roles.On any given week back in the normal world, I would meet with a number of candidates, and often our discussions would lead us to discussing professional development, or perhaps moving their career in a different direction. In nearly every conversation, the candidate I was chatting to would cite the struggle to find time for professional development on top of their regular jobs and family commitments. Therefore, perhaps there is no better time to commit to improving your skills and chances of securing your next role.I have found a number of different online courses that I wanted to share: If you are interested in pursuing a career in HR, and would like to explore this field further, there are a number of free online courses covering HR Fundamentals that last between 4-7 weeks: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/hr-fundamentalshttps://www.cipd.co.uk/about/media/press/070218-futurelearn-partnershipAlternatively, if you already working in HR and are interested in learning more about management, leadership, teamwork and diversity, the following last around 4 weeks: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/people-management-skillshttps://www.bolc.co.uk/free-online-hr-courses-with-certificates.htmlhttps://www.oxfordhomestudy.com/courses/hr-courses-online/free-online-hr-courses-with-certificates If you’ve been furloughed perhaps now is the time to explore using your skills to volunteer. Whilst you can’t provide your expertise to your existing employer you are able to support other organisations on a voluntary basis. There are a huge number of smaller organisations who are very likely to have lots of HR questions right now. However you spend time during the Covid-19 outbreak, most importantly look after your well-being, keep active, socialise with your friends and family via the numerous online platforms and keep smiling.Please get in touch if you have any questions about your career path, CV advice or remote working, we are always happy to have a chat.

Step by Step – recruitment for the remote worldIt has been a rollercoaster over the past few weeks and a time of confusion and stress for most people. Charity People remains positive and hopeful; mostly because our consultants are having inspiring interactions, every day, with charities and candidates as the sector does what it does best. Rolls up its sleeves and get to work. To make things as simple as possible for an organisation about to embark on a recruitment process that needs to happen completely remotely, we have put together this specialist pack to support you with various steps you will need to consider in the context of social distancing.​Here you’ll find a step-by-step guide to support remote recruitment:•Advertising•Long-listing and short-listing applicants•Briefing calls with candidates•Candidate assessment techniques•360˚ references​AdvertisingAdvertising across various job boards is key to ensure you reach a wide talent pool. Language plays a significant part in attracting the right candidate. Your advert should focus on the candidate as much as possible and use the ‘you’ pronoun wherever possible. An advert shouldn’t be a regurgitation of your job description and person specification. It should be an exciting and enticing read that stops good candidates in their tracks! Charity People are expert communicators when it comes to creating job adverts. ApplicationsThis is the perfect time to assess whether your application process is working for you, especially at a time when candidates may have less time on their hands if they have children at home. Is your long application form right for the current climate?There is debate from an equality and diversity perspective on the use of CVs, but they remain a quick and efficient way to assess a candidate’s suitability. However, if you’d like to try a more innovative and inclusive approach how about three key questions with a 500-word limit attached to each. It’s also a great internal ‘acid test’ for your key requirements; a boiled down version of your person spec that allows you to consider transferable skills more easily. This method can be adapted to suit your job profile and skills need. We are happy to offer free advice and guidance on how this could work for your charity and skills gap. Charity People can take this admin-heavy task off your hands if you are really busy right now. We can provide either a comprehensive longlist or a more detailed shortlist. Both will contain candidates that have been thoroughly assessed by our experienced consultants in a way that best suits your culture and need.Briefing calls with candidatesDue to limited face-to-face contact at the moment, there can be a worry about recruiting someone you haven’t met in person. Increasing the number of contact points you have with candidates can set your mind at ease. Having an initial informal conversation that isn’t an interview can be incredibly valuable to set both yourself and a candidate at ease before a formal telephone/video interview. It can provide clarity on motivation and values fit too. You can also use this technique to ensure you get the best quality from longlist to shortlist. Interviews – telephone versus video There is some evidence to suggest that video interviews can disadvantage older candidates who may not be as used to digital platforms, so you should consider this when making a decision on your assessment methods. If you want to go ahead with video interviews (and they certainly feel like a good option in this new remote world), consider whether candidates need support to set themselves up digitally prior to interview to ensure inclusivity. Telephone and video interviewing are fairly new for most people so give yourself time and space to get used to this new way of working. Many of Charity People’s consultants are either fully or partially homebased so we’re well placed to offer advice and guidance on how to get the best out of a remote process. How else can we test people?Charity People has spent time mapping how to get a fuller picture of capability and experience in this new remote world. We are offering a range of additional services including chemistry testing, online tasks, virtual presentations and creating candidate portfolios to showcase their work. Perhaps it is worth considering undertaking a full and comprehensive psychometric assessment?Please get in touch for support, advice and guidance on any of these techniques. References using the 360 approach360° referencing is the perfect way to get a wider perspective of a candidate: line manager, a peer or colleague, and someone a candidate has managed or mentored. While social distancing prevents us from meeting in person, this is an excellent method of gathering information and insight (and can include skills, experience, personality and collaborative working).A helpful tool for all hires, but particularly in a remote world. We want to provide as many resources as possible to assist you in having the confidence to appoint. ​Call usCharity People makes your recruitment process easy and effective. We have the tools to give you the confidence to make decisions now and enable you to on-board where necessary in this new remote world. We are still here, still recruiting, still smiling. Call us for a chat and see how we can best help you. ​

​Keeping calm and carrying on– A self-isolation reflectionBy Tanya White“Have no fear, 2020 will be a much more promising year than 2019!” they said. “The only way is up!” they also said. Fast forward and here I am confined within the four walls of my home during a global pandemic. It is hard to remain positive when everyday all you see and hear is negative news. But it can’t all be bad news, can it? This self-isolation period has really given me the time I never knew I needed to stop, breathe and reset. As a true “city girl” who grew up in London, I am someone who likes to keep up with the pace of the city and keep incredibly busy. Over two weeks ago when I moved to working from home, I was forced to put on the brakes and to slow down whilst everything around us came to a halt. Though at the time it felt like we were being forcibly slowed down against our will, I  see this as a time to reconnect with myself as a living being separate from modern life, and the distractions around me - and a time to be content with myself when I am alone. With all the sad events that are happening around the world, I have realised that each new dayis a blessing for me as my family and I are healthy and well. I have made a promise to myself to continue to see through this period of isolation in a positive light as well as use the time to focus on my health and wellbeing (for both my body and mind). So I wanted to share with you some of my key practices which keep me ticking over during such an unnerving time.​Miracle MorningDuring the week I continue to follow my daily routine by setting my alarm 30 minutes before I would usually get out of bed. I begin the first 15 minutes of my day by writing a list of 5 things that I am grateful for. It’s during this time that I hold a deep appreciation for where I am today, the people that surround me and the things that I have collected along the way. I start to feel a shift from stressed to calm, from self-focused to attentive to others, and from pessimistic to optimistic. The next 15 minutes are spent reading a self-development book where I can learn something new that I can implement into my day. This way I start the day strong by accelerating my personal growth whilst feeling inspired and motivated. I then jump out of bed, into my most colourful lycra and spend the next 30minutes exercising to keep my heart rate up, and to clear my mind. Whether it is a full-on cardio workout or my ‘one’ walk of the day to the local park I can guarantee by the end I will be fully awake and feeling energised. Fuel your bodyFood is one of my biggest joys in life and this period of isolation has given me the time and energy I need to cook healthy and balanced meals and try out some new recipes. As someone who has previously trained in Nutrition and Lifestyle Coaching, I am well aware of the things I should be doing, and this knowledge can easily go out the window when I'm in the middle of a busy week at work. The Tesco meal deals are a faint distant memory and my inner Nigella Lawson has taken over in the kitchen. I am challenging myself to see how many wholesome grains and pulses, and colourful nutritious fruits and vegetables I can squeeze on one plate. Jokes aside it’s never been more important to keep our bodies well by fuelling them with the right types of food. Do what makes you happy I have made a list of all the things I’ve always wanted to do but never seem to have time for. Things on the list can range from sewing the hole back together on one of my favourite dresses to mastering the art of baking sourdough bread. There is nothing more satisfying than putting a line through your day’s achievements no matter how big or small. Equally I have found sitting in my pyjamas all day eating nachos and bingeing on a Netflix series that I wouldn’t usually have time to watch is equally as satisfying. Not every day for me will be productive, and I have taught myself to be ok with this.  It is important to remember that whilst we all have to stay inside, this time is ours to use both fruitfully and freely. After all, every cloud must have a silver lining. ​Finally, stay connectedIn a world where technology has taken over our checkout assistances and where food can be ordered at a restaurant via a computer screen, there has never been a better time to reconnect with our loved ones. Connecting with others, whether it is through talking on the phone, or video chat is good for improving psychological wellbeing and imperative during the Covid-19 pandemic. Video calling technology has made it so easy for me to connect with my family from various parts of the globe. I can pick up the phone and hear my brother’s voice who lives in Australia (as if he was in the next room) just by the press of a button. During this time of self-isolation, it is easier to become stuck in my own thoughts and feelings; connecting with others has offered me support and comfort as well as boosting my mood during this time. So now is a time for me to rebuild relationships and make time for the people I care about.One of my favourite charities The British Red Cross are a perfect example of how charities continue to stay connected to service users and volunteers with the help of a dedicated team and beneficial resources during this period of self - isolation. The British Red Cross Young Refugee Service runs five youth projects and one ESOL group in London for vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers (age 15-25 years old) who have arrived in the UK without their parents or family members. Whilst the whole of the UK has gone into lockdown, the organisation continues to keep in touch with their young people through WhatsApp and regular phone calls, whilst sharing activities and competitions to keep them engaged and active. The resources are sometimes created by the young people themselves who write peer reviews of useful apps, and articles advising others on how to stay healthy and positive. The Red Cross is also working with organisations such as ‘Doctors of the World’ who are translating NHS resources into 23 different languages so that those who don’t speak English as a first language can have up to date knowledge on the Corona Virus situation. Red Cross volunteers share their daily activities with the young people via staff members, using photos and video to keep them connected. The Red Cross also provides all volunteers with a year’s subscription to the popular Headspace app and access to training if they wish to upskill at home. For many of us this will be a difficult time but if we collectively make the effort to stay connected then we can make a big difference to people who are feeling alone at this time.Stay close and happy.

Covid-19 Superheroes                                                  Picture by Ted Bryant, age 12 As an organisation we get to work with so many inspirational charities and non-profits who are, like all of us, feeling the seismic impact of the current pandemic. Whether it’s large well-known organisations like Oxfam or Barnardo’s who have had to make the difficult decision to furlough high numbers of staff, or smaller local hospital charities where fundraisers are being called to put aside their day jobs in order to help with front line logistics in hospitals, we salute you. As communities pull together and the kindness and generosity of strangers helps us to feel more human during these isolated times, gratitude can be a big boost to framing how you feel and staying positive. It can help to remember how lucky we are to live in a country where we have such a good healthcare system, available free of charge to all of us. It’s heart-warming to seethe 20,000 retired NHS staff who have come back to work and hundreds of thousands of people who have volunteered to help the NHS. The compassion, commitment and kindness of all those who continue to work selflessly to keep all of us safe and well is remarkable. And taking part in a nation-wide clap to cheer on the NHS helps us to feel part of something good. In the interests of shining a spotlight on some of the other incredible things our medical charity colleagues are doing to keep people safe,I wanted to highlight the fantastic work of Doctors of the World UK. During a chat with Ellen Waters, Development Director, this morning, I learnt more about the difficulties faced by refugees, migrant and asylum-seeking communities, many of whom fall between the cracks of community and state support. On top of their mobile healthcare provision for marginalised communities in London, Doctors of the World is leading on the translation of the NHS Covid-19 guidelines and resources into 35+ different languages so that, whatever your status or language, understanding how to best protect yourself and others is accessible. If you know of any organisations who may need this kind of resource, please share: https://www.doctorsoftheworld.org.uk/coronavirus-information/.With so many people out there doing amazing things to support others during difficult times I’d like to finish off with a massive thank you to you all. Thank you to my incredible colleagues who keep my spirits up on a daily basis, thank you to my friends and family, and thank you to all those, NHS and beyond, who are working so hard to keep us safe. You are all awesome.  Philippa and the Charity People team

​I’ve been home-based for just over three years now and it’s hard work. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t telling the whole truth. It takes persistence and patience and self-compassion, but most of all time to fine-tune what works. This started life as ‘a day in the life’ blog, but then I realised there isn’t a magic formula. Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable days is part of the learning process. My daily schedule chops and changes according to workload and what’s going on in my personal life because home is my office. I’m an advocate of good intentions and trying to stick with them. I write a daily ‘to do’ list. I meditate and practice yoga most mornings, I exercise and take regular breaks outside in nature to help alleviate stress and anxiety. I’ve found champions and allies in brilliant work colleagues, explored new online communities and grown my external networks; connecting virtually and physically as regularly as possible. Homeworking is an ongoing, evolving project that requires continued effort and adjustments to keep on track. Managing your mood is the hardest lesson to learn about homeworking. I’ve had to connect better with how I’m feeling and find ways to shift low moods. At home, you don’t have anyone around to make you laugh, or office chit-chat to lift your spirits. When something goes wrong you can’t offload with a good old moan and problems can sit with you and fester if you don’t find ways to shift them. Science tells us that emotions are deeply connected to the physical body and we can change mood through sensation and movement. I’ve tried freezing cold showers in the morning, motivational power ballad playlists, dancing in the kitchen, YouTube kickboxing, aromatherapy and brisk walks round the block (pre-COVID19 of course). Smell, sound and movement can all have an impact; you just need to find what works for you. Confession: There are some days when I don’t work at 100% and that’s ok. When I’m having an off day I prioritise me and in the long run Charity People gets a happier, more productive employee. I don’t feel guilty if I occasionally put ‘Gone Fishing’ on in the background and work from the sofa as long as I’m getting something done. I don’t worry if I have introverted days where business development takes a back seat. Background traffic noise is fine if I need to be outside to talk to people. Ultimately, I know that most days I’m doing a good job. I don’t beat myself up on the days when self-care is the first thing on my ‘to do’ list. Your productivity will tell you whether you’re getting it right or not. I’ve found that keeping a journal helps release tension and identify what works and what doesn’t. If you’re comfortable with gratitude, you could add something you’re grateful for each day too. It’s a work in progress and the recent changes to daily life have unbalanced my equilibrium, so I’m starting from scratch again in some respects. Rubbish days will happen – especially in this atmosphere of stress and tension – but tomorrow is always brand new. I dust myself off and try again.

A sentence I never thought I’d say is “I wish my train home was delayed today”, but at the moment, it’s painfully true. Charity People supports me to work from home three days per week following a move out of London last year and, like many, I ended my working day in the office last Tuesday with a moan about signal failures on the line I use to get home in time to put my daughter to bed. Faced with the reality of the next few months, thinking back to just over a week ago provides a stark reminder of how our world has rapidly changed; bringing old worries into perspective. In a time of very real fear, as the road ahead is daily paved with much larger anxieties for us all, I’ve been surprised to find myself feeling, on many occasions, hopeful. I’ve been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of examples of solidarity, resilience, and kindness that I’ve witnessed in just four days from every avenue; and I’m starting to understand that we’ll get through the next few months, as one. A chronic list maker, I’ve found it really helpful to write down my priorities over the next few weeks; spanning home, family, work, my community; and I have an action plan for now. As someone famous for hating for change (if he wasn’t so busy being incredible at supporting everyone around him, I’d say to ask my boss Nick for validation of this), this is something that keeps me grounded, and helps me navigate the new normal. Work wise, my only goal is a concentrated version of the one I had when I joined Charity People two years ago; to support our incredible clients and candidates, and my colleagues, in any way they need. Charity People was founded 30 years ago this year with the aim of partnering with the thousands of charities out there who tirelessly strive for a better world day in, day out. Having always worked to the very best of our ability to provide the best talent for roles within the phenomenal organisations we are privileged to call our clients, this is an opportunity to really prove ourselves and help in any way we can. As my wonderful colleague Anna said in her earlier blog, with charities facing unprecedented times ahead, good fundraisers will be needed now more than ever; at Charity People, we’re committed to doing whatever we can to help. She’s absolutely right (I suspect she has never been wrong about anything) when she says that charities will need well-resourced teams of the most talented individuals out there working together as one. The good news is that excellent candidates are still looking for their next role; that in fact they are more available to interview than ever before because of the shift to Skype and other platforms. Outside of work, I have found a local action group and am volunteering to help with shopping for those who are self-isolating, as well as anything else people need, over the coming months. This includes being available for phone chats with anyone who feels isolated and is struggling with a lack of human contact, which I suspect I very much will. I’m focusing on my daughter, ensuring that her physical and mental health is impacted as little as possible – tricky when her favourite game called “doggy kissing” and involves strenuous attempts on her part to lick faces; but we’ll get there with lots of lessons about germs and hand-washing. She won’t remember Covid-19 when she gets older, but she might remember the feelings she had and emotions she picked up on. I am hopeful that with this understanding we will be able to shield children from what we are feeling. I’m also trying to take breaks from news, and social media; I’m going to start running again, as well as getting out for walks as much as possible; and crucially, make sure everyone is fed, with healthy immune systems. This is a time to pull together; shift the way we work; support each other; and keep going. For charities, more income than ever will need to be found in order to respond to increased demand on services. At Charity People, our focus is on helping support the charity sector in any way we can, to keep communicating, and helping others to communicate; keep helping; keep being kind to one another – the last week has shown me there is a previous untapped strength in all of us, and that together we can get through this.

The team here at Charity People have been struck by how positive, adaptable and inspirational our charity clients and candidates have been over the last few days. I for one, turned on my laptop with some trepidation this morning, unsure of the new world I was waking up to. With a relief, the traditional British outlook remained the same – keep calm and carry on – and this is exactly what we are trying to emulate too.Charities are still recruiting and are actually, more committed than ever to find talented, ambitious and innovative fundraisers for their teams. With charities facing unprecedented times ahead, good fundraisers are needed now, more than ever and we are committed to doing whatever we can to help.Fundraising efforts need to diversify further, new areas of income need to be explored and existing relationships need to be strengthened. This requires talented people and we’re here to facilitate this.Rather unexpectedly, we find ourselves having more access to candidates who are looking for a new opportunity. As more candidates work from home, we are finding it easier to have conversations with individuals which are usually conducted in hushed tones during their lunch break. We can chat openly and candidly about their career aspirations and have the time to talk through the wonderful opportunities we have for them. The second unexpected thing that has happened, is that it has suddenly become easier for candidates to actually interview! No more early morning ‘dentist appointments’ or random half days leave, candidates are able to conduct a Skype interview from the comfort of their home, in a relaxed setting without the awkwardness of hiding it from their colleagues! Potential employees are also being encouraged to consider applicants who work part time or work remotely as this new way of working is being explored.True, this is a strange and tricky time, one which is uncertain and confusing. But we are comforted by how positive and calm all of our candidates and clients are being and reiterates to us what a truly phenomenal sector the charity sector is, one which we are incredibly proud to work alongside.

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting with Dylan and Alex from Lord’s Taverners charity, based near Blackfriars station. I went into the meeting with a small amount of information on the charity, as I am an avid sports fan with experience following and volunteering with sports-based charities. I knew it was a charity focused on cricket, but I did not realise the scale of work they do and how many people they help. Lord’s Taverners name has been misconstrued as a male focused charity because of having ‘Lord’ in their name. However, this is in fact due to the charities strong link with Lord’s cricket ground, the England cricket’s home ground and most historic venue. Dylan and Alex were kind enough to show me around their office and go into detail around how the charity engages with the community, with particular emphasis on the groups they aim to support. Their focus is on inclusion. The charity aims to offer cricket as a sport to engage communities that do not get the same chances as more privileged demographics. The charity works closely with children and young people between the ages of 8 and 25 who have a disability or live in a high poverty region that don’t get access to cricket and sports programmes. The two startling statistics are as follows:•‘Young people with a disability are less than half as likely to take part in sport at least once a week than young people without a disability’•‘30% of children (4.1m) in the UK live in poverty, with those from lowest income households more likely to report low levels of physical activity: 47% of children aged 5-15 from the lowest household income group currently have low activity, compared with 35% in the highest’. So, how far is their reach?The charity runs a few programmes, but I want to talk about two of the main ones they run across the country. Table cricket and Wicketz. Table CricketTable cricket is an adapted version of cricket, played on a table tennis table and specially designed to give young people with a disability the chance to play and compete in the sport we all love. This sport looks incredible and has been highly successful across the country with regional and national tournaments every year. The sport was initially designed to focus on people with disabilities but with the format being such a success, this has now been opened to the wider community to people without disabilities. This has created a fantastic sport which has allowed a level playing field for all involved, regardless of disability. This program runs across all counties in the UK. The benefits are remarkable. The Table Cricket format of the game has had such a positive impact on children and young people that play. Table Cricket has been shown to develop teamwork and social skills among players. It also helps coordination and cognitive skills.Click here to see some of the case studies who have benefited from the programme.WicketzWicketz is a programme focused on deprived communities and works with children and young people between the ages of 8 and 19. The programme has 19 hubs across the country from Plymouth, all the way up to Glasgow. These sustainable cricket hubs provide year-round, weekly cricket sessions with a focus on breaking down barriers, developing crucial life skills, creating stronger communities and enabling brighter futures for those taking part. Each hub has a Development Officer who works closely with the children and young people in the community. The young people that attend are young offenders, refugees and excluded pupils. The program aims to tackle local issues. These programmes are bespoke to the communities they work in and the young people get to meet and work with role models, community leaders and other peers. Click here for a link to the Wicketz programme and their reach. Outside of the programmes, I got a real sense from Alex and Dylan that both are fully invested in the work of the charity as well as everyone in the office. We met in one of their meeting rooms and all along the walls were former presidents of the charity. There were some big names from entertainment and sport. Such names include Eric Morecambe, Trevor MacDonald and Will Carling. The charity is a lot more than a sports charity. I don’t think that’s their sole focus and neither do they. They do not want to purely focus on that aspect. There is a current and real divide when it comes to inclusion in cricket. It has the unfortunate reputation of being a privileged sport, whereby the affluent get the best chance of success in the sport. Lord’s Taverners, alongside their great programmes, are trying to create a better balance where young people in deprived regions, as well as young people with disabilities, get the chance to be involved with a great sport. This is a magnificent charity and I walked away trying to work out how I could put all of the information I learned into a blog. There is a lot more to talk about and I would encourage people to check them out here. ​​

​Earlier this week, Stuart and Georgie had a rewarding meeting with Joanna Christophi, the Director of Fundraising and Marketing at the wonderful national mental health charity, SANE. Read below for an account of their morning:We set off for an early morning meeting at SANE's Head Office in Islington, a short 10-minute walk from Highbury and Islington station and a 5-minute walk from Holloway Road station. We arrived at the office, eager to learn more about the charity and to find out more about the life-changing work they do.The meeting was arranged with little notice, so we both attended the meeting with an understanding of the charity and how they support people with mental health, but little knowledge of the significant difference they make. We were met by Joanna, who gave us a tour of their office, surrounded by all the people that make great things happen for people affected by mental illness. What really stood out was the warm reception we received from each team and how everyone we spoke to wanted to give us more information on the charity. Also, everyone was smiling and clearly so happy to be there.  Everyone we met at the charity was so lovely and caring, and everyone at the organisation is so passionate about the work they do. It was so great to see so many people so invested in the charity’s aims:Raise awareness and understanding to combat the stigma surrounding mental illness, and fight persistently to improve mental health services.Provide emotional and specialist mental health support through our services. Promote and facilitate research into the causes – and more effective treatment – of mental illness. SANE was founded in 1986 by Marjorie Wallace, who still is someone who is at the core of the charity and still heavily invested presently. Marjorie is a huge voice in the mental health world and actively campaigns on huge media platforms, including LBC. SANE is an independent charity and the wonderful work they do is enabled by caring volunteers and generous donations from Trusts and individual giving, and the fabulous work all the team members at SANE do. Throughout our meeting, we learnt a huge amount about SANE, in particular the huge array of support provided and campaigns for improving the quality of life for anyone affected by mental illness. This includes emotional support from helplines including SANEline and Textcare, raising awareness of mental illness through the Black Dog Campaign and other media outlets, research into the causes of mental illness and a Creative Awards Scheme (SCAS) that began in 2019 which helps individuals fulfil their creative potential by providing creative materials and funds for projects and training courses. SCAS had such success that the scheme has had a second round of funding for 2020. SANEline is their national out-of-hours mental health helpline, offering specialist emotional support and guidance every evening from 4.30pm-10.30pm. This helpline is run by a bank of 70 amazing volunteers who have been through a lengthy and detailed training programme to ensure they can provide great help and support. SANE receives over a quarter of a million calls each year and answer over 200 calls a day, so it is clear how vital the volunteers are for this amazing helpline. SANE also provide a texting helpline service called Textcare, as well as a callback service which provides monthly sessions with a qualified psychotherapist or counsellor to help people affected by mental health conditions. If you would like to find out more about SANEline, Textcare or are thinking about volunteering yourself, please click here.At Charity People, we have colleagues who are huge advocates for Mental Health charities and SANE is a charity we really enjoyed meeting. They have a plan to double the amount of calls they can take each year through SANEline. This means twice as many people will be able to speak to someone qualified at potentially the darkest moment of their lives. The charity wants to grow each of their programmes further to help more people who desperately need the help. This charity left us wanting to do more to spread their message, we left feeling inspired and eager to tell their story further. This organisation is truly incredible, and the work they do is invaluable, so much so that it is hard to mention everything in this blog. To find out more about the wonderful work they do, please click here.   

​Earlier this week, Charity People were so pleased to say hello to Tanya, our new Community and Events consultant. Tanya volunteered for three years in the charity sector before building her experience over four years working in the sector. To celebrate Tanya beginning her journey with Charity People, we wanted to get to know her a bit better, and for everyone else to know a bit more about her too. Read below for Tanya’s interview. Welcome to Charity People. So, to start things off… please tell me a bit about yourself. Hi! I was born in London and I have quite a large family, with four brothers and three sisters. Two of my siblings live in Australia and another in Belgium, so I try to visit them as much as I can. I love to travel. I spent two years living in Australia, which included lots of blueberry picking. I also love food - I think I would say curry is my favourite meal, and I make a great berry and lime drizzle. I come from a family of musicians, and love music myself, especially singing.I follow a plant-based diet and I try to live as ethically as possible. I buy second-hand clothing whenever I can and always recycle.What was it about Charity People and the community and events role that you were interested in?I started my career within the charity sector in 2010. Several years after I finished university I really wanted to focus on finding a career with high job satisfaction, which for me is helping people and in an environment surrounded by people who love doing the same thing as me. I really love talking to people, and engaging with local communities and making partnerships. I am always thinking ‘’how can I help?’’ or ‘’how can they benefit from what I do?’’, so I am really lucky to have found this role where I can do that every day. In three words, how would your closest family and friends describe you?I think they would say… bubbly, thoughtful and a procrastinator. Only because I am always thinking things through to make sure I am doing everything I can, which sometimes leads to me procrastinating I guess.Now that you have joined the wonderful Charity People film club, what is your favourite film of all time?My favourite film would have to be The Matrix (but not the trilogy… only the first one). I have seen it so many times but I think it really revolutionised movie making to this day. Fun fact about you…A fun fact about me would probably be I am currently learning the Ukulele. Quote you live by.Definitely “Dance like nobody’s watching’’.Favourite food, band and book?My favourite food is probably cake. Although my sister suggested I should give it up for lent and it has really been testing me walking past Doughnut Time every day. My favourite band would have to be Incubus and favourite book is Shantaram. One thing on your bucket list you would like to tick off this year.Jumping out of an aeroplane. I would love to do that. Top three places you have travelled to and why?Number one has to be Vietnam. Vietnam is visually stunning, and every place you go is completely different. There is so much adventure and great food. Second is Jamaica. My family are from Jamaica and it has beautiful beaches and also great food.Finally, Sardinia. I went to Sardinia last year and it was amazing. The people and beaches were incredible. Final question, what are you most excited about at Charity People?Last night at the Charity People Innovation event, I really saw the positive impact that Charity People and the consultants here have on candidate and client’s lives every day. I spoke with a candidate who had been through the whole candidate journey and then placed by our colleague, Stuart. To see how happy they were in their role, and how invested they were in Stuart to attend the event last night, I think shows how much of an impact Stuart had made on them.  I am just really excited to be able to do the same with my candidates and clients. I am excited to see what the future holds, and so far everyone has been incredible and so lovely. ​Thank you very much to Tanya for allowing us to ask her all of these questions! For any queries Community and Events related, please contact Tanya who will be happy to help. ​

​Stoll is the leading provider of supported housing to vulnerable Veterans. Stuart and Georgie were lucky enough to visit them in their London office, based in Fulham. Here is their account of the morning at Sir Oswald Stoll:We arrived at Fulham Broadway station on a rather rainy and miserable, grey day. It was freezing and we rushed to Stoll, motivated to get warm. The charity is a two minute was from the station in the beautiful Fulham Broadway area. As you look at the building of the charity, you can see the magnificent Stamford Bridge stadium overlooking the Harvey Oswald mansion. If you were a Chelsea football fan, you were in the right place. From the beginning of the meeting, it was so clear how wonderful this organisation is. Our meeting began with a fabulous and in-depth tour from the Director of Fundraising at Stoll, Beverley Russell. We were shown through the grounds of the Fulham Mansion, surrounded by lovely gardens. We met a few of the fantastic beneficiaries of the organisation, who all couldn’t be happier and more grateful for the work Stoll has done for them and how their lives have changed since they moved into Stoll housing. One veteran has done some really life changing things for the community at Stoll, namely updating and improving their in-house gym with much needed equipment. This gym is really a community amongst them, to help improve wellbeing and to bring people together. When being shown around the gym and the newest additions to the impressive space, it was evident how much involvement there is from the beneficiaries at the charity. There were symbols of the beneficiaries everywhere, ranging from motivational sporting pictures to the inspiring athletes that have gone on to achieve so much after a life changing injury. There is a hall for community events, a communal kitchen where everyone can eat together and a room dedicated to computers, books to read and an excellent array of films. The feel around the first ever building dedicated to social housing for ex-Servicemen and women is a tight knit family, who have been able to achieve so much through the help of the charity. Throughout the whole meeting, Beverley was hugely passionate and ambitious about the organisation, with a real personal feel throughout. Everyone is on first name basis with one another, and we really saw first-hand the wonderful work Stoll does. You came away with a feel that the people working with Stoll truly care about the people that live there. Along with providing affordable homes, the organisation also leads mental and physical health services, such as mental wellbeing support, social activities and specialist practitioners who provide drug and alcohol use support. They are also partnered with Addaction, a leading substance misuse and behaviour change charity, to help tackle addiction and substance misuse. This service is provided to the wider London community as well as Veterans living in Stoll houses. Stoll has supported Veteran’s since 1916. They have been at the forefront of supporting vulnerable ex-Servicemen and women since their founder, Sir Oswald Stoll, donated ‘The Fulham mansions’ as the original building to begin providing affordable housing for Veteran’s from WW1, with the housing still remaining today. That means for 100 years Stoll has been providing much-needed and much-appreciated support that ex-Servicemen and women are incredibly grateful for.We spent over two hours with the charity, in particular Beverley. Speaking with people so passionate about the charities that they work for make the meetings so enjoyable. It’s an enjoyable and unique experience whereby you see the people every day that benefit from your efforts.  We thoroughly enjoyed our meeting, and think Stoll really is an amazing organisation.  If you would like to read some of the Veteran’s stories about how Stoll changed their lives, please click here.   

What a brilliant evening we had last night with Henry Rowling and Anne Race from the innovation, insight and strategy collective Flying Cars, exploring audience-engagement and innovation in the not-for-profit sector.We invited thirty fundraisers to share an issue they are currently struggling with at work, for the chance to have their problem worked through on the night. Henry and Anne took us through a series of a fast-paced, interactive exercises designed to help innovate and develop new solutions to fundraising problems.Helen from Macular Society, who braved the rain and the trains to join us all the way from Andover, was lucky enough to have her issue selected by the Flying Cars team to work through. With a strict time-limit for each exercise, our brains/ imaginations were fully stretched as we were taken through the paces of innovation methodology. We all learnt masses, about the power of audience-led research, using problems as a launch-pad for idea generation, the importance of testing assumptions and the huge potential for creative thinking in the sector.Thank you to everyone who came, and a special thank you to Henry and Anne for sharing their expertise with us and delivering an immersive and lasting learning experience.In the words of Flying Cars co-founder Henry,‘The future is here. Don’t get left behind. Only those charities brave enough to embrace the changing needs, values and expectations of the modern supporter will survive, maintain and grow a loyal movement.’For further information about how Flying Cars can help your organisation, please contact: hello@flyingcarsinnovation.com / 0207 157 9504For advice and support around your future career or help finding exceptional fundraising talent for your team, please contact: info@charitypeople.co.uk / 020 7939 7439Additional facts about eye disease we learnt during the process: did you know that most eye damage happens before you are 18 years old? So any parents out there, make sure your kids wear proper UV sunglasses, and eat kale and yellow peppers!For more information about eye disease, please visit https://www.macularsociety.org/​

​Earlier this week, Stuart and Georgie had the pleasure of visiting Auditory Verbal UK’s London Centre in Bermondsey. The organisation work with pre-school aged deaf babies and children and their families and train more specialist therapists to help deaf children to learn to listen and speak. This is the account of their meeting this small, yet incredibly valuable charity. Auditory Verbal UK (AVUK) are a wonderful charity based in Bermondsey on Jamaica Street. Before our meeting, we didn’t know a huge amount about the charity…after we left we spent the whole time walking back to the office discussing this niche and caring organisation. We met with Emma, the Head of Fundraising at AVUK and someone who is clearly one of many at the charity who are completely motivated by their work. The time was spent discussing the charity, their history, what they specialise in and what they plan to do in the future. We were engrossed in the conversation from the very start. Founded in 2003 by Jacqueline Stokes, who started this charity working with deaf children from her home in Oxfordshire, the charity now has over 20 fantastic and dedicated individuals, all working together to achieve the same goal: ‘’To ensure all deaf babies and children have the opportunity to listen and speak as equals alongside their hearing peers.’’ Their CEO, Anita Grover, who is also profoundly deaf, has led the charity through its current five year strategy, to help even more deaf children to get the support they need and to train enough specialist therapist so that every deaf child, no matter where they are born, can access auditory verbal therapy (AVT). Each charity has a goal, a mission they try to stay true to. One of the most poignant comments Emma made during our time with her, was the following: ‘We have a plan to exist until our services are no longer required. This means achieving the target we set ourselves, which is to train as many therapists as required to support the thousands of pre-school children who desperately need this early intervention, which we estimate to be 300’. You have a sense that the charity is completely selfless. You would expect that with most charities, but AVUK have a goal to not exist in the future, which seems strange but isn’t. It means they will have conquered what they set out to do. The reason they do their jobs every day, is because everyone at the charity is motivated to achieve this target. They run early intervention programmes to help enable pre-school age children to talk through listening. AVUK offer a 2- 3 year programme of one-on-one sessions with specialists accredited through AVUK’s own training programme. Throughout the country, there are currently only 25 professional therapists but over 7000 pre-school children who are deaf or impaired hearing. There is a clear and very real demand for more therapists in the UK to receive this training. 10 of the currently qualified therapists work for AVUK, the others are working for the NHS or independently. The charity are working tirelessly to train more therapists. They are offering training in-house, online and are looking at evening classes for people who want to train but don’t have the time. This charity is truly inspiring and unique. They rely solely on the generous donations from individuals, trusts and organisations, with no direct funding from the government. They are a small team with an enormous impact on so many young children and their families. It was a pleasure to hear the accounts of people that visit. Everyone that comes to the charity walks away having a fantastic experience. Parents and Grandparents of children who are deaf walk in with a child excited to be going in, and walk away with a child with the biggest smile. It’s reported that 80% of children who graduate from AVUK have language skills equivalent to their hearing peers. The charity are so in tune with the children they work with, that they treat each subjectively and cater to the individual child and their families. The office in Bermondsey has a dedicated toy room! Case studies of the impact AVUK has had on these children and their families are available online. One parent said this after their son received support of AVUK: ‘I’m excited to see what the future holds for him and know that he can achieve anything he wants to, and that is all thanks to the amazing support we have received for him from the beginning, and AV is a massive part of that and I will be forever grateful.’ To read more about other case studies, please read some incredible accounts from parents here. We both walked away truly grateful for the time Emma gave us and felt completely overwhelmed by the impact of AVUK, what they do, as well as the ambitious plans for the future. I advise everyone to have a read of their website to find out more, because selfless charities driven by their users deserve all the support they can get. To find out more, have a click on here .​

​A week or so ago we sadly bid farewell to Pete, our fantastic Community and Events consultant here at Charity People. Pete, and his abundance of energy, will definitely be missed around the office.In honour of Pete leaving, we hosted a cake bake sale raising money for HOPE not hate, chosen by Pete himself. HOPE not hate is an amazing anti-racism and discrimination charity that focuses on building communities and celebrating shared identities by developing community action and engagement plans. We raised a total of £152 for this wonderful organisation. In Pete’s own words, “Whilst comparatively little when compared with the vast cost of Brexit and the tragic rise in hate crime and assault on liberalism since the referendum, it was beautiful to see everyone so positive and driven to make even the smallest of differences.”We wanted to say a massive thank you for all of the generous donations from our workspace colleagues and all of the effort that our Charity People bakers went to with their fabulous cakes.​

​Where to start? Neil Hogan and I from Charity People traversed up 17 stories, stood with a panoramic view over-looking London with members of the London Air Ambulance. I wore my best Top Gun jacket, felt appropriate on the day. (Neil and Stuart…or Maverick and Goose?) We do not appreciate the level of efficiency and commitment that goes into this inspiring service. Two pilots, doctor, paramedic, fire team, security, call handler – 365 days a year. The London Air Ambulance deal with the most challenging incidents/accidents inside the M25. Ranging from the most severe road traffic collisions, cycling incidents to violent acts. Between 5000 – 6000 calls come in every single day to the London Ambulance service. The dedicated team listens to each call for particular comments, signals that will trigger the London Air Ambulance team to head out. The Air Ambulance team respond to the most severe cases in a day and this can be the difference between saving a life or not. A very profound statement was made on the day from a fantastic firefighter in the team, ‘The very busy days aren’t an issue, it just means we are reaching more people who are having the worst day of their lives’. A quick thank you to Shai, Anna and Lucy from the database team for inviting us to the afternoon.​

​Good job there’s GoodJobsThe process of recruiting fundraisers is about to be tweaked to help expand training of fundraisers, and improve the diversity and inclusion of fundraisers.GoodJobs is a new jobs board for fundraisers. There’s nothing new about jobs boards of course - there are plenty to choose from for fundraisers, and have been for 20 years or so. GoodJobs, say its founders, is designed, of course, “to be different”. This is not in terms of technology, although machine learning and AI is already transforming what can be done in recruitment. Instead, the site takes two approaches that make it stand out from other providers.Saving charities moneyFirst, it avoids the model of paying a set fee per job advertisement. Instead, it offers a set annual fee for an unlimited number of jobs. It does so at a very modest rate, to ensure that it can be used by almost any sized charity. £120 a year for unlimited jobs could make national recruitment a more realistic prospect for small and very small charities, even if they use it just the once. The annual fee rises to £600 for the largest charities, which are of course more likely to recruit more than one fundraiser a year.Investing in fundraisersUndercutting existing recruitment sector providers is hardly a novel or necessarily sustainable business plan. There has to be something else for the service to stand out and appeal. Which is where the GoodJobs bursary fund comes in.GoodJobs has been established as a social enterprise, and is committed to distributing 25% or more of its profits for social good. Specifically, it will donate this sum via a bursary fund to support the training of fundraisers. It’s no good recruiting fundraisers if the charities that recruit them don’t have sufficient training and development budgets.They will distribute the fund regionally to try to reduce geographical bias. It will be distributed based on the income generated via each region.Finding even more fundraisersThe fund will also be directed at projects and services that are working to help find and recruit fundraisers from a much wider section of society. Who is behind it?GoodJobs is a collaborative initiative from some long-standing individuals and organisations in the fundraising and charity sector. These include Howard Lake, publisher of UK Fundraising (fundraising.co.uk), and Charity People, the charity sector recruitment specialists. GoodJobs launches at the end of January 2020. The timing, we think, couldn’t be better. Charities need even more opportunities to plan ahead and predict their expenditure. The sector as a whole needs to reduce unnecessary costs where it can to apply investment to activities that are most successful and impactful. In addition GoodJobs aims to bring benefits to small and large charities by expanding the range and skills of fundraisers that will drive charities’ resilience in generating income over the coming challenging years.Howard LakeUK Fundraising​​​

​Fundraising Futures: Innovation with Flying CarsCharity People is hugely excited to be hosting an exclusive, interactive event with the brilliant innovation collective Flying Cars.Fundraising is changing. As fundraising leaders, decision- makers and change-makers we would be delighted if you would join us for this one-off innovation event. The future is here. Don’t get left behind.When: Thursday 27th February, 2020 5:00pm arrival, 5:30pm workshop starts, 6:30pm onwards drinks and networkWhere: Charity People, 3 Tuns House, 109 Borough High Street, London SE1 1NLFlying Cars Innovation will take you through a fast-paced series of exercises designed to help you innovate at work and develop new solutions to the issues you are wrestling with in your area of fundraising expertise. If you need a new individual giving proposition, a new mass engagement event or an exciting idea to put in your next corporate partnership proposal attending this event will increase the tools at your disposal to develop ideas that work.On the night, we will work through a real issue submitted by you in advance and use a rigorous methodology and process to come up with innovative solutions to your problems. We’ll offer fresh audience insight into the problem area and develop practical solutions to your fundraising problem that you can develop further in the coming months.Before the event:This will be a fully-interactive event, helping you explore innovative ways of problem solving. To have the chance to work through something fundraising-related you are currently struggling with, please share an issue with us by February 14th 2020. ​1.Tell us a little about an issue you are struggling to solve. It might be something like: We need to engage more 30-40-year-olds with regular giving, or how do we grow our grassroots fundraising using our regional presence2.Who is the core audience you need to attract/engage with this problem - please tell us a little bit about them3.What would success look like in tackling this issue?All submissions will be treated entirely in confidence and remain confidential.This is a free event with limited capacity. We ask that if you do confirm, please, you do attend.Please RSVP​​

​Big shout out to Better Bankside for having organised, yet again, such an amazing campaign that has coordinated Christmas gift donations for homeless, vulnerably housed and elderly people throughout Southwark. This is the fifth year that Charity People have been involved.We had a great couple of afternoons mucking in and wrapping some of the donated items! If only there was a day where we could simply choose to stop the marginalisation of so many people in our society...Better Bankside's Together at Christmas is an annual festive gift appeal that supports over 2,000 homeless, vulnerably housed and elderly people in the Bankside area and across Southwark.Every year, Better Bankside's business members host collection boxes so that their staff can donate gift items such as warm clothing, toiletries and edible treats. We collect all of the donated items from businesses in early December, and with the help of teams of volunteers, wrap them to make into gift parcels that we deliver to hostels, sheltered accommodation units and community organisations across Southwark.

Recently, I had the pleasure of volunteering for an incredible charity called Dallaglio Rugbyworks. The charity works with Pupil Referral Units, short stay schools, specialised schools in a mentoring and coaching role. The charity provides a staple in their curriculum's that develops the students in a sporting environment, with specialist coaches working with the group and individuals to grow as people as well as students. There was a touch rugby tournament hosted for a number of schools who lack the opportunities to access sporting provisions, one of which is rugby. It is well documented what Rugby brings to young people with its core values, to name a few: - Camaraderie - Teamwork - Discipline - Hard work - Integrity.The tournament resulted in 12 schools across London coming together in a competitive format that was a complete success. Students from differing backgrounds, problems and struggles simply came together with a common interest. They represented their schools in a fun touch rugby tournament, which exhibited some lightning pace, and skills. The charity builds pathways to careers, apprenticeships and further studying to a very challenged and vulnerable demographic. I want to thank Phil Hannah, and the whole of the #DallaglioRugbyworks team.Find out more.​

​Luke has twenty years' experience of working in both the commercial and charity sectors. He joined Bowel Cancer UK in June 2012 as the Head of Philanthropy and Partnerships and joined the Senior Management Team two years later as Director of Fundraising. Luke specialises in corporate, business development and relationship fundraising.How did you end up in fundraising and what advice would you have for someone looking to enter the sector from the commercial world?I started my working life in media sales and stayed with the same company for eight years. I learnt a huge amount, had a lot of fun and worked with and met some great people. I had a strong manager who both challenged and supported me throughout that time making sure I had every opportunity to grow, succeed and learn from my mistakes.As much as I enjoyed working in the media world, I started to feel like a needed a new challenge and wanted to look at other possible ways I might be able to use the valuable experience I'd gained in sales in a different way. The British Red Cross Society were recruiting for a corporate partnerships role at the time, which I was fortunate enough to get and I haven't looked back.Ultimately, my time in the commercial sector taught me all about the key elements of what it meant to be able to tell a story in a way that would inspire and persuade people to spend money with the titles I was responsible for. I have no doubt this helped with the transition in to fundraising. For me there is very little difference between the disciplines of sales and fundraising. Both are about building relationships, understanding your audience or supporters and making sure they get a full measure of the impact that working with you will bring - whether that's a page in a magazine or a relationship with a charity.Having made the move from commercial to non-profit, I can safely say that I do not regret it in any way. I would absolutely encourage anyone considering the transition to go for it. Working in fundraising is both challenging and tremendously rewarding and I believe the sector will undoubtedly benefit from even more good people that have a range of transferable skills to bring to many fantastic causes across the wonderful world of fundraising. I would add that I think the sector could do more to promote itself to the commercial sector when it comes to career opportunities.If anyone is thinking about making the move in to fundraising, what are the three key pieces of advice you would give?The first thing I would say is to understand there are some clear fundamental differences between the corporate and the charity sectors. Charities operate in a different way - our ultimate goal is to put ourselves out of business which is a fundamental difference that can take a little while to get your head around. Beyond that though there are one or two tips I can offer people going to interview for a new role (and these could definitely be relevant to people also already in fundraising):Research. Get a grasp on what fundraising actually is and what it looks like on a day to day basis. Beyond that make sure you have a really comprehensive understanding of the charity you want to work for - what they do and how they do it, the numbers they use to show impact - there is nothing more disappointing than spending 45mins to an hour with someone who hasn't done their homework.Don't try and be something you're not - I want to see someone who is honest and transparent about why they want this role and why they really want to work for the charity - even if this is because you aren't getting what you need from your current role.Don't be afraid to get creative - unfortunately, it's very tough to come up with new ideas in fundraising these days, but I firmly believe that if an idea is good enough, people will buy in to it. If you can show that you have the ability to think laterally about all the elements and positioning of a product, event or campaign, then that will definitely serve you well if you are looking to move in to fundraising.Who inspires you and why?I have to say I am constantly inspired and blown away by the sheer energy, creativity and determination I see every day in the people working for, advising and supporting Bowel Cancer UK. I have been fortunate enough to work for some incredible charities, but over the last five years I have met and seen so many amazing people channelling absolutely everything into making a difference for others. Whether they currently have bowel cancer or are supporting someone who has or has had bowel cancer, it never fails to move meto see such strength, courage and focus in action as they raise awareness and funds for an often misunderstood and underfunded cause. I can't tell you enough how hugely inspiring the people that I work for and with are! For me there are few things more motivating than thinking of them.As a corporate partnerships specialist what advice would you have for someone looking to broaden their experience and head up a whole fundraising function?I'm not sure 'specialist' is ever a word I could say would be applied to me! But if you're looking to take on a role which is broader than the one you are currently in and has more responsibility than the one you're used to, I would say that the most important thing I've learnt is you need to accept that you won't ever be a specialist again. You will always be closest (it's unlikely you'll lose that knowledge) to your 'specialist' area of fundraising, but you need to accept and be ok with the fact that there are going to be people in your team that will know more about their area of fundraising than you might. It's imperative that you have an understanding of all areas of fundraising, how they work, what they cost, any trends, etc., but if you can offer practical support, encouragement, direction and make the decisions no-one else wants to, then you should be on the right path. Whether you're heading up a team or coming in at a different level, the important thing is to always play to each other's strengths. As a leader I just think you have to figure out how to juggle more balls and spin more plates without dropping them.What key traits or experiences do you tend to look for when interviewing potential new members of the team?Generally, I look for one or two main things: Team-fit is critical for me. And I completely appreciate that this is a very subjective measure based on a short period of time in an interview. But you have to get that right. As an interviewer you have a responsibility to nurture and promote the culture and environment of the team you are leading - and the wider organisation, particularly in a smaller charity. If there's even one individual in a team that starts to create challenges for others, that can quickly become catastrophic to performance and in general to the day to day environment. They need to show they understand what it means to be a team member and show that they can work as part of a team.If there is one thing I ask of every person in the fundraising team at Bowel Cancer UK, it's that they understand that meeting the overall goal or budget takes precedent over the individual lines for which they are responsible. They need to own and understand their targets inside out of course, but if one line is struggling and another is not, the team has a collective responsibility to support one another and keep their 'eye on the prize' - the overall result. As long as everyone is doing their best to get to where we need to be, then that is all I can ask of them. Team first, individual second! Ambition and drive are healthy, but if it's all about big ego's, then they need not apply!Secondly, I always try and think about what that person would be like with one of our supporters. What sort of experience do I think a supporter might have if they called in or met them and talked to them about fundraising for the charity? In this day and age it is more important than ever and whilst it is a bit of an old adage, first impressions really do count for a lot. I need to know that someone can be trusted to make an individual who wants to support Bowel Cancer UK feel really special and give them the experience that helps to ensure they support us long-term; the quality of every interaction and experience is just so important.Leadership: What is the secret to building a loyal, happy and motivated team and what are the biggest challenges you face in doing so?I'm not sure if there are any secrets and if there are, please tell me!For me it's all about being present and leading by example. I don't think it sends a good message to always be in the office or the other way round. There needs to be a balance. I try and join each team member on meetings they may have where I can add some value to the discussion. I think it's important that you are showing an interest and you're invested in the work your team are doing.Good communication is absolutely essential (that includes listening as well as sharing). I find people generally expect the common courtesy of knowing information in a timely and open way - not many people like surprises - especially when it comes to work, so keeping people in the loop on things regularly is really important. Building trust is important. People need to know you are on their side and that you're respected by your peers too - and that is something you really need to be aware of as a member of any seniormanagement team. And lastly I think it's also really important to encourage a bit of humour, I am often at the receiving end of banter in our office and that is fine! You're with these people A LOT and it's important you can actually like being around one another so being able to laugh with and at one another is pretty important.In terms of loyalty, I don't necessarily think that because someone moves on, they're being disloyal. They may have another opportunity that they simply couldn't say no to or feel ready for a different challenge and want to do that with another organisation. My measure is if someone leaves the charity having had a great experience, learnt things they can apply in a future role and felt they have contributed to furthering the cause, then that's great and we should celebrate that.I realise this is obvious, but different people are motivated by lots of different things. Some by the cause, some by the role, some by the culture - ultimately, if you're consistently listening, giving people an opportunity to talk about what motivates them or is concerning them and paying attention to that, then you're going to be doing something right. You're never going to please everyone all of the time and that's ok. You need to be ok with that and that just comes with time and experience. I'm still not there yet!I guess all charities will face all kinds of challenges. I think the biggest challenge for the current team is that bowel cancer is easily one of the toughest 'pitches' I've ever encountered. It's the UK's second biggest cancer killer and whilst our income is growing well, it is nowhere near the scale we want to achieve our mission and aims. However, the sales-person in me knows that this also offers an enormous opportunity to grow and build for the future. Every day more people are getting more aware of bowel cancer, and more importantly, they are talking about the disease. Up until very recently, bowel cancer wasn't really a topic that many people felt comfortable talking about, but this is changing and that will almost certainly start to give us the growth needed to stop bowel cancer!Having previously worked in much larger organisations have you had to change your approach to managing people in a smaller office environment?Not really, to be honest. I find the same rules apply regardless of the size of the team or office. There's more to do in a smaller office because you have fewer people to do everything, so pulling together and stuffing envelopes for a mailing or supporting people at events are often an 'everyone mucks in' approach, but in a lot of ways that's good because everyone has a better understanding of what each other does in the day to day which can help to bring teams closer together.How do you ensure that you continue to grow personally when in an SMT level role?Hmm good question. The range of responsibilities and decisions that need making are so wide and diverse I feel like it's almost impossible to not grow. I think you certainly develop more resilience to different situations. That doesn't mean you care less about what people think, but you have to strike a balance between being in a position where knowing you have a sometimes difficult role to play whilst also making sure people feel heard and supported. There are times when you have to say no to something when you'd really like to say yes, but time or resources won't allow for it. I think it really helps when your fellow SMT members are all people you enjoy spending time and working with. If you can share, debate and discuss everything in an open and transparent way, but ultimately make decisions as a collective, that can help you grow and learn. I am very fortunate to have some great colleagues and that makes being a member of SMT an even more enjoyable and rewarding experience. We support one another and share the load on everything and that counts for a lot in the day to day.As a small-ish charity with limited resources how do you keep abreast of upcoming regulatory changes?First thing I would say is that these changes have definitely added workload!Right from a very early stage, we agreed that everyone has a shared responsibility to be close to the regulatory changes and what that meant for the charity. We have carried out internal training to make sure everyone understands the changes coming and the implications. We have also had some presentations from an external consultant which has been very helpful too. All have been really useful in enabling everyone across the organisation to respond and adapt to the upcoming environment. This small investment to get professional advice has been immeasurably helpful.We set up an internal project group which included representation from each area of the business and was chaired by our Director of Finance & Resources. It was up to us as a group to get our head around these changes and then we have weekly meetings to keep each other updated. We have recently launched a full and comprehensive 'opt-in' campaign ahead of next year's changes to ensure that Bowel Cancer UK is fully GDPR compliant in good time for the deadline. I do believe there is a real advantage to this because we're ensuring that everyone who wants to hear from us can and anyone who doesn't has the chance to tell us that. This is an opportunity to get even closer to the core group of people who really believe in us and what we're doing - and then get them to act as advocates on our behalf. This will help us stop bowel cancer and ensure Bowel Cancer UK can show how people really are having an impact on the disease.

In November, I had the pleasure of helping a room full of fundraising managers reflect on their personal leadership brand. And yes, I know it sounds like a horrible piece of management jargon, but actually it is something simple and powerful that can really impact your career.You see you already have a leadership brand. It’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room. It’s how your team describe your management style and what the CEO thinks about your potential. It can open up opportunities for you if it’s great and close doors if it’s not. That’s why I encourage every leader to consciously create their leadership brand for themselves.There are a few steps to this…Consider what sort of leader you want to be. Not sure? Think about leaders that you admire and what specifically you admire about them. Then think about what is important to you – your values – such as integrity, enthusiasm or nurturing. Start a mind map or list of the words that come to you.Think about your unique strengths, or superpowers – those things that come naturally to you which you probably take for granted. List those down too.Ask yourself – what kind of leader do my team and organisation need me to be right now? Reflect on your priorities for the year – what kind of leader do you need to be to achieve them? Make a list of those words too.Refine your list down to the 10 words that you feel drawn to. And then refine it further to the three words (or phrases) that sum up the kind of leader you want to be. Not what your think “good leadership” looks like but what feels like you at your best.You’ve now got your Personal Leadership Brand! Your next step is to look at what actions you can take this week to move even closer to really embodying and living that brand. Then take those actions.​Carla is a leadership coach who helps women be brilliant at influencing, make more impact at work and develop unshakeable self-confidence. She’s running a FREE online masterclass on Boosting Your Authority & Credibility as a Leader and you can sign up at http://bit.ly/2svWi9p​​

​When you apply for roles within a charity you will usually have to submit a copy of your CV. It’s the most important document you have to show your experience to date. For this reason, it’s vital that this gives a truly coherent overview of what you have achieved, as well as your main skills and your education. It also needs to be written with your audience in mind. The reader could be someone less familiar with your role, such as someone from within a recruitment team; or it could be the hiring manager who will most likely know more about your role but not necessarily the nuances of your role within your current organisation. Income targets are a great example of this. £100k raised in fundraising income for a £1million charity is very different to £100k raised within a £5million charity for instance. Make this document the best it can be; spend time on it and tweak it as you take on new responsibilities, undertake more training and development, or add in new skills.Here are our top tips on how to write a brilliant CV: Think like a writer – make every single word countA key element to remember when you write a CV is that it shouldn’t be longer than three pages at the maximum. For individuals who are less far through their career, it’s a good idea to stick to two page. There is also an imperative to ensure that the whole document is engaging, and makes an impact, so make every word count! In addition to making every word count you also need to use space wisely.A useful format to stick to is the following:Name, address, email address and telephone numberProfileWork historyEducationTraining and DevelopmentName, address, email address and telephone numberThis sounds so obvious, but double check your contact details. If you’re uploading an application to a portal, which is often the case for charities, this will be the only way for the recruitment team or hiring manager to contact you. Additionally, it makes a much less than good first impression if there are inaccuracies here. Finally, double check that your email address is appropriate for applying for a job. ProfileThis should be concise, the best representation of you, your career aspirations, and your reasons for wanting to work in the charity sector. It’s the first thing that a prospective employer will read about you so it’s important to spend time getting it right. Think like an architect and use space wisely; this section should be a maximum of a two to three-line paragraph in total. On your CV, your achievements, responsibilities etc. in previous roles will largely remain unchanged but your profile should be tailored to each role you apply for. You shouldn’t use the name of the charity you are applying to in the profile section as it’s about you but it should reflect your reasons for wanting the role you’re applying for. Here's an example profile for someone applying to a new business role:“I am charity fundraising professional with eight years’ experience gained within corporate fundraising. My experience includes a mix of new business and account management across COTY, CRM, sponsorship, and strategic partnerships. As I continue my career, I’m keen to specialise in new business fundraising. I feel privileged to have been instrumental in developing and delivering income generating partnerships of six and seven figures which have contributed to the work of charities whose work I am passionate about. I’m very motivated by continuing to develop transformational partnerships in a senior new business role.” The golden rules of your profile are write, read, stop, and repeat. It’s an ever-changing part of your CV.Employment historyKeep this in reverse-chronological order, with your most recent role first. This is the section that will take up most space and is your opportunity to outline how skilled you are for a role through your experiences and your achievements. A solid format to stick to is as follows:Dates including months – if still working for your current employer include “Present”EmployerJob titleShort, one or two-line overview of your role. Key responsibilitiesUsing bullet points outline the main elements of your role  Key achievementsOnce again using bullet points, outline achievements and include specific figures and information. For instance: “led on the successful COTY partnership application with Morgan Stanley worth £1million for the charity over three years. I led on all elements of the process from initial research to pitch and staff vote, which we won with 20% more votes than our competitors.”Some tips to remember are:You should include most detail about your most recent and most relevant rolesDouble check dates and include the month you started and left a roleDon’t include salary information or reasons for leaving each roleUse bullet points and keep the language conciseWhen applying for fundraising roles it’s vital to include your figures, as well as income targets to give context to how much you have generatedLook out for tense usage – often when you update your CV you will add in your most recent role and edit some less relevant information from your previous roles but keep the rest of the document the same. If you do this, make sure to go back through your last roles and change tense from present to pastThink as though you are speaking to HR as they will often be the initial contact for your CV and may be responsible for providing a long list of applicants to a recruiting manager. Remember that they might not be as knowledgeable about the role you’re applying as a potential line manager. So use language that reflects the job description where possible, and outlines your role clearly. EducationFollowing your work history, it’s a good idea to include education. You don’t have to include dates if you’d prefer not to but do include the institution and your qualification including your grade. This can include university education as well as qualifications such as GCSEs or O’Levels and should also be in chronological order. Qualifications and TrainingThis is similar to “Education” but should detail qualifications and training that you have attained whilst working. Do use the date of the course or the award here and list the name of the course and training provider in chronological order.InterestsIt’s up to you whether to include an “Interests” section and it often can depend on space as it’s less relevant information than everything else. It is quite a nice way to round off your CV though and to give some more flavour of who you are and what you enjoy. If you do decide to include this section, then try to steer clear from the generic and ensure that it’s interesting and gives some insight into who you are and what you enjoy doing in your spare time. Final pointsDon’t use a photo on your CV – this is important from an equality and diversity point of view, and also wastes spaceGet yourself an editor! Use a fresh pair of eyes once you’ve finished the document to avoid mistakes. Preferably this will be someone who understands your role as they can then spot any omissions that you might not meant to have made.​

Our guest blog this week comes from Jane Curtis, a former fundraiser who runs her own consultancy."I have moved around a bit during my 20 years as a fundraiser. I have managed big and small teams, had permanent jobs, interim roles and contract positions. And now as a consultant with my own business, I know only too well how important training and looking after your career development is. It is your process and you need to take responsibility for driving your own development but all too often the day job can get in the way. The tools below are all available online in various forms, but it can be difficult to know where to start. As a visual learner these exercises really helped me. Being Brilliant Exercise​This tool can help you understand your Unique Selling Points and help you visualise what you want and need to be happy in your career. Capture your answers on the three headings within the circles. It may be useful to speak to a manager or colleague for their input under the ‘what is valuable to others’ section.Questions to reflect on: What themes are emerging? What are you brilliant at? What will make you happy? What is valuable to others? What are you doing right now that matches these themes and what will make you happier? What could you do more/less of to prepare you for your next career move? ​Career PlottingThis next tool helps draw out conclusions and identify patterns and trends about the highs and lows of your career so far. The idea being you sketch your career lifeline so far with peaks representing the high points and troughs representing the lows or when you felt less good. And next to each peak or trough you write a couple of words which explain why it was a high or low point. It may help you be clear on which environment and situations work well and less well and how you can develop to enable you to perform better in these situations.Questions to reflect on: What are the characteristics of the highs? What do they have in common? And what were the characteristics for the lows? How did you get out of them? What have you learnt from them? What does all this say about you and your career development needs? ​Career ConversationsThese don’t just happen with your line manager – you could speak to another manager, colleague, mentor or coach. The following are some of the questions you might want to cover. Preparation is key and will avoid any awkwardness and will help keep you to time. Once you’ve had this conversation, discuss with your manager your next actions and continue to discuss progress in the coming months. With all these exercises, you should incorporate them into your existing objective setting or personal development plans. Focus on the direction you want to go in your career, what roles match your happiness, what you’re brilliant at, where you can add value. Start collecting job descriptions for roles you aspire to do and read the person specs thoroughly. Seek out opportunities to gain experience in the criteria the role is looking for. There are so many opportunities to develop yourself within the charity sector, from free workshops like the one Charity People run to Institute of Fundraising SIGs, volunteering or finding yourself a mentor within the sector. Remember: YOU need to own the process and take responsibility for your own development." ​About the authorFor a copy of these handouts and more, you can email Jane Curtis or visit her website and add your name to her mailing list. You can also follow Jane on twitter.​​

​How to be a star in competency-based interviewsOver the past couple of weeks, three things have had me thinking more and more about interview preparation.One of my candidates thanked me for sending them the Charity People interview guide. I also had a really enjoyable pre-interview preparation session with another candidate. And finally, I came across a tweet about some brilliant TED talks to get you in the right mood for an interview.Nobody does (or should) interview regularly. It's one of the reasons why interviews can leave you feeling nervous. Even for super-talented fundraisers, interviews can still hold terrors all of their own. Whilst your day job will often involving building rapport and pitching to panels, you will be more used to selling your cause not yourself. Interviewing can be a daunting prospect. Especially when it's a job and cause that means a lot to you. There is some interview specific jargon around, which can be unfamiliar, so this blog is designed to demystify the process.​​Competency-based interviewsCompetency-based interviews, also known as behavioural interviews, feature questions designed to gauge your ability to handle the job and deal with specific situations. This type of interview generally requires you to demonstrate that you have the skills the employer is looking for by providing examples of situations you’ve faced in the past and what you did in those situations. For example, you may be asked to discuss past projects that have succeeded and failed, how you’ve dealt with challenging situations or a time when you took a risk. Answering these questions gives the interviewer an idea of how you will fit into the team and handle the job. Competency-based interviews are designed to test past behaviour and success.  The theory is that it will be a good indicator of future performance. I have heard some candidates say that it is tough to build rapport and to get your personality across when the process is so heavily structured.  If all you do is to try to map your pre-prepared examples to their pre-prepared questions, then the conversation is bound to seem a little stilted.So don't let the structure control your performance. You need to have some fantastic examples ready to show your skills and experience in the very best light. Think of this as building a compelling case for supporting yourself - just as you would when encouraging donors to support your cause. Treat yourself with the same kindness and compassion as you do with your cause.  Be a #proudfundraiser. If you were speaking to potential donors, then you would be concentrating on bringing your charity to life - to show them the value of investing their time and their money. You need to do just the same with your potential employer.This is all about story-telling - the bread and butter of fundraising. What are the brilliant anecdotes that highlight your successes, experience and skills? How can you tell them in a clear and meaningful way?STAR techniqueUse the STAR technique to create some amazing personal cases for support:SituationTaskActionResults You will have multiple strands of stories and will need to weave them all together to make a compelling case on the big day.  However, don’t forget that your stories must be clear and succinct to give them real impact and meaning.  Great storytelling is all about making every detail count and to do this you have to be selective. Can you think of several good-quality examples so that you have plenty to choose from when presented with the interview questions? And you don't have to use them all. A well-stocked arsenal allows you to give a better demonstration of your experience, because your answers will have direct relevance.Start with impressive figures, achievements and wins. Make sure that you have the correct numbers in your head. And then work through the challenges you have faced and how you have managed key projects.Just like any great charity, you will hopefully have tons of cases for support just waiting to be discovered and told in the right way. As with your day job, it takes time to find them, to tease out the detail, and create something compelling. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time and practice telling the stories.What questions can you expect?Use the job description and person specification as your guide. They should highlight competencies that the organisation believes are vital for the job. At very least, you need stories that show you match each of these capabilities.Make sure you don't just have lots and lots of stories that say same things about you. You need to find a good variety that demonstrate the different areas of your experience and skills.Once you have your cases for support ready, think about how you'll deliver them. Once again, there are parallels between your day job and the interviewing process. When you're conveying your charity's amazing stories every day, you hopefully allow your personality to shine through, so that your stories are believable and personal. I expect you will be thoroughly in your comfort zone telling stories in your very own style. Why should it be any different with an interview panel? You can be confident, clear and concise, whilst delivering your case in a persuasive and meaningful way.Finally, take the time to listen carefully to your own stories, whether in your head, or recorded on your phone. Preparing properly for an interview will give you a real confidence boost. Simply hearing yourself describe all the brilliant things that you achieved and the difference you will you have made will you in a winning frame of mind. Take the time to think about your relationships with donors, beneficiaries and fellow fundraisers as well as the money you have raised in support of a terrific cause. You can acknowledge the value in your skills and experience.If that doesn't put a confident smile on your face, then I don't know what will!We are always happy to spend time with our candidates to help you to prepare. It's all part of the service and we're happy to be that challenging sounding board.​           Good Luck!You can find more information about preparing for interviews on the Charity People website (including a blog with some ideas for questions you should be asking!) or feel free to give us a call for a chat.

​​The Job description is one of the most important documents in your arsenal when working in a candidate-short, competitive market, in order to engage the right people in your role. It is important that the job description covers: what will be required of the person in detail so that potential applicants are able to understand if the role matches their requirements for their next position; how much of a new challenge the role would represent; if it is a position that offers them the prospect of success. The best job descriptions are an engagement tool, a continuation of the marketing you have done around the role that draws potential applicants in and solidifies their interest. The main sections to include in this guide are outlined below, together with insight into the information to incorporate in each section:IntroductionOverview of the charityKey details of roleJob responsibilitiesPerson specificationBenefitsIntroductionThis is where you want to give a brief overview of the role. A short introductory paragraph should set the scene, introduce the charity and, where possible, include reasons for recruiting. You should explain why now is a great time to join the charity, as well as any other headline selling points of the role such as team size. Here is an example:“Our organisation is at an exciting time in its history – with huge interest in our cause; a new five year strategy and an anniversary year ahead next year. We’re going through an exciting period of growth and are recruiting for a brand new Corporate Fundraising Manager role as part of this. Working within a team of six in Corporate Fundraising and 23 in the wider Fundraising team, the post-holder will be joining an award-winning, collaborative and creative team which has real freedom to build highly strategic, sector leading partnerships.”​Overview of the charityThis is your opportunity to really sell your cause and engage potential candidates with the work you do. Try to keep to a couple of paragraphs and focus on what you feel really makes you amazing! You could start with a brief overview of the organisation’s history. Then go on to talk about the impact of the work you undertake; the organisation’s proudest achievements; key milestones you have reached. You could even include testimonials from beneficiaries if you feel it is appropriate. Potential candidates may well be considering several roles. The key here is to take the opportunity to really sell the cause and the work that you do.Key details of the role This is the information that it is important to include in the job description so that potential candidates are aware of key details such as salary, interview process etc. It is fine to use bullet points as this presents the information in a clear and concise way, which is your main aim in this section. Suggestions of what to include are:Job titleRole type – is it permanent or interim? If interim, it is important to explain why.Salary range LocationFlexible working arrangements – it is a good idea to be clear here about what you can offer – could the role be full or part-time for instance? Would you consider home working? If so, how much?Deadline for applications and application processDates for first and, if anticipated, second interviews Main responsibilities You need to provide as much detail about the role as possible. The aim is to give potential candidates a clear understanding of what the role entails. The most attractive job packs include information on areas such as: income targets; number of people the role will be managing; split of duties in role, so feel free to go into detail! Start by writing a long list of everything you want the person to take on. Then work through your list, making sure each point would make sense to an external reader e.g. is all information relevant and in the right order? Delete any irrelevant details to avoid the inadvertent mis-selling of the role. It is a good idea to split the tasks involved in the role and list them in order of importance for the role. For instance, if the role is a fundraising position and the person’s primary duty will be to generate income, you could use something like:“Meet and, where possible, exceed income targets through the delivery of strong fundraising relationships that bring in five and six figure income for the charity”.If the role is primarily about leading a team, then this should be at the top of the list of duties. If the role is multi-faceted, it is a good idea to consider splitting the responsibilities section into sub sections, listing duties within each in more detail, in order to define exactly what is expected of the person across each main area of their role.Person specificationYou should include everything you are looking for in potential applicants. Lots of charities use a table format to let candidates know which experience is absolutely essential and which is desirable, giving an idea of where there might be some flexibility in terms of experience. A note to bear in mind on this section is to question each point on here as you write it. Think about why the skill, experience, or knowledge is necessary and desirable. Think about whether it is really vital and why it is needed for the role. For instance, Person Specifications often include “Degree is essential” which can exclude potential candidates with no degree but relevant skills, when having a degree might not even be relevant to the position. Doing this exercise and keeping the “Person Specification” section as open as possible will mean that you are able to attract candidates from a more diverse pool, breaking down barriers to application that might simply be outdated or irrelevant.BenefitsIt is a good idea to include your benefits in the job description, particularly if they are unusual. Salary is not necessarily what is the key motivation as people at different life-stages have different priorities. Often people feel uncomfortable asking about benefits relating to holiday allowance, maternity and paternity allowance but these details can be fundamental to their decision to move role. Remember to include this information to further encourage the best candidates to apply.​​

​Bringing a fundraiser into your organisation for the first time is a huge step for any charity. It means that you are ready to grow and engage new individuals with your cause and start making (more) fundraising asks. Before you start to write a job description and person specification or to put out a job advert, there are some vital steps to ensure your charity is Fundraiser ready and that you are looking for the right person. Fundraisers come in all shapes and sizes. You need a clear picture of the fundraiser that is right for your organisation. ​1.Fundraising is a professional skill Fundraisers are highly skilled professionals and valuing that skillset and knowledge is the most important first step. As the first professional Fundraiser in your organisation, you want someone with a working knowledge of charity income generation. 2.Engage a professional If you do not have professional fundraising experience within your own organisation, you’ll need to engage a Fundraiser in your planning ASAP. If you do not currently have a fundraising trustee, consider getting one before beginning your Fundraiser recruitment. If it is time sensitive, ask someone to volunteer their time or pay a Fundraiser to consult with you during the process. Seek a sense-check on your decisions with someone who has working fundraising knowledge. 3.Be realistic This is especially important, if you are exploring new income streams. There is a huge amount of foundational work to be done in the first 6-12 months to get your charity ready to ask for money. Predictions are difficult to make as they depend on so many factors, but it is a pretty good rule of thumb that your Fundraiser is unlikely to generate much more than their own salary in year 1 from a standing start. For example, if you do not have a marketing person, your fundraiser will need to spend time raising awareness before (and as well as) raising money. Many charities make the mistake of considering another charity’s fundraising income as a benchmark, but your capacity, resource and profile also need to be considered.  4.The cost of fundraisingFundraising costs money. It is an investment in the future of your charity. Consider what you expect your fundraiser to generate and pay them accordingly. If you are expecting strategic insight as well as operational delivery, you will need someone with enough experience to be able to deliver that for you. Think about your options carefully. If you cannot afford someone full-time, you could consider three or four days first. Once you are generating more money, you can build an additional post into your strategy. This also gives your fundraiser a future development opportunity and will help to keep them with you longer. 5.What is your need?Consider how much you are hoping your Fundraiser will generate once they are up and running (years 3-5) and make sure you are clear about this throughout the process. Again, seek a sense check with your fundraising expert and ensure that this forms part of your interview process so that you can see how candidates respond. It is so important that both you and your Fundraiser are aware of your expectations before they take the job. 6.What type of fundraising suits you? Fundraising is a complex business with many income streams to choose from. Your sole Fundraiser cannot and should not do absolutely everything. You will need them to focus on key income streams that are most relevant and best suited to your cause and current circumstances. You do not necessarily need a definitive strategy in place before the interviews (as this may form part of your fundraiser’s new role), but you will need some guidance on what will/will not work. 7.Are you fundraising ready?There will almost certainly be a large amount of internal communication to do within your organisation before your Fundraiser starts. Why have you decided to employ a Fundraiser? What will your Fundraiser be doing? Your Fundraiser will need engagement (and time) from your staff so you need to prepare them for that in advance. Everyone in your organisation will need to be behind your Fundraiser and for the most successful charities, everyone in your organisation is a Fundraiser too. Share the knowledge you are gaining from the recruitment process with your staff (and volunteers where applicable) to make sure they have positive, realistic expectations.  8.Fundraising expertise on your interview panel It is absolutely essential to have fundraising expertise on your interview panel to help guide you through the process. Coming back to the fact that fundraising is a professional skill, you need fundraising knowledge in the interview room. You would always have an accountant present for your finance interviews and this is no different. 9.Be flexible Flexibility is key to recruiting the best person for your fundraising role. Most charities now have flexible working policies in place and you need to ensure that you are competitive in your offer. For example, many Fundraisers now have some capacity to work from home (even for one day per week) and candidates are often driven by factors other than salary.10.Your marketing materialYour job description, person specification and job advert are all hugely important marketing materials in recruiting your first Fundraiser. Make sure they are concise, realistic and inviting. Ask your fundraising expert for support and spend time making sure you are sending out the right first message to your future Fundraiser. ​​​​

​Conscious that I have an innate tendency to talk at a million miles an hour and with the added pressure of public speaking, I wanted to share some of the ideas and thoughts that came out of Tuesday’s Career Mapping conversation with the Institute of Fundraising in Manchester. It’s probably quite on topic, as public speaking is one of the areas I’m working on personally at the moment.The event was a collaboration between the IoF and Charity People aimed at fundraisers looking for professional development and personal growth. We know that career mapping can be challenging in our sector when salary increases, training budgets and upwards movement aren't always readily available. We had an open and frank discussion about career progression, personal development tools and practical tips on how to develop skills, gain career momentum and forward plan for future ambitions.We covered how to challenge and push internally to achieve your goals for development. Here, I’m going to focus externally and where you can look for learning opportunities (on a budget). Some of these may be specific to Manchester because that’s where I live, but there will be similar local events and activities if you’re willing to do a bit of digging. This is by no means an exhaustive list – just a few ideas to get us started. If you’d like to add to this list, please drop me a message and I’ll update in a few weeks’ time.I’d start with this brilliant TED Talk by Eduardo Briceño, ‘How to get better about the things you care about’. It talks about how people who are really good at something only continue to get better by learning, which is just common sense. But the interesting thing is that the learning doesn’t have to be in that subject or specialist area, but any learning at all. Watch it and see what I mean – Eduardo explains it a lot better that I do. Since watching this, I’ve started learning in lots of different areas and you start to see where your learning is fluid and seeps into other areas of your life – including your job. Please bear in mind that these suggestions are not all charity related – that’s kind of the point. You can pick and choose to your own interests and hobbies, but the idea is to enrich and enhance your existing skillset, knowledge and experience.Reading. Far too many brilliant books and articles to mention, but the one I keep returning to again and again is ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’ by Reni Eddo-Lodge.Podcasts. A mix of sector-specific and personal interests. Favourites include: How To Fail, The Guilty Feminist, Do More Good, This is NOT the Mandy Johnson Show, Simon Scriver’s Amazingly Ultimate Fundraising Superstar Podcast, Cracking Charity Chat, Inner Driven Leaders, J Brown Yoga Talks, Under the Skin.Find projects that excite and energise you and run with them. They don’t have to be existing projects, but could be ones you’ve imagined and created yourself. I’ve run fundraising events, done expert interview blogs, created video content for our website, started an Equality and Diversity committee… and none of it part of the ‘day job’. I’ve gained loads of skills and experience through these projects – and all CV worthy.The power of social media. Bold statement, but I wasn’t half as clued up on what’s happening in the sector before I joined Twitter. You can cut out the noise and just follow key people who share interesting articles and information all the time. LinkedIn is a great tool too.Events – so much to choose from. Variety is the spice of life, so I try to mix it up. I have been to TED Talks, Funzing events, sales and marketing talks, Institute of Fundraising networking. My top tip is to search on EventBrite and get creative – you won’t believe how many amazing things are happening right on your doorstep.Conferences and industry events. The IoF is a reliable and constant source of brilliant learning opportunities, but there are also other fundraising and charity events that you might be interested in: Pizza For Losers and IWITOT are now both regional events. Keep your ear to the ground and ask other fundraisers for inspiration if you’re stuck. The hottest new event has to be Nikki Bell and Simon Scriver’s new virtual conference, Fundraising Everywhere.Peer-to-peer learning is such a valuable tool. Seek this out internally by linking up with peers in HR, finance or service delivery and share ideas or find other fundraisers in organisations you either know or admire and meet up. Talk, share and learn together.Offer your services. Could you mentor or support someone in your organisation or externally (and this could be work related or not)? I recently mentored a young person for a local youth charity and it was one of the steepest learning curves I’ve been ever on. I learned so much about myself and how to really listen.Coaching. Circumstances recently changed in my organisation and I knew I would need additional support to manage those changes, so I researched and put a business case together detailing costs and the value to the organisation. Now I have an incredible coach and I’m finding it absolutely invaluable. There are lots of options out there both virtually and locally and some really affordable options. I’d highly recommend Julia Worthington’s coaching groups in Manchester. I think we could have the start of a great list of personal development top tips and practical tools here, so please do get in touch to share your suggestions and ideas and we can add to our list and support one another.You can reach me on amelia@charitypeople.co.uk

​The best questions to ask at the end of an Interview. The questions you ask in an interview are very telling. Here are some top tips from our consultant, Ben Garner…In order to make an informed decision about whether this is the right move for you there are a range of questions you can ask. You will have your own expectations on what you're looking for; be it career progression, a better work/life balance or a strong interest in the charity so always tailor your questions to your own aspirations. Here are some suggestions:Can you tell me how the role relates to the overall structure of the organisation?This questions shows you're thinking beyond simply your role which is an attractive approach. Through gaining an understanding into the size and structure of the organisation and team you can identify who you'll be working alongside and learn how the team works. You'll get a better sense of where you would fit in and how your contribution would affect the rest of the charity.How would you describe the working culture here?We all want to work in a positive environment where we can operate at optimum level. Identify whether the work will be collaborative or whether you'll be working on your own and how that fits with your personal preference.What are the greatest challenges that the charity is facing? It's not just the job you're interested in, but the structural and business challenges that the organisation faces. You've done your research into the organisation so this is your chance to hear their side of the story. What would you expect the successful candidate to achieve in the first 30 days/ 3 months/ 6 months?One of the best questions a candidate can ask. It sets the scene for allowing your interviewer to talk about what you'll be doing Monday to Friday. If they mention a specific duty which you hadn't covered in your earlier answer you can flip it back and say, "ah yes, I've managed those types of campaigns before at CHARITY X"What will be the first project I'll be working on?An interviewer will have a specific list of duties required (usually written in the job description) but it is a great idea to investigate a live project so that you can talk them through how you would approach it.Is there a chance for career development in the future? What is your commitment to training your staff? We are all looking to move forward in our careers and by asking this question you will gain a sense of the importance they place on helping staff with their career progression and whether they recruit from within, and they will understand your determination to make long-term progress. How has this vacancy come about?This is a great way to find out a little more on the charity and its culture. It also allows you to gather some background information.How would you describe your management style? This is so important as conflicting management styles often cause issues and it will also show you how self-aware your prospective line manager is. Is there anything you would like to improve in your department and how could I help?You're showing an interest in being part of the team and you're looking at contributing to the goals of the department. Employers love this display of interest.Do you think I am well suited to this position? This question takes courage. You're trying to suggest from the outset that you're open to constructive criticism and willing to learn from experience and feedback. It also gives you a chance to defend yourself from any misconceptions your interviewers may have gained and restate why you think you're the right person for the job.I am very keen on the role and would love to progress. When will you be looking to make a decision?This is a great question to end an interview on. It states your position that you feel you've shown how you'd do the job and you would love to move forward in the process.​

​Cover Letters - Prescriptive or not? - Top Evaluation TipsClients often tell us they struggle to evaluate and appraise Cover Letters effectively but nonetheless they are a common tool used in selecting new recruits. Tips on how to get the most out of this stage of recruitment.Evaluating a Covering LetterPeople write their CVs in all sorts of weird and wonderful formats, lend different weight to different aspects of their role and omit experience as irrelevant that might actually be extremely pertinent to the current situation in your team.Covering letters can be a great tool for getting people to highlight specific experience that is relevant to the specific role you are recruiting for, allowing you to more fairly compare candidates. But as an arbitrarily applied tool covering letters can be extremely damaging to the recruitment process and may mean that you could miss out on someone with the potential to raise you above your competitors. What if your competitors don't make the same mistake?There is one central point to remember with covering letters, they are supposed to be a tool applied with a positive bias; you are looking for candidates that would have gone in the no pile on the basis of their CV to give you a reason to put them in the yes pile, not the other way around. During my years in recruitment I have learnt to give people a chance, because people who haven't had a great CV and / or covering letter have walked into my office, blown me away and gone on to be some of the best hires my clients have ever made.These are my three tips for making sure you give your next great hire every opportunity to WOW you;Tip 1: You're not looking to hire a professional "Covering Letter Writer"Candidates have no idea what you're looking for, what format you want it in or what you're expecting to see. Unless you're recruiting for a role where being psychic is an essential quality, be really clear about what you want and give candidates a fair chance of delivering the right information. If you want them to use each point in the person specification as a heading and then explain, using real world examples, how their experience matches this, then tell them that. If you want them to weave their experience and how it matches the person specification into an easy to follow narrative, then let them know. Applying for jobs is a skill in and of itself and the easier you make it, the more likely you are to see the best people shine through.Tip 2: Don't be too clinicalThink about how you want to score or assess your Covering Letters. Often clients choose to check off every item of a Person Specification against a Covering letter. Although if the competition is very tough this can in the end be a good way of whittling down potential interviewees it can often eliminate candidates who in fact would be very able in the role. The way I advise clients to approach this initially is to work out the three most important over-arching skills or experience areas that are absolutely essential to the delivery of this role. If a candidate meets them I would put them on the 'yes' pile and then if it is necessary to reduce that number further look through that list again alongside the more detailed Person Specification. As annoying as it is, candidates often fail to include examples against every single area of a Person Spec in a Covering Letter and will often focus on those they feel are most important. If someone has all the three important things you need and seems a little weaker on some of the lesser items, get them in and meet them, perhaps they're an absolute superstar with one or two development points.Tip 3: So important, I'm going to repeat myselfI really want to reiterate a point I touched on at the beginning, because I genuinely believe and have actually seen some of my clients miss out on people that were the best person for the role because they used covering letters too prescriptively.I always try to keep in mind that covering letters are a rudimentary screening tool that makes sure that you don't waste time interviewing people who will be totally irrelevant, but it shouldn't be used as part of the interview process where only those who tick every box shall pass. Some of the best hires I have seen are people that have the core skills necessary for the role, but come from a slightly different background and bring a new perspective and a new way of doing particular things into the team. By all means use the covering letter to make sure that you don't invite any more 'eccentric' candidates into your office, but don't be too heavy handed and risk screening out the best hire you might never make.

Writing a cover letter can be a chore, especially when applying for a number of roles. As consultants, we know they can be difficult and often go back to candidates to help them amend ones they’ve submitted.Knowing what to include and what to leave out can drive one to distraction. So here are a few things you need to know to make sure that your cover letter stands out:Your CV is more important - Yes, unfortunately it's true. However a cover letter is still helpful in determining a candidate's values, past achievements, culture fit, as well as demonstrating their written style: all of which will help to secure that important interview.Do the basics right - by making sure the cover letter looks tailored to the job you are applying for. Address it to the hiring manager or recruiter, insert the job title and organisation name in your opening lines. Addressing a cover letter "Dear Sir/Madam" when you have their name is a little lazy!Include your current job duties and key achievements - when highlighting your current duties make sure you include examples of your work and your key achievements. Don't assume that someone from your sector would know what your key responsibilities are - you could be selling yourself short. If, for example, you are responsible for raising funds or managing budgets, make sure you highlight your financial achievements clearly.Be specific and refer to the job description - The hiring manager wants to know if you can do the job they are advertising. So be specific by addressing the role requirements and demonstrate how you can effectively carry out those duties, based on your experience.Show your variety - your extra curricular experience, such as volunteering, can provide the hiring manager with crucial information on you as a person. This can give you the edge by showing the hiring manager/recruiter that you have a genuine passion for your line of work which could be what separates you from your competitors.And finally...remember, cover letters should be kept simple and should be around 1-2 pages in length. That doesn't mean skimp on addressing the job description: it means stick to the formula above. Hit those marks and you will almost certainly find yourself getting more calls from hiring manager and recruiters.

​How much money does the hospice need to raise each year?When I started we had to raise £4 million and now we're at £12 million overall; it increases all the time. A quarter of that is from statutory sources, whereas it used to be a third so we're definitely upping the ante on our voluntary income. Having that flexibility when you have money that you can spend as you wish means that you also have flexibility of direction for the whole organisation. It's been challenging - within six months of me joining we hit a recession. We really had to think about what we were doing because wewere quite corporate heavy at that point and that just dried up immediately. That's when we started looking at things like the Midnight Walk and mass participation events - more people raising smaller amounts. That strategy really worked because we kept those supporters engaged with us and really built up the database over that period too. Great North Snowdogs was just phenomenal in terms of data capture and recruitment.What is the Great North Snowdogs campaign?Snowdogs was a two-year project in the making, although the public didn't see all that! It was a mass art trail; huge sculptures of snow dogs. We then commissioned each one and got artists involved to design and decorate each dog. Each dog was then sponsored by a company. There was a real opportunity for a win-win situation that we'd never managed to create through anything else. The ability for the companies to market on the back of their Snowdog; the things they could get involved with just became huge!It was hard sell at first because it was quite a complicated case to make to get them to buy into, which I know we have totally overcome for next time. We've actually people asking us if they can sponsor next time round. Our key headline sponsor, Nexus, are saying they will definitely do it again. They are saying they can't find anything that will generate the revenue that Snowdogs did because we got so many people mobilised on the Metro system like never before. They changed the names of the stops from Whitley Bay toWhippetley Bay! It just went on and on!Loads of things just kind of galvanised from it. Fifty Snowdogs sponsored then turned into fifty schools with smaller Snowdogs. It just totally grew legs! As well the big sculptures, it was that local community involvement as well, so we had them in little packs in different places that you could go out and see. Essentially the aim was to auction them all at the end, but we ended up doing a big three day event where we brought them all back together because the outpouring of affection for these things was so huge! Wegot literally thousands of the people coming to see them over the three day finale event!The merchandising grew as well. So something that we originally thought would be quite small, we were selling porcelain Snowdogs en masse! People were giving them for Christmas presents! From that original project team it grew and grew; we ended up needing to bring in a much bigger resource. The digital side was massive and social media needed 24-7 response, which led to real engagement with people that we'd never had before. The amount of media coverage we had was phenomenal. 675,000 people came to visit them - the impact report was just amazing! It has a massive impact on the North East economy; millions of pounds coming into the region comparable with major events like the Great North Run. That's because people were doing things over a period of time; it wasn't just a one off hit.It was something so different and something that appealed to so many people. We've got such lovely stories out of it. There was one guy in Tynemouth who had been a recluse - literally hadn't been over the doorstep for years. He'd read about them and could see one of the dogs out the window. He said, 'I'm going to get out of the house and go see it!' He'd got himself out there to see the dog and was sat on a bench just crying. He wrote us this beautiful letter saying that he was in tears because he hadn't been able to step foot out of the door. He then started getting taxis to see the other ones. He didn't feel that he could get on public transport, but he could get a taxi and see another one now. He said the campaign had literally changed his life because he's out and about now. You can't believe that what we're doing has such a big impact because it's nothing to do with our natural cause. So many stories of families spending time with each other and the campaign bringing people together.I also think there was something about the statue being a dog. We are a nation of dog lovers! This is going to sound really pathetic - and you may think I'm slightly mad - but the first weekend they were out on the trail and we got news they had been damaged, I was virtually in tears. Not because of the effort that had gone into the campaign, but more 'how dare you hurt my dog!' 'I am outraged!'The original story of the Snowdogs came from famous The Snowman story; the little boy who builds a Snowman outside and they go off on their adventures, but the Snowman melts so it is a bereavement story. We tied that into our bereavement work when we were talking about it in the press. The affinity with that just really worked. It was a nice story to get hold of and be able to talk about in schools. The message really hit home and had impact. Lots of little bits of magic just came together on that.Companionship is a huge part of the end of life journey and Snowdogs really tapped into that too. We've had people bringing their own dogs in to the hospice for that reason - I would want my dog there if I was going through that. Something like that can be really important to people and that's why a hospice is such a different environment than a hospital. We completely personalise things for people and it is bespoke. If you want your dog there, your dog's there. That's what is going to bring comfort to you at that time. Alot of people can show emotion - even stiff, upper-lipped people - to a dog that they cannot show to a human. It's alright to be stroking and touchy-feely with an animal, but maybe they just can't with a human being.We have since held an exhibition of where the dogs have all now gone and we're going to take that out publicly and put it in libraries. People still want to know where their Snowdogs have gone! And, we will definitely run this campaign again, but it is one of those things that will need at least a three-year gap. For the sanity of the team if nothing else! You need to make sure that you take on all of learning. For the next campaign, we are going to try and create our own mascot from it. We had such a limited period of time with the copyrights of the original product. As great as it was in terms of awareness and people relating to it, I think people get that now in the North East. People have seen it and they know it's out there, so creating something that we can go on to sell in order to galvanize further will be the natural next step.The Snowdogs idea was ultra modern, innovative and fresh. How do you nurture innovation and creativity within your team in such a saturated charity market?We have a lot of team sessions where we just try to brainstorm. There are debriefs after every event and campaign thinking about what we could do better next time. We do a lot of that kind of thing. We have away days at least twice a year where it is purely about the team. They get to set the agenda. Bring what you have seen out there that has totally inspired you. What do you wish you'd been able to work on in another charity? That sort of stuff - encourage that. On-going training is an important thing and looking at where you can offer mentoring within your team.It's not even necessarily just looking in the sector. It is also looking outside the sector. Improving processes is hugely important and recognising your team for doing that. Small, incremental things can mean quite big changes. Ease of working makes everyone's life simpler and easier in terms of processes. That runs right through our organisation and we actively encourage that - bring your ideas forward! I do an induction with every member of staff on a one-to-one basis. Never be afraid to knock on my door and say 'we could do this better' or 'I've had an idea'. I encourage that right across the hospice too. If you've got an idea for fundraising, we want to hear it. But I will crucify the next person who says 'do you think we should get Ant and Dec?!'What are the biggest challenges and / or opportunities facing fundraisers right now?There is a lot of competition out there, but I don't think that's anything new. I think we've got a lot of charities out there trying to do the same thing. People need to look at collaboration more. It's great that we are doing it in terms of the hospice sector. Getting together and saying 'what can we achieve?' Looking at the pure end goal like when we were set up in our infancy - it was about putting patients at the heart of it. If we were just looking at that and the services we provide - rather than getting hung up on whose jobs are going to be at risk - how much more could we achieve? Between the hospices we have around £30 million worth of income. If we just had that £30 million to spend, what would we do with it? It's constantly pushing at those boundaries.Equally, there are umpteen cancer charities out there all trying to do the same thing. It's just nuts if you actually look at why we are doing it in the first place. The driver shouldn't be able keeping your organisation afloat. That's a real challenge to overcome and I get that people are protective. But, if you could even just open up and talk about what we are doing together. When there are opportunities to work together, let's do that. Have at least the insight around what we are all doing; be open to the strategy and the planning. Not necessarily from the fundraising side, because that comes on the back of what you are trying to achieve. But at least then we wouldn't be treading on each other's toes so much. I think the public are getting sick of that; there is a bit of fatigue. We need to be the ones that take control of that. Get the right messages back out there, along with trust and confidence in the charity sector. It's still there, but it has been tarnished. Being aware of the public feeling is really important. Being prepared to answer questions and be really transparent with what you are doing. 

​Employment testing is not unique to the charity sector. However, there are several reasons why it makes sense to use these tools when looking for new recruits in this sector.Psychometric testing has been around since 1905. Today’s evidence shows this type of testing is increasing among employers. One body of research indicated an 18% rise over a two-year period. Yet employment testing costs money, so this must be a wise investment for charities to continue using it. If there was no return on the investment, it would be money wasted. This is not something charities can afford.​What kinds of tests are used?Employment tests typically fall into one of two areas:Skill testsPsychometric tests or personality profiling​Skills tests are also known as ability tests. They cover many areas that are crucial when selecting the right candidates to work in charity-based roles. They can test for:Numerical reasoning skillsVerbal reasoning skillsLogical reasoning skills​Skill tests may also be provided to test an individual’s ability to handle the tasks they would be required to do if they were given the job. Specific tests tailored towards the role to be filled are common, such as those designed for admin roles or finance roles. While skills tests focus on practical ability, psychometric tests or personality profiling focus on the individual. While applicants can provide incorrect answers for the skills tests, this is not the case with psychometric or personality tests. Rather, they aim to provide a good indication of the individual’s character, strengths and weaknesses. Most recruiters across all industries use a mix of the two to get the best outcome from the process.Finding the best employees is important for all recruiters. However, the financial aspect of recruiting the best people for charity roles is arguably more important than ever. There are limited funds to devote to recruitment. Is it worth sinking some of those funds into testing processes that could be seen by some as optional?Is testing a wise investment?​Charities are accountable to those who donate money to them. Donors want to be sure the charities they give money to use those funds as best they can. So, are recruitment tests worth the money?​It would seem prudent to avoid the tests and stick to the usual interviewing techniques honed over decades of use. Funds that would have been spent on the testing process could be allocated elsewhere within the charity. This decision may result in hiring the best person for the job, but there are also many areas where things could go wrong. This is the risk to be faced when deciding not to use such testing.​For example, some people are better at being interviewed than others. It’s certainly something everyone can improve on. Research has shown 40% of interviewers would fail someone if they didn’t smile. Around two-thirds of recruiters also rejected people who didn’t make eye contact.​These elements can be learned by anyone prior to going for an interview. When reading statistics like these, it is easy to see how a charity could recruit the wrong person. It’s possible to study to pass an interview, or at least to increase the odds of doing so. It is far harder to cheat employment tests they are asked to sit as part of the consideration process.​How much would it cost the charity to hire the wrong person?​Research indicates a bad hire costs a business an average of £8,200. Another source found 19.5% of recruiters lost a minimum of £15,000 on a bad hire. Some said their losses amounted to over twice that. ​If we apply these losses to the charity sector, we can see how employment testing is in fact an investment rather than a cost. Yes, it costs money to access the tests. However, that money helps the charity find the best person for each vacancy. The quality of each employee has a direct impact on the charity’s success. ​Some businesses may find it easier than others to cover their errors if they hire the wrong person. This isn’t true when you think of charities. Not only will a bad hire cost money, it could lead to a drop in the amount of donations received if news of the situation gets out. This could lead to greater losses over time than would be experienced by other businesses.​Employment testing allows for a more rounded view of each candidate​Anyone who knows the tricks to succeeding in interviews stands a far better chance of passing them. Even if they are inappropriate for the role, they could end up being taken on, only for the charity to later find the decision was a costly mistake.​Some of those in senior positions within a charity may view employment testing as an unnecessary cost. However, as we have seen, it helps identify skills and traits within each candidate that cannot otherwise be uncovered. Surely it is better to find the best people than to find those that know how to ace an interview even if they are unsuited to the role they are applying for?​Test for success​Some charities recognise the power of identifying key traits in their applicants. That’s why charities are benefiting from their use of employment testing to get the best results from their recruitment efforts. Those results don’t merely attract better recruits, they also impress those who fund them—their donors.​This is a guest blog, by Denise Allen of SkillsArena. It contains links to external sites. Please Note: Charity People does not take any responsibility and makes no warranties, representations or undertakings about the content of any website accessed by hypertext link. Links should not be taken as an endorsement of any kind. Charity People has no control over the availability of the linked pages.​

​Kemar Walford has over 10 years of experience in Fundraising and the wider Third Sector, which includes working with mainstream charities such as London Youth, Caritas Anchor House, Ladies Who Learn and the Bromley by Bow Centre. He worked for the Big Lottery Fund for the bulk of his career in grant assessment, management and more recently supporting groups in the West Midlands and East and West London. He has a wealth of experience working as a fundraising consultant, mainly for small to medium size charities across London. Kemar is also the Chair of a special interest group of the Institute of Fundraising.What is your mission?My mission is a simple one and that is to champion the accomplishments of BAME individuals and charities working in the sector, who make the world a better place with little steps or giant leaps. We are all struggling to make a difference and we all need a little helping hand from time to time. These helping hands are easier to find for certain communities and occur more often. So, I'm just one of many that are trying to level the playing field.Why is diversity important?Diversity is not only important but necessary, because it truly brings innovation, creativity and a greater understanding of the communities that we serve. It allows people to bring their cultural identity into the workforce, which brings spice and flavour to the way we deliver things and how engaged these communities truly are with the projects, programmes and activities we develop. Diversity in the private sector has for several years been evidencing the financial and internal environmental benefits it brings. Both in terms of the bottom line and expansion into new areas of work for the respective organisations. According to "Delivering through Diversity - Jan 2018", the top preforming companies have a more diverse group at executive management level resulting in a 33% increased likelihood of industry-leading profitability. So why is it so difficult for the charity sector to understand the importance and need for developing a truly diverse workforce at all levels? It sometimes seems as though, those in the sector don't fully grasp that making their workforce more diverse helps to inspire more people into that sector. This in turn increases the available pool of talent. Let's use the Black Panther film as an example and the buzz surrounding that film in the wider society. We can see the thousands of people from across the world were inspired to believe they could become actors, directors and many more positions in that industry. The film industry will ultimately benefit from that for many years to come. I believe the phrase is "Seeing is believing", understanding this creates opportunities and options for individuals that they never thought were possible. Charities are usually at the forefront of doing good, so why are we letting commercial companies show us the way forward.What are the barriers to creating more diversity in organisations?I believe that there are a few barriers to creating more diversity in organisations. Some of the barriers are structural/cultural, some are motivational, and others are financial, but let's not forget the political. So, let's look at structural/cultural, there are so many organisations that see their structure or culture as the norm and therefore don't understand the need for change. They consciously or unconsciously seek to employ people that look, sound and behave like they do. These organisations have managed for years to attract generous income from many clients or donors, as they have targeted those that look and sound like they do. However, the mix of society is changing quickly and if you don't adopt you die. Then you have organisations that have little or no motivation to make change happen. Motivation for change needs to come from the top down, as people at the bottom may want change, but don't have the power to affect change. Now these organisations have individuals that have been at the organisation for so long that they are part of the furniture. These individuals believe everything works well enough as it is and therefore nothing should be changed as they either fear or don't understand the need to make changes. Remember change can be scary and can feel destabilising, so many people try to avoid it. These organisations are usually well-established institutions with a long heritage and are typically proud of that heritage. I believe, we all know a few of these organisations in every sector. They may even say the right things externally, but internally they don't or won't make changes necessary to make diversity a reality.For those with financial constraints it can be hard to make change happen, even if they want it. In the charity sector, this is typically down to the fact that they are heavily dependent on grants and donations. This makes it difficult to recruit in new ways and take different approaches without a serious financial commitment. These organisations need to make diversity an integral part of their future planning strategy and that requires resources. Typically, many of the people in the charity sector started their careers as volunteers and then after a year or so moved into employment. This is typically a difficult transition period for individuals, but easier if you have other financial means. Many BAME individuals can't afford to work or volunteer for free, as there is a need to support their families or other constraints that prohibit this from happening. So, to attract these individuals your organisation needs to make it an attractive proposition for these individuals both financially as well as socially with flexible working and other benefits. However, all of this has a price tag, which is not always achievable or feasible. This is not all bad news, as there now seems to be a few funders that are offering grants to charities to help pay for the employment of paid interns, which opens the internship option for individuals from BAME backgrounds. More funders should be following suit and helping the sector to more representative of the communities they serve.Last but not least political, we have for the last few years been witness to the onslaught of race hate caused by Brexit. Much of the communications and messaging that surrounded Brexit focused on immigrants and migrants, despite many, if not all European countries having predominately white populations. This sent out a message of hate and disconnection between communities already settled here, which for the most part have lived harmoniously. This resulted in an increase in hate crime against all races and open season for racist approaches and behaviours. Now, I know this a strong statement, but there will also be an undertone of hate that sinks into the minds of certain individuals in the sector or wider society that creates unnecessary blockages.What practical steps could we all adopt right now?Change starts at the topCEO's and leaders need to take their organisations on a journey, through creating a vision and a clear direction of travel for their staff, volunteers and beneficiaries/clients. This must be compelling for the whole organisation and tangible in terms of being able to see the actions and those that are going to be accountable. This cannot just be lip service as those in middle management will not truly buy into it and work towards its achievement. You truly need all members of your team to be committed to the vision and direction of travel.Linking diversity to organisational performanceThis will create a step change in the approach used by those in your organisation. As a sector, we are continuously seeking to increase income and meet targets to survive, so why not link your diversity targets to this for your organisation. This will allow you to show the positive impact that your increased diversity is having on your organisations bottom line. Sometimes seeing is believing! Invest resourcesThere are very few things in this world that can be achieved without resources, whether that be people or finances. It is therefore crucial that you invest resources into developing your approach to diversity. Put your money, where your mouth is!Making sure you tailor for greater impactNow there is no point setting targets that are not relevant for the local geographic context. This is particularly for the larger organisations that operate across the country and internationally. You need to ensure that any policies or approaches are appropriate for the communities you serve. Having a one size fits all approach doesn't work for diversity, as there are so many different fascists to culture/ethnicity that you will end up turning said communities you are trying to represent, away.Remember this is no short-term initiativeCreating a diverse workforce is no picnic, whether your starting from scratch or have a small number of BAME individuals in your workforce. It will take time and effort on your part but remember once you start you can no longer continue with the status quo and real change doesn't happen overnight.You need to create a welcoming environment beforehandSeek to find out the experiences of the BAME staff in your organisation and be open to constructive criticism. This will help you to understand their career journey within your organisation and their perceived barriers. Knowing this will help you to understand what you can do to support making changes to bring a more positive working experience for your staff. Following this learn and develop an understanding of racial bias and its impact on decision making. This will help you create a better environment to recruiting BAME individuals and help them to flourish. Ensure your policies and procedures are the same in practice as in writing. Create policies that are flexible and accommodating for your staff. Ultimately, ensuring your organisation not only showcases your commitment to the approach, but represents it in all its internal and external actions.Recruit for potentialIn todays market, it's harder than it sounds. We know the pressures that exists in meeting targets and achieving outcomes. This often means that we automatically seek to recruit individuals that fit the exact criteria or are highly experienced in a field that we consider transferable. If we keep seeking the finished article we will miss out on hidden gems and those that will become the leaders of tomorrow, if given the chance. We need to ensure that people get opportunities in the variety of fields available or risk losing out on great future talent. Now, there seems to be a trend in the sector that expects people to have degrees or significant qualifications, but this automatically creates a barrier for some individuals who just need that chance. So, for every great position that comes up we should make room to take a chance on Potential. Even if that means negotiating a smaller salary with the opportunity to increase after they prove themselves. Have you ever had a coach or a mentor?Although I have never had a coach or mentor, I've had individuals that have played that role in my life. They have inspired, motivated and challenged me to operate and think differently about my approaches and actions. They have been my sounding board and my filter, as there are always moments where we let anger or disappointment guide our thoughts. This is despite considering myself a well-rounded and thoughtful individual in many of the activities I undertake. Although, recently I've been looking for a mentor or coach, as I truly feel that everyone should have one. It offers you all that I've mentioned, but it can also develop into a wonderful relationship that pushes your career forward. I love organisations that have a mentoring approach built into the way the work, as I think they are ahead of the game. This creates an environment that helps the development of your staff both in terms of career and their emotional stability, which often ends in a better outcome for the company. ​

"Fear of failure was stopping my personal development." Read how Ellen took the plunge.​Fear of failure. I can safely say I have that in abundance; a definite born worrier. I've always been quite risk averse, but until it came to writing this blog I hadn't fully identified that it might actually be bordering on self-sabotage.I have always been pretty steadfast in my professional life since leaving University in 2005 (yikes that is a while ago!). Up until 2017 I had only ever worked for two businesses. I always did well, I was often picked for promotion and there never seemed any real reason to look at other things. It was safe and secure, but I was attributing my success to those businesses rather than myself. Over the years I had been approached by other companies who were really interested in me, but that risk-averse voice would be whispering: "don't be daft, you can't move, what if you can't do it, what if you fail, what if everyone thinks I'm a bit average really". I kept on listening to that voice for many years. Fear of failure was stopping my personal development.Returning to work after having my daughter, Isabella , I finally yielded and had one of those conversations. Maybe having a break from 'head-down' work gave me some perspective. It was a transformational point in my life! I finally muted the doubting voice, did some background research on the company and jumped! I have never looked back. I work with a new team of people who are super brilliant at what they do. They challenge themselves and therefore lead me to do the same everyday.What having Isabella taught me was that sometimes when you choose to go down another path it can be, quite frankly, terrifying! But, you can only be your best self by accepting some challenges and proving to yourself that you are enough and you will be fine. I also found that failure really is a relative and temporary thing. Success and the confidence you gain from coming out of the other side lasts much longer and takes you places you might never have gone otherwise. It's this journey that shapes and enriches your life.

As part of the lead up to Pizza for Losers, Stuart tells how he used a bitter disappointment to drive him forward.I have played Rugby all of my life. I have had my share of highs and lows along the way. In my latter years of school and club level rugby I played with a great team. Our successes meant that we made the finals of a national tournament. It was to be played at Twickenham - the shrine of rugby. It was my dream to play there and I had been an ever-present member of the team.The week before the big day, I had to miss a local tournament due to illness. Another player, who had not featured at all through the year, played in my place. He had a good tournament. The squad for the National Finals was announced and I wasn’t in it. The player who replaced me for the tournament the week before was heading to Twickenham instead of me.Of course, they won and had the magical experience of lifting a trophy in front of the Royal Box. It was a bitter pill to swallow. Seeing the team and squad come back and be treated like superstars was equally hard to watch.My dad saw how much it had hurt me. He advised me to channel my feelings into making sure that never again had to miss out.So I trained. I trained hard and I got myself stupidly fit. I remember cycling in Brittany in the pouring rain a long these long hilly roads, nearly getting blown off the roads and I remember pushing harder and harder on the pedals, keeping in mind why I was doing this. I would not experience missing out again if I could do something about it. I wanted there to be no doubt that I would never miss out like that again.After spending 18 months training and playing representative rugby, there was an opportunity to go to New Zealand to play rugby on a scholarship. It came a little bit out of the blue and I went forward for it. To secure it, part of the process was a fitness and a rugby task. I got the scholarship and I went to the other side of the world for three months and experienced and played rugby where few have had the opportunity. From the previous failure and with the support of my dad, I was able to experience something that I likely would not have – if I had not experienced the failure that led to me missing out on being in Twickenham and playing rugby with my friends.

Our amazing and successful consultant, Anna Ludeman, is everything that you could hope for in a team member. Here she sounds the call for greater flexibility in charities.On my mission to find more opportunities for part time workers, there is a phrase that I hear time and time again -'We will only consider someone part time if they are an exceptional candidate'.I have nodded along and agreed with this statement for as long as I can remember, never giving it too much thought, until now.Firstly, shouldn't all of our candidates that we are representing be exceptional in their own way?Secondly, is this implying that they need to be better than someone looking for full time work to counter-act their need to work part time?What a lot of pressure to put on someone's shoulders! To be considered for a role, does a part-time candidate needs to be better qualified than their full time counterparts? Do they need to prove that they will work harder and smarter in order to secure that new role?I'm worried that this statement, however innocently spoken, can easily create discrimination against part-time employees and create unfair expectations. Excluding those candidates who are wonderful, dedicated, hard-working and talented but might not necessarily be head and shoulders above other candidates in the market or be able to work the same hours seems a little short-sighted. I have berated myself for nodding along to this for so many years and I am trying my best to push back on the high expectations that clients are putting on the shoulders of those who work part time.Having such a lot of expectation and pressure on the shoulders of part-time workers is neither healthy nor productive. It leads to many individuals pushing themselves further, trying to prove their worth by working longer hours, taking on more projects and striving to achieve an un-realistic target to prove to their manager that they were worth the hire.Instead, shouldn't we be open to all types of individuals who have the right experience for the role and support them to reach their full potential? Giving them the support they need to complete their duties, focusing on outcome instead of hours?I appreciate that there are jobs out there that do require someone full time and making the role part-time just would not be feasible. However, I believe that there are always ways to create flexibility and in this instance, a job share might be the perfect solution. Similarly, an employer might reason that offering one person flexible working will open the floodgates to all which is unsustainable to a business. Allowing just one person flexible working might well cause issues which is why I believe flexibility for all is the key. There are so many incredible individuals out there, working hard to make a living and managing a million other things outside of work hours. If we opened ourselves up to considering candidates on a part time basis, we'll have more of a diverse, interesting, fun and energetic team of people, all of whom are exceptional in their own way. Not to mention, the endless benefits of opening up a vacancy to a wider pool of candidates, increasing candidate engagement in your role and brand.I am pleased to say that I have also experienced really flexible employers who are incredibly open to part time candidates. They believe that it is essential to find the right person who will add value to their organisation, someone who will drive change, bring fresh energy to the team and create initiative and inspiration. We've seen how well this can work with candidates juggling work and education, parenthood and even setting up their own businesses part time, all the while contributing invaluable experience to their organisation.I work part-time myself and I was offered flexible working, not because I am an exceptional individual but because I am a normal person, able to prioritise well and do a good job in the time I have. I am hard-working, committed and passionate about the work I do but I don't believe that I'm a stand-out unique marvel in the recruitment sector. I feel valued as a person, not just a number.I am lucky to work for a truly flexible employer who values a person's contribution above and beyond set targets. We have a mix of part and full-time employees who we're thrilled to have on board. We have exceptional relationship builders, 'blue sky thinking' influencers, support staff that are second to none and the most amazing social committee. Every person brings something special to the team which is endlessly appreciated.By giving everyone the freedom and flexibility to be exceptional, we can see how far a team and organisation can really go.

"Everyone feels out of their depth sometimes" - find out how Alice learnt from failure. Part of the lead up to #PizzaForLosersAnyone who knows me well knows that I am someone who is prone to worry. I think that that I would also be described as naturally conscientious, organised, and capable. Which I know isn't entirely true, at least not the "naturally" part.Most of the biggest failures in my life have been caused by anxiety and the way I react to it - which is through a tendency towards ignoring problems, and hiding from issues, so that they grow and grow - potentially becoming much worse.A great example of this comes from university where I studied English. To begin with, I had a lovely time - I was reading books I loved, learning lots, being challenged just the right amount - all was brilliant. Until one morning, in a critical theory module, we started to study something I just did not understand. At all. I still can't wrap my head around it if I'm honest (it was Roland Barthes and semiotics if you're interested). It was the first real hurdle I had encountered since leaving home and being wholly responsible for myself, and it totally threw me.If you'd have been privy to what was going on inside my head you'd have heard "how come everyone else around me seems so comfortable with this stuff?"; "they must be so much more clever than I am"; "I shouldn't be here" and so on. I didn't know where to start with figuring it out - so I just didn't. And I never wrote the essay; and I ignored the calls from the Department Secretary; and eventually I got a zero because I didn't hand it in. Being at the start of my second year, this had a lasting impact on my grades. I had literally got into bed and pulled the covers over my head, and had hidden from the problem.Then I finally told someone - my dad. We talked, and he helped, and we put plans in place to manage this if I felt lost in future - and I got the confidence to ask for help if I needed it. He also gave me the advice I carry round to this day which was - "don't let problems get to the stage where they are unmanageable; you have the power to shape outcomes". It was a revelation to understand that everyone feels out of their depth sometimes - but this had become so much worse by my failure to try to address the problem head on.It taught me about how I respond to stress and anxiety, and how to manage so that this feeling doesn't create much larger, potentially insurmountable problems in the future. I still worry, question and feel apprehensive but I do so much less because I tackle things head on, and understand that I am capable of navigating life's problems, because of what I learned from previous failures.

​Nick leads our team of fundraising recruitment experts, as well as taking on senior executive search projects. Inspired by Pizza for Losers, this is how Nick learnt from a past failure.Like many colleagues past and present, I had entered the recruitment world straight out of university, in truth not knowing what I wanted to do, but driven to somehow start making some of my own money rather than spending someone else's. I'd figured I would do this for a couple of years and then find my true calling and real career. In October 2013 I'd been recruiting Fundraisers for four years, over that time I had been promoted a couple of times and been asked to manage a team. Things were going well but I couldn't shake the idea that at some point I really needed to get a real job. I'd learnt to love Fundraising, I guess by osmosis, and I had always thought I could do that! After countless chats with (what was then) my relatively new wife, I thought sod it, time for my real career to start.I joined the Corporate Partnerships team at Cancer Research UK ready to change the world. Six months later I was back in the recruitment company I had left at the end of 2013, through no fault of anyone at, what I still see as the brilliant employer, CRUK.I tried and I failed. But I've always been ok with that. Fundraising is really hard, and ultimately I wasn't very good at it. I was (I think/hope) better at recruitment, and I realised if I stopped worrying about what I should be doing, I actually really enjoyed changing people's lives via recruitment. I learnt a lot of things whilst failing at CRUK, things that would ultimately make me a better recruiter, but most importantly I had resolved the unease in my mind about my career path and what a "real career" looked like.

​Anita has over 17 years' experience working in the voluntary sector in income generation and communications positions. Her strengths are in people management, strategic and business development. Anita has successfully united all income generating activities at the hospice and developed a cohesive strategy that has seen rapid growth and development. New initiatives include the emergence of social enterprise models and expansion and maximisation of income streams, Retail has grown significantly and e-commerce is one of the latest development streams, she looks forward to driving significant growth to support the Vision of the hospice over the next ten years.What does inspiring leadership look like to you? I think it's about having real clear direction and focus on what you are looking to achieve. You really need to have integrity; belief in what you are doing and be able to take people with you.When you see drive and determination in someone, you really want to follow them - you want to do and achieve more. It's important having a lot of humility and being approachable. Being able to talk when things aren't going right and adjust. It's not being so focused that you can't see anything else coming. Having someone who is adaptable and open to listening to people is massively important. Being open to taking some risks is important too.One thing I have got really good at over the years is listening to people. It is important to be really listening. You can be sat there actively preparing what you are going to give to that person as a solution, but truly listening is different. Trying to get to what is at theback of someone's problem - asking questions. Helping someone to properly see what the issue is, rather than just the solution. They can think it is one thing, but when you dig a bit deeper it is something completely different. Something restricting or holding them back from achieving their full potential can be about something totally different.I think if you spoke to my team, that is one thing they would say. I don't assume and I don't jump to conclusions. I stop, I pause. I will always hear them out. I will listen intently before I respond. If they tell me something isn't right, I don't sit there and tell them they're wrong. I will say they're going to tell me why - this really good. But you need to tell me why and we'll get to the bottom of it. Work out what we are going to do. I don't think any of my team are afraid to come to me with that - I hope not. I don't think that they are because they challenge me with plenty of things!In terms of leadership, who or what has been the biggest influence on your career and why?When I first came out of university, I went to work for a PR and marketing agency and had an absolute tyrant of a boss who owned the company. You were terrified to make a mistake. It was horrendous. Then off I went down to London and got this amazing boss - a Fundraising Director - who actually said me on my first day, 'I'm not going to happy until you've made some mistakes'. It was just a complete role reversal that really made me open my eyes to how good I could be; he really encouraged me to be the best I could be.He didn't mind me making mistakes as long as they were calculated and I wasn't doing anything too crazy or ruthless! It was a real, proper turning point for me and an attitude that I've taken forward with my teams too. Push, keep pushing, push harder! Don't be afraid. That is massive in this sector. There can be complacency, or a willingness to accept things because it's too hard. A lot of obstacles. 'There's too much competition out there'; you hear that a lot. Yes, there is competition out there, but that's life. I take that as agiven and I don't want to hear any more about it. What are the things that you can do and you can take control of?You absolutely do have to take some chances and risks and not be afraid to do that. You'll do your best learning from the challenges that come along and that's how you grow as a fundraiser. If you have someone leading you that has the right attitude, you can really thrive in that environment. You're never going to be great if you don't take some of those chances - it will just be mediocre. There is loads of tried and tested fundraising out there that you can do; you can keep going and keep being safe if that's what you want. But if you're in an organisation that wants to move forward and do great things, your fundraising has to follow in line with that. Otherwise, you're just either standing still or going round in circles. Maybe that's ok for some, but it's not for me!I have had both positive and negative experiences of leadership, but in the end it has been the positive experience that has absolutely shaped my own leadership style. The bad ones teach you exactly what you shouldn't be. You think, I never want to be that person or I never want to make someone feel like that. It is soul destroying and I just don't believe you get results from that the hard, autocratic style. Being so direct and focused on some things without listening to people. All my team have a whole heap of different strengths and you have to find what to take of each of them to make them the best they can possibly be. They are never all going to be great at everything. It's your job to make them better at the things they are good at already. Help them to focus. I'm exactly the same; I also have strengths and weaknesses just like the rest of the team. When I was 12/13, I was put into a lower set at school and I was beyond furious - livid in fact! You had this one opportunity to be moved up into the higher set and it all revolved around this one test. I was just straight at it! I got 98% in the test and they said you'll be moving up and I said - 'yes! That is exactly what's happening!' But I was fuming about the 2% - what did I get wrong!? I'd worked so hard and my mum says I have always been like that - 'If someone tells you that you can't do something, you'll be really quiet about it but you'll just go for it!'I look for that tenacity in my fundraisers. It's not so much a killer instinct like you might relate to a sales person. It is just dogged determination - I'm not going to let anything stop me! I'm just going to be keep on going. Not blindly and for the sake of it when you see you might have gone down the wrong path. You need to accept you might not be doing something in the right way. When you can see you need to take a bend in the road to keep on track. It's not about pure stubbornness. It's just about seeing the end goal; end up going round to get there, but I am going to get there! I think that massively helps your team no matter what leadership role you're in. If you have someone that has that mindset leading, it keeps everyone on track and focused about where you are going.What is the secret to building a loyal, happy and motivated team and what are the biggest challenges you face in doing so?The biggest challenge I have faced is retention in fundraising. It is a largely a very transient career. People move around and can take their experience and move on quite fast if they are very good. Keeping people committed is a challenge.The strength we have as an organisation is that the work we do is there on the ground so people get to see it all the time. I always make sure our fundraisers spend time with the teams in the hospice; even if it just serving teas and coffees on the ward. Spending time with the gardeners; all our gardeners are volunteers. It's really important in terms of making the organisation work as a whole. Having an appreciation of everything that we do keeps you motivated because you're seeing the difference we are making all the time.Making sure your team are committed to your cause; otherwise you can only go so far. A lot of people think that you just need to know the mechanics of fundraising in order to be a good fundraiser. If you're a massively sales-driven person, you can probably get away with that. Most people don't get into fundraising for that reason; they get into it because they want to be part of doing something good or helping something happen. You've got to get people committed and linked in with your cause. That's how we've retained some of our longest serving. They just really believe in the organisation and it shines through when they talk about it.I understand that a hospice isn't for everyone; people have their own passions. It's about trying to capture that passion in amongst it all and getting people really engaged once they start with you. Speaking to patients and their families, you can't help but be moved by it. It gets under your skin and you realise you're part of something really amazing that we're doing here.How do you ensure that you continue to grow personally in a senior leadership role?I've worked with a really great senior leadership team in that they really want to drive forward. There are clear aims for the future that are ambitious. If I didn't believe in what the Chief Exec was doing, I would massively struggle. Or if I felt someone was really off-kilter or not performing, I would struggle with that too. I think we are very good at holding each other accountable. Having a really good, honest debate about things. Because we have worked together for quite a long period of time, we are quite gelled; I think that is quite important.I am also part of a business networking group called Vistage. They started in America and are a big operation. They have either CEO or Director led groups and they are quite small, so you tend to get groups of about 12 people. I've been involved for about three years now. They get great, international speakers over who are fantastic. I've learned huge amounts and have taken lots of inspiration from them. There are two in particular that I have stayed in touch with. I wouldn't say they are official mentors as such, but they are people that I can touch base with and run things by. I get a totally, non-voluntary perspective on things. The group has a real code of conduct that there is absolute trust, so what is said in the room stays in the room. Every month you have to bring the one thing that's keeping you awake and then bottom out what you are doing about it and the next month it is followed up. Did you do what you said you were going to do? So again, it's that accountability and making sure you aren't letting something slide for months on end. That has been a massive part of my development, which isn't really voluntary sector learning but has just made me think about things from a different perspective. Come at things from new angles. Look at what's going on outside the sector and what we might bring back in.It has also been great in terms of building the team as well. You'll learn a lot about different psychologies and how you get teams to work together. Whether that's a Myers Briggs type approach or other ways of just getting a team to perform. A lot of that stuff is relevant no matter what your leadership role might be. It would be beneficial for any type of big team.I have key people in the charity sector that I touch base with as well; people that I have trust with and can ask difficult questions of. A couple of people in the Yorkshire hospices particularly who are outside of the region. Close enough, but far enough away. A similar size and shape that you can run things by them. There are also the conferences to consider; keeping on top of the trends in terms of fundraising. I always push and encourage the team to keep learning, whatever it is. Just keep learning, because you'll never know enough. No matter who you are, you can always learn more. Your whole entire life - even when you retire! - you can keep on learning things about life. I have that need in me to do that. I can't just sit still and accept things.What has been the highlight or biggest success of your career?You can obviously think of different events or campaigns that were really amazing or a huge grant that came in that meant you could do a huge capital project. But, actually, I think it's the long term work I have achieved at St Oswald's. Seeing that growth and development. Seeing those sustainable income streams and knowing that the hospice is in a totally different place, largely because of the money we have been able to bring in and what we have then been able to do as a result of that. It's been a long, long process, but it is a huge achievement for this team.People often talk about the churn and how fundraisers don't stay in their roles for very long. It has been good to see it through, but I didn't expect to still be here. Most of my fundraising roles before this one had been shorter. I think the longest I had been anywhere was touching on five years. Again, I did see development through that period and we did some really big things. So actually, when you are able to stay and really fully commit - see what's ahead and buy into it - that's where you do see great things happen. It is with the longer term roles. The driver for me isn't able the glory of short lived successes or campaigns. It's about helping patients and that's what I get up for.For all the difficulties that you come across like performance management or horrible situations, I've never got up and thought I can't go in today. That is what's driving me. I have to get up and go in to make things better and to keep on helping people. You have to get through the crappy stuff sometimes. You can only do that with having a big goal in mind. Otherwise you just think, 'it's getting too difficult and tricky and I just want out'. I'll go somewhere else and that's easy.​

Amanda Bringans joined the British Heart Foundation in December 2015. She has a strong background in fundraising, strategic development and implementation, strategic brand management and communications. Amanda has held interim fundraising director posts at Leonard Cheshire Disability and Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. Before that she was Director of Global Fundraising and Communications at VSO for three years, and spent 16 years at Macmillan where she was latterly Director of Fundraising.​What tips do you have for an aspiring Fundraising Director?Put your hand up! Whilst I was a more junior fundraiser, I always put my hand up for projects that would take me out my immediate responsibilities. I am not sure when I developed the sense to do this as I wasn’t always inclined to do so – certainly not at school where I was always in trouble! When I started in fundraising I felt such a strong fit, and I feel that when people feel like they fit, and they are being listened to and heard, then that feeds a desire to contribute more. So I think it’s about finding an environment that you want to contribute more to which then feeds a desire to contribute even more.So when I got into Fundraising I started looking for things to take me out my comfort zone. This really happened to me at Macmillan and there are a couple of examples that spring to mind: the first was being on the team to successfully pitch for the Tesco partnership. And then being a part ofthe team to project manage the development of the then new brand for Macmillan that you see today.Taking on these projects increases who you are interacting with. And then the more people you meet, the more you learn. And actually that is the key to it isn’t it? A desire to learn. I love learning from clever people! And that is a really relevant point too; work for “super clever people” – or have “super clever people” working for you; I would always encourage people to never be scared of recruiting people who are more intelligent than you- see it as an opportunity and don’t be afraid, as they will bring so much depth to your team that you may not have personally.What does someone coming to an interview with you, need to do to impress you?I think we can all be slightly guilty of having a strong opinion of someone within 30 seconds of meeting them. So without being overly clichéd I always look for someone to come in confidently, shake my hand, make eye contact and give me a big grin rather than shuffling in looking a bit terrified.Being well prepared is vital too, as is having a laugh. And be yourself; as soon as I sense somebody is not themselves or trying to be something they arenot I lose interest. Tell me genuinely about your skills and their talents and their achievements – because I want to listen and hear that.The best thing you can do is to be articulate and clear about what your achievements to date are and what you have learnt. A good interview is really enjoyable – I want to come out of it thinking that was great – I learnt something from that person! So it should be fun – if a tiny bit terrifying…Do you think the sector does enough to attract new talent to Fundraising? What more can we all do?I am fully aware that there is a bit of a merry-go round of fundraising staff in the sector. Some people move from charity to charity – and sometimes this can be a really good thing but sometimes it is good to bring in new blood. I very much value bringing in fundraisers from other charities, but if all you are going to do is move from charity to charity at the same level in the same discipline then that isn’t going to energise our profession. Here at BHF we have just recruited our new Fundraising Director of Innovation and Performance from outside the sector.And working with the IOF we are very eager to push fundraising as a professional career – continuing to promote and drive commitment to the academy and the journey to chartered fundraiser. The Institute has a key role to continue to professionalise it and to raise the profile of it as a respected profession.What was the last thing that made you angry (within a Fundraising context)?Badly written thank you letters make me very angry! In my opinion there is no excuse for this. They have to be prompt, beautifully written and come from the heart with absolutely no spelling or grammatical mistakes.You have taken on the role as Chair of the IOF at a testing time for the sector – congratulations, how did it come about?I have been working with the Institute for a long time; having previously sat on the London committee many years ago and have always really enjoyed my interaction with them. When the vacancy came up a couple of people suggested I go for it, which was hugely flattering. So I did and I still can’t quite believe I got it, when I found out I was just so astounded, delighted, and very proud and I have to say I am absolutely loving it. There is certainly a lot happening. Perhaps rather naively I thought the happenings of 2015 were quite a while ago and Richard, my predecessor will have dealt with that and that we have come out of the other side but then you get into it and actually there is of course so much to do! But as I say I am genuinely loving it.With this, plus the day job and the trusteeship at Regents University you must be busy! Do you have any life changing time management tips?Certainly the Chair-ship has increased my working hours! Over the years I have developed a time management tool which seems to work for me; I see each week as a pattern. On the weekend I look at my week ahead and grade meetings accordingly – what is each one going to require from me - intellectually and energy wise? When do I need to put a suit on? When can I wear my jeans? And subsequently I manage my time and structure accordingly. I definitely need spaces in my diary where I can just sit down and think and I think that is very important – otherwise I will get to the end of the week and be shot. But it is a pattern, it’s a shape and that is how I view it.You have spoken about the need to support smaller organisations in the face of regulatory changes – how are you hoping to do that?One of the strategic priorities for the IOF is to support smaller charities and we are conscious we want to do more of this and do it better. A good example is having easily accessible, affordable resources – which I know these organisations need more of. An example would be the recent UK wide GDPR courses that we ran for around £75 for small charities. The feedback from these has been great and we know we need to do more of things like this. On a personal basis I am planning to visit all of the different regional committees to hear more about what they need so we can plan that into our wider strategy and I recognise the importance of that.BHF were fined by the ICO – has that impacted on the department on a day to day basis?Initially yes, we definitely felt the impact – though I had literally just joined when it happened. Something like that is always genuinely upsetting for fundraising teams - fundraisers here certainly felt that very strongly. So there was a period of “what are we going to change to do better?” And as a result of that we have had to significantly invest in our compliance. So it has certainly led to a desire to get things right, investment in compliance and an ongoing desire to audit and monitor and compliance in a very rigorous way. So we have had Deloitte in to do an audit all of fundraising compliance activities to ensure we are adhering with best possible practice. Has this led to us being more risk adverse? No absolutely not, it has led to a desire to be even more innovative and creative based on the fact that we know we have to be absolutely compliant but also to ensure we are doing things that our donors want and need. So conversely no we are not more risk adverse – instead we are trying to be more adventurous - but within a compliant framework.Ultimately whilst GDPR has increased our workload, if you think about what it is trying to achieve its true aim is fundamentally a good one. People will feel more protected; as fundraisers we can translate that aim into a true desire to delight our donors. But it can only be a good thing if donors are getting what they genuinely want. So we can’t see it as a constraint or a barrier but we have to see it as an opportunity to communicate more closely with what your donors want. Easy to say, hard to do!How do you ensure the whole BHF fundraising team is motivated and 100% behind the cause?I think it is absolutely vital to have fun at your job. I once got reprimanded by a CEO in an interview for a very senior fundraising role for using the word fun three times in the interview. I could not disagree more strongly with that person than I do! You have to work hard, be intellectually challenged, drive high performance and held to account but you absolutely must have fun at work.I also think that strong leadership that is aligned to your organisations values is vital. Our CEO here is very focused on ensuring our values are front of mind. And I think as fundraisers that is a great help. And lastly you have to keep the cause at front of mind. So one of the things we do here is to run events that the team can go and hear from the researchers to listen to the work that they are actually helping to fund, and that is important.Who is the best boss you have worked for and why?Obviously I have to say Simon Gillespie the CEO at BHF – who would kill me if I didn’t say him! Notwithstanding that he is a top bloke with a shed load of integrity, and great to work for so he really is genuinely up there. The other one I would say is Judy Beard – my director of Fundraising at Macmillan from 1999 to 2007. She was just an amazing Director of Fundraising: willing to trust, willing to teach, willing to have a laugh and hugely empowering andself deprecating about her own extraordinary abilities. Along with being just lovely.I wish I’d have thought of that – any campaigns or appeals you think have been particularly ground-breaking.I admire lots of things other charities do. I came across UNICEF’s latest legacy campaign this morning – which was around personalising a timeline from the historic events that have happened during your life, leading to a really well constructed legacy ask. It was beautifully put together and really well executed so I really enjoyed that. I also really enjoyed the campaign Battersea Dogs and Cats Home ran around sentences being too light – with lots of comedians - that was brilliant.When was the last time you cried? I have just finished this book (A Heavy Reckoning) by Dr Emily Mayhew who has written this about the long term health issues caused by blast injuries – principally focussed on victims of the Afghanistan war, for example people who are triple amputees and the massive toll that blast and IED injuries have on people for the rest of their lives. It is an absolutely amazing book. And every morning over the last week, on the train I have shed a tear. I thoroughly recommend it, it is written so beautifully and is such a powerful mix of science and human emotion.

​What does leadership mean to you?Motivating and inspiring a team is about providing direction and clarity of purpose. In terms of my own approach and leadership style, I try to be really collaborative. But I also don’t think anyone wants a leader who dithers and can’t make decisions on their own; there are times when you need to give clear direction.Wherever I can, I try to collaborate and listen to people. Listening is definitely one of the key skills of a leader. I don’t pretend community fundraising hasn’t changed since I started as a Community Fundraiser with Marie Curie 13 years ago; it’s very different now. But I do think having been a Community Fundraiser gives me a real insight and understanding of the role.I guess the other thing about leadership is adaptability. When I first started in my current role, the team had gone through a lot of upheaval – morale was low – and there was a feeling of instability. You go into a new job and, of course, you want to change things; but it was evident that it wasn’t the direction I needed to go in. It was about trying to calm things down and build a really positive culture. My mantra in those days was all about getting the North back on top. My management team and I spent a lot of time motivating people and I tried to be a really positive influence to get us all on the same page.Now we have built up a team full of energy and positivity, it is all about enabling and empowering people to make the right decisions. I might have to change again in a year because leadership style depends on the people and the environment. You definitely have to reflect on who has been leading the team before, as well as adapting and changing the way you do things. If your style is different it will take people time to adjust and you might need to rethink what the team needs – maybe you need to change rather than the team.What’s the best tip you can offer on building a loyal, happy and highly motivated team?We were talking before about the importance of culture and personal development, so my top tip would be to make sure you give yourself enough time and space to do the people-centred things. That might involve taking enough time to plan team meetings – don’t wing it! Ensure you make time for the personal development of your team. If you have any kind of feedback (e.g. the staff questionnaire Marie Curie do every year) make sure you do something with it. You need headspace to think about these things and plan whatto do next. Never think of personal development planning or team time as a luxury. If you spend time doing those things, you will reap the rewards when it comes to your team and how they feel about working for you and the organisation. It will also impact how long they stay with you.What are the biggest challenges in regards to leading successful regional fundraising teams?One is definitely staff retention, especially when you are in the business of building relationships. When you lose someone, you lose some of the traction you have built up with those relationships. It’s obvious to think about the challenges of managing your team but another big challenge can be managing upwards and outwards. That might be around expectations if those people have a key role to play in budget setting and the growth you can deliver. Not hitting target is one of the most demotivating things a team will go through, so targets need to be achievable in the first place. Also, in terms of your team expecting you to deliver changes or improvements for them when it sometimes won’t be within your power to do so.You need to build a solid relationship with your own line manager. You may need to work hard at that and find a way towards a common ground; sometimes, you’ll have to bide your time. When you first start a role you aren’t immediately the go-to person, but in time you prove what you can do and start to make suggestions. It can help to adapt the information you put in front of people and present things in a way that you know will get their buy in. Marie Curie is quite a hierarchical organisation and I have to respect that hierarchy, being careful about the way I phrase things and choosing the right situation for challenge. It might not always be the right time or place and you have to be mindful of the pressures that your manager is under too. Pick your battles and don’t go after every single thing!How do you have to adapt your leadership style to foster a sense of team when your staff works either remotely or in different regional offices?It all comes down to providing clear direction. If you are all singing from the same hymn sheet, it doesn’t matter if you don’t get chance to get together all that often. Saying that, I do believe working hard to be visible is important. It might not make sense to be travelling around all the time, but when you are there make the effort to talk to everyone and find out what’s going on. If you are genuinely interested in your team it will come across and help them to feel valued, but be careful as they will pick up on it if you are not genuine. Coming from a community fundraising background, I am genuinely interested in people.Be clear about the team’s objectives. Be really honest and tackle things as a team – how are we all going to approach this together? Ask your team for feedback – do they feel like a team? What is working and isn’t working?Definitely accept that remote working is different – you’re not going to have the same sense of team that you would if you all sat around the same bank of desks in an office. Don’t punish yourself for that – it will be different. From a practical sense bring people together, but do it appropriately. And again, ask for feedback. Are we doing this enough? Are we doing it too much? Make the most of that time too, so that people go away feeling like it was a brilliant day.Use technology and conference calls. If you don’t have those tools in your organisation, ask someone to look at the cost because you will save on travel if you invest in those technologies. For the Daffodil Appeal when everyone is out doing their own thing, our Fundraising Manager in the North West set up a WhatsApp group and everyone was sharing photographs and news from their collections. There was a real sense of team and achievement from that; simple things can work really well.Put people together on projects who don’t usually work in the same office. At regional meetings, split people up so that you combat the tendency to sit only with the people you work with – mix it up! Protect your time together because it isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. Make some of that time for celebrations and some for social things. We always get together at Christmas and do very little business and that’s absolutely fine – we spend time together as a team and enjoy ourselves!What would you recommend to an organisation that doesn’t have an official employee retention strategy but would like to work hard to actively keep hold of their best talent?I can’t imagine any manager doesn’t have some sort of retention plan, although they might not call it that. You have good people in your team and you want to keep them. If you don’t have an official strategy within your organisation there are two really important things you can do. Accept what is in your control and accept what is out of your control. Salaries, job descriptions, terms and conditions may be things you can’t control, but there are lots of things that you can. Think about personal development. If you manage anybody, a key part of your time should be spent thinking about their personal development. It shouldn’t be an add-on. Appraisals aren’t a box-ticking exercise and you should take them really seriously and give the people you manage your time. Empowering people is also really important. It isn’t your responsibility to develop someone’s career, but it is your role to support that person to make it happen – encourage personal accountability.Really simple things like being imaginative and creative with awards can make a huge difference. A small recognition can make a real difference to people feeling valued; you don’t join the charity sector because you expect huge bonuses, but a thank you from someone in a senior position can go a long way. Be genuinely interested in your people and sing about what they are doing.At Marie Curie, some of my Fundraising Managers manage really big teams of 8-10 people and, for me, that is too many people to directly line manage. So some of our more senior Community Fundraisers take line management responsibility for one other member of the team. I think that definitely helps us to retain people because it gives them that first experience of line management. You might not be in an organisation that can do that, but definitely consider it if you can. If you can’t, think about what you can do to enable people to develop the skills to help them move into the next step in their career e.g. buddying, shadowing, mentoring, secondments, deputising, etc.In terms of retention, I always take quite a pragmatic approach if someone leaves. Sometimes a fundraiser leaves because there has been a clash and it hasn’t been the right role for them – it can then be the best thing for them to move on. Also, I absolutely love it when someone joins and we really support their personal development and they then move onto a much bigger role; we should really celebrate that and not see it as a negative. You’ve definitely done your job there and helped the sector! I came back to Marie Curie after being away for four years, so you never know – they might come back!Accept what you can control and consider challenging what you can’t. Pick your battles but don’t be afraid to ask the awkward questions. There often isn’t a great deal of money to play around with when it comes to pay awards, but in my team I often underspend on my salary budget from people leaving and waiting to re-recruit. So I recently asked the question: ‘could I use the savings to reward people?’ One of my peers commented that wouldn’t be allowed, but I pushed for the question to be asked at a more senior level. Itwas, and the response was quite positive. It hasn’t happened yet, but it might and that makes asking the question worthwhile. If you can’t ask a question as a fundraiser, then obviously you’re in trouble!How do you celebrate success within your fundraising team?The most important thing about celebrating success and failure is that you have to live and breathe it; you can’t wait around for moments like staff awards to happen. Celebrate small successes as they happen and you can help to create that positive culture everyday.We have awards in the team and give a £50 voucher every quarter – not a lot of money, but it can mean an awful lot to the individual who wins it. It used to be a management decision, but a member of my team challenged that and now we do a staff nomination instead. Being nominated by your peers means so much more. I went to the effort of putting the nominations and award announcements in gold envelopes and had a red carpet backdrop on my PowerPoint to make it feel like something a bit special. We also have a team of the quarter across the UK and I always try and nominate a team from the North region when appropriate… and we have won three out of the last five!Where appropriate we ask our Chief Exec and Director to send ‘Thank You’s’ to people individually for exceptional work and that works really well. I do the same with personal congratulations for people who have gone above and beyond. Again, as a management team, we look back at what we have achieved and take time to reflect and embed that. I have a big team across a big geographical area, so I do broadcast emails to tell everyone when people do things well. We mix things up with the format, e.g. sometimes, we use video to try and keep it fresh. In quarterly regional meetings we do a review of the previous quarter, which is an opportunity to recognise the team’s achievements; then at the end of the year a big annual review. We all work so hard and it’s getting more challenging, so it’s vital we commit that time to recognise the efforts of our team.

Jane Ide joined NAVCA as Head of Member Engagement in September 2016, and in 2017 took on the role of Chief Executive for this national charity and membership organisation. She is able to draw on a substantial career leading engagement and communication at the most senior level, across the NHS, the Civil Service, and the public and private sectors.How do you ensure you continue to personally grow and develop in a senior leadership role?It helps if you have the sort of personality that gets bored easily because you are always looking for new input, new understanding. I always assume I can learn something from somebody else. Mandy Johnson (CEO of Small Charities Coalition) has given me two digital tools this week that I am now using. Hopefully I can share things with other people as well. It's important to be interested in what's happening next and not get stuck in what you used to do.In the context of the sort of work I'm doing and the organisation I work for, there really isn't space or time or budget for formal professional development. I don't have thousands of pounds at my disposal to do an MBA. You have to be creative! It's something I am talking to my Chair about at the moment. What are the gaps I need to fill and how can creatively do that? By the same token, I am having that same conversation with my staff. What do they feel they need and how do we make that work? It's a work in progress and it should always be.I'm very lucky that my first experience of being led in an organisation was by a really good leader. It was all about open communication and taking a genuine interest in what other people think. He used to say it was his job to think and he needed time to do that. He would carve time out of his diary and protect it at all costs and that's one thing that I haven't quite got the hang of yet. As a leader, if you don't take time out to think and reflect on what's working, you're not going to do your job as well as you could.There is definitely something to be said about honest and open leadership. I did a blog recently for Third Sector about mental health and gave my account and experience of panic attacks. In my early twenties I barely left the house for three years. I did think twice about sharing that because I didn't want it to have a negative impact on NAVCA, but I think it is important to be honest and have those discussions. Mandy Johnson did a brilliant blog about imposter syndrome, which we all have!There's a different model of leadership that isn't just about following 'me', although you do need some of that too. It's about striking the right balance.You have to be able to give your team and the people around you confidence, a sense of security and the understanding that you have everything under control. You don't want your team to waste time and energy worrying about things when they don't need to. Equally, especially in collaborative teams, if I'm not able to be open and honest I can't get the support I need (if I'm having sleepless nights about an event I want to be able to share that!). It puts the team in a position of not being able to tell you things if you aren't sharing with them. Getting that emotional intelligence right is really hard, but something you need to always be aware of. Protecting yourself and getting the work-life balance right is a hugely important part of being a good leader too.Much of your team aren't based from the same geographical location and flexible/homeworking is becoming more and more common. What is the secret to building a loyal, happy team of remote workers?I made a really clear, strategic decision the day I found out I had got the job at NAVCA that I would be recruiting a team that was mobile, flexible and not office-based. We are a national body and we need to be able to get around easily. I also knew that would create a different dynamic. If you going to have one member of the team working remotely, it is much easier to have everyone doing the same thing. It really opened up the opportunity to make sure we got the best possible candidates because we weren't restricted by location and that really paid off.If you have the luxury of starting virtually from scratch as I did, you are recruiting people from the start who know they will be working this way when they apply for the job. They therefore have a desire and willingness to work this way. You have to literally equip them with the right tools for the job, which may mean making an investment. You also have to equip them with the right knowledge and understanding.It is important to spend time early on talking and listening with a thorough induction because they will not be in the office to ask questions further down the line. You have to be really clear about what you are asking them to achieve. Regular one-to-ones and appraisals are crucial too to make sure people know they are heading in the right direction. I have yet never worked with anyone who wasn't interested in coming to work to do a good job. People will always want to do a good job given the right opportunity.Giving people a sense of the shared goals and vision is important. What is your individual role and where does that fit into the wider team? Going back to the honest piece, I need to be clear about my role too. Something I am just starting to work through is getting the team to a point where I am not the hub of the team with everyone linking into me. I am working quite actively on the team becoming truly collaborative and inter-dependent so that they are having relationships with one another, as well as with me. The thinking being that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I'm not always going to be around and it isn't an effective use of our time for me to lead on everything.​

​"Getting to know someone during the interview process helps us find the right people." - read how Maggie's recruit their team.Carys Winship joined Maggie's 11 years ago as a community fundraiser. Carys is now staff and resources manager for Maggie's, overseeing all 140 staff across the UK from her base in Glasgow.We have heard some glowing reports about the culture at Maggie's. How have you developed such a great place to work?We're a fairly small organisation (even though we're growing pretty fast) but that means we really know all the people who work here well and keep them involved with where Maggie's is going.Communication is really important. It lies at the heart of Maggie's as we are there to listen to our centre visitors and I think that means we are good at listening to each other. Everyone wants to work together to support people with cancer in the best possible way.How do you on-board your newbies?In your very first week at Maggie's you spend a week in one of our centres away from where you will be working. This is so important as you get totally immersed in the work of the centre. If you're a Finance Assistant based in our office in London or Glasgow, you might not visit another centre for a year or so. The centre you go to for your induction always becomes really close to your heart and it's such an important reminder of why we do what we do.In that first week, you'll see everything we offer in our centres. You'll get involved in our drop-in service and see how difficult it can be for someone to walk through the door for the first time, versus how comfortable and relaxed it can feel to be a repeat visitor. You'll learn about our benefits advice service, relaxation sessions and nutrition services.There isn't a big, chunky document to read. Instead, you're given postcards which include the top 10 things you need to know about Maggie's. Our on-boarding doesn't stop at induction week. Six months later, we run a 'Getting Started' session. It's based in our London office and allows all of our new starters to reflect on their induction and also share how the first 6 months at Maggie's has been for them. They meet our leadership team from Fundraising, Operations, Communications and Finance which can sometimes be overwhelming on your very first week at a new job, and I'll also do a session on HR and the useful things people might not know unless someone tells them.This is also a brilliant opportunity for our Chief Executive Laura to personally meet each and every new staff member. This session makes the leadership team approachable and allows us to all work together as an organisation.Maggie's has a really low staff turnover. Why is that?As we grow as an organisation, there are more opportunities for people to grow with us. Our growth means people continue to work for us through progression, and we're taking full advantage of that.What are the important things you look for in Maggie's people?Someone who really wants to work for us and be part of the Maggie's network, rather than it just being a job or a step on the career ladder. Having that sense of community is so important to us, and what someone can bring to the organisation in terms of personality is as important as the technical skills they have. We wouldn't hire someone if we didn't think it was the right for them, as well as us.Getting to know someone during the interview process helps us find the right people. We look to see how they describe Maggie's, how they communicate and often ask for a presentation which allows us to see their creative ideas and initiatives.What is the long-term vision for Maggie's?Our aim is to increase staffing by 49%, which is in line with our 5-year growth plan. We want to do this by developing our internal infrastructure, bringing new people in when we build new centres and continuing to offer more opportunity for progression for our current staff.

​Many people may not have heard of SeeAbility. Tell us a little bit about its mission and the current key areas of focus for the charity.Registered as The Royal School for the Blind, SeeAbility is actually one of the oldest disability charities in the UK and has pioneered specialist support for people with complex disabilities for nearly 220 years. Our support has evolved over time and I feel really privileged to work for an organisation whose starting point is not underestimating people. At work, I have colleagues from different specialisms from behaviour analysts to speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, optometrists and vision rehabilitation workers who all share the same goal; to encourage the people we support to challenge what they expect from life, from themselves and from wider society.SeeAbility has always had a brave and pioneering spirit about it and most recently, we see this through our work to champion better eye care for people with learning disabilities and autism, many of whom have sight loss.Not many people know that a child with learning disabilities is 28 x more likely to have a serious sight problem and yet least likely to receive the eye care they need. One of the things we’re passionate about at SeeAbiltiy is ensuring that everyone has an equal right to sight and we’ve just completed a 4 year research study that shows an estimated 40,000 children in special schools will have never received any eye care. As a parent of a young child, I think this is truly shocking! It means thousands of children who desperately need glasses are going without and as a result, this impacts on their ability to learn, play and socialise. We’re committed to working with policy makers to end this major health inequality.What is the key to developing successful corporate partnerships? Which do you think have been the best?There really are many ways to approach corporate partnerships but at the heart of most successful ones is a shared and equally-valued desire to tackle difficult social issues. In my experience, when this is truly the case, partnerships tend to fall into place because both sides are motivated to do what it takes to make the goal a reality.I’ve spent over a decade working at charities supporting people with disabilities and it’s been amazing to see the change in attitudes over that time. When we first started talking about partnerships that might create meaningful employment opportunities for people with disabilities, there was a huge awareness piece that went alongside these conversations. Even finding the right person to talk to at companies was a mission. But then you find partners who are truly committed to creating diverse and inclusive workplaces and this sits at the heart of their Corporate Social Responsibility, follows through into their People policies and is echoed at the most senior levels of leadership. And this makes all the difference.I really enjoy working on these type of strategic partnerships. Being on the charity side means you have to do your research and understand as much as you can about your prospective partners and what is important to them and their stakeholders. As part of this, it’s important to network widely and have lots of conversations to share ideas, plans and strategies. And never be afraid to share your big idea or present the big picture of what life will be like as a result of your partnership. It’s a crowded market place so its important to demonstrate how your partnership will be game-changing for everyone involved!This is your first Director of Fundraising and Marketing role - how different is it having total responsibility for a whole fundraising programme? How does that feel?I feel honoured, a little scared but mostly excited to take on my first role as Director. At SeeAbility, we have a cause I feel passionately about, a senior leadership team that is diverse and ambitious for our beneficiaries, colleagues that I enjoy working with and an environment where I can be my authentic self. These were all really important factors that made me want to take the next step in my career.As a Director, you need to be looking across your team and out across the whole organisation at all times. This feels different as you need to leave the comfort of familiar territory and relationships and make the effort to understand all aspects of your Charity. You will be expected to contribute to conversations about all parts of the organisation and the more you can learn about how it all works, the better you will be placed for these.Within fundraising, you will also find your time is stretched, so you’ll need to make decisions about how best to use it. It’s important to trust the experts around you and work with them to pre-empt challenges/risks, as much as you can before they occur. It can be full-on but hugely rewarding to see the bigger picture.A point on diversity: our sector sometimes feels pretty good compared to others on the issue of diversity but I feel we need more representation, especially at the top of fundraising. I know the barriers are complex, but if you’re thinking about stepping up and worried about the time commitment or your breath of experience, just do it. Be honest about your shortcomings, reflect on them and discuss them up front and then think of all the ways you can work on these in your role. We need diverse voices to have diverse conversations to come up with new ideas and solutions. If you’re in a leadership role, it could be YOU who does just that!Given your background in predominantly corporate fundraising, what have you learned from how other teams work?Actually, along the way I’ve had responsibility for delivering a growing range of income streams across my career. I started as a corporate fundraiser and then managed a Trusts and Foundations team. I then found myself responsible for those teams and Challenge and Special Events. Recently I took a year to learn about Major Gifts which remains invaluable experience. And now I have the opportunity to work with my really experienced colleagues to understand our individual giving stream and the drivers for this.In some ways, what I’ve seen across fundraising are the commonalities more than the differences. Of course corporate partnerships decision-making can be different from that of trusts and foundations and this will be different again for individuals making their personal giving choices – but in the end, it all comes down to articulating the purpose of your charity and offering lots of ways for people to connect and offer their support.This feels particularly important if you work at a less well known charity and so it’s really important to get right. No matter which part of fundraising you work in, spending the time getting to know the people who support you and valuing their support, whether it’s in the form of advice, financial support or their voice, is what really what counts.What makes a great leader?The people I consider good leaders are really diverse have inspired me at different points in my life. Working at different charities across my career I’ve had the privilege of meeting many young people who have grown up in really challenging circumstances and who have used their experiences to challenge the status quo and rise up as leaders and role models for the next generation. It’s brilliant to be around their fantastic energy and as a fundraiser it really fuels my work!The quality I most value in good leaders is their ability to envisage a better future and to support the people around them to get there. They often make it look effortless but I admire so many wonderful leaders who I have met and worked with, who do this through a lot of hard work, an openness to explore new ideas and careful consideration for how to get a job done. It’s a powerful mix when you see that all in one person!What next for SeeAbility and your team?It’s a hugely exciting time to be part of our charity! With the leadership of our Chief Executive, Lisa Hopkins and our Council, we recently co-produced and launched SeeAbility’s new strategic vision together with people supported by SeeAbility, their families, our colleagues, commissioners, donors, and volunteers. We’re really excited about the opportunity this creates for long-term partnerships with companies, trusts and foundations - and with individuals who share our goal of building inclusive communities where everyonecan participate as equal citizens.While we’re ambitious for change, we are a relatively small and hugely passionate team. So right now, we’re prioritising our areas of focus. We’re developing our messages and offerings so that many more people understand our unique work and investing the time it takes to build strong relationships with our supporters and influencers. In this way, I hope that everyone in the team can feel the impact of their work and ultimately, this brings us closer to a society where people with learning disabilities, autism and sight loss are valued and included in all walks of life.

​What is the best route to CEO in the charity world? Our associate Director, Nick Billingham, offers his advice.One of the things I love about my role is the opportunity to meet informally with Directors from different specialities in the sector and discuss their career plans. When I'm not interviewing potential candidates for specific roles, I will always meet professionals for a career-focused chat. Typically this will cover work history, motivations for a potential job move and undoubtedly gossip on what's going on in our sector. One question that often comes up is "what is your opinion on the best route to CEO". I would estimate that over 50% of the people I meet are ultimately seeking to become a CEO in the future and it is widely accepted as a common aspiration.However, it's becoming more and more common for not for profit organisations to appoint a CEO from the public or private sectors, as they already have many of the skills required, plus an understanding of how Government works or how to generate income from commercial routes. As a consequence, it's becoming harder to move up from within the sector, despite charity professionals already having a grasp of the culture, an understanding of funding issues and a proven ability to get the most from limited resources. So how can you maximise your chances of making it to CEO?The first suggestion I always make is to understand what type of cause they are motivated to work for and ultimately run. Different types of organisation require different skills from their Chief Executive. A somewhat obvious comment perhaps, however it is something that is worth individuals clearly establishing early on. A campaigning organisation can require a vastly different skill-set from their CEO compared with that of a medical research charity.Having spent most of my time within the sector in and around Fundraising, I am fairly biased when I say I think undertaking an income generation role before broadening out to cover wider external relations responsibilities can be a great route. However, it's often vital that you also gain experience in programmes/service delivery. And you undoubtedly need outstanding financial acumen and the capacity to manage complex budgets with ease. And let's not forget the requirement to have an excellent understanding of the role of HR within a successful operation. In essence you need to have exposed yourself to every area of the business!So where does that leave you as you plot out your carefully constructed career plan? Naturally it will be very difficult to experience running each of the functions mentioned above; however there are some key actions to consider:Start out by writing your career plan, literally writing it out. Start with the ultimate goal and work backwards. Where do I need to be in 10 years, 5 years, and 3 years?Ensure you weigh up what any new career opportunity can offer you; what experience will this give me that will aid my long term ambition? Where will this experience leave me in five years' time?Secure an official mentor; seek out an existing CEO and ask to meet with them. They will of course have some great experiences you will be able to learn from. Once you have done this, do it again. Keep meeting people; network with professionals from a variety of different organisations.And of course one of the best ways to gain exposure to the challenges of running a charity is to volunteer as a Trustee and all at the Charity People Group would strongly recommend this.The Charity People group is made up of a group of companies that work closely with organisations with a strong social purpose to improve their impact and effectiveness. My focus is on sourcing the best talent in the Not for Profit world. To get in touch to discuss how we could work with you on this, you can contact me through nickb@charitypeople.co.uk or 0207 9397422.

​What does innovation mean to you within fundraising?I’d like to talk about what innovation means at Marie Curie first of all… Like most national charities we have an Innovation Manager, whose role is all about facilitating ideas. We live in a rapidly changing world and how we respond to those changes is really what that innovation is all about. I’m not very creative myself – I probably have one or two good ideas a year! – so I leave this to other people. There is a great quote that I read today: ‘great leaders don’t innovate the product, they innovate the factory’ and that is what innovation really means to me personally. When I first started community fundraising, I remember sitting down with my line manager and saying, ‘I want to revolutionise the way that we manage office volunteers!’. I probably didn’t revolutionise it as such, but the way that my brain works means that I see things not working and I want to improve them. So I guess that’s what I mean when I say I am innovative leader.How do you enable and encourage your team to work innovatively?In terms of the team, it is about having a culture that means they can challenge things and putting the tools in place for them to make things happen. I think I am lucky that I have an opinionated team and that really helps! I make sure we have the time and space to give opinions and never put people off if they are trying to challenge things, even if that means challenging me directly – in fact, I welcome that.Not saying ‘no’ is also important. I very rarely say ‘no’ to people. If I don’t think someone is on the right track it is more about exploring that – discussing what it is we want to achieve and finding out where we can take it there – rather than just saying ‘no’. I definitely want to improve how we do things and that is what innovation is all about.I see the Innovation Manager at Marie Curie as a facilitator and it is really important that my team have a voice as experts in Community Fundraising championing what will work for us in the regions with volunteers. I really encourage people to speak up and get involved and encourage them to take on our internal role of ‘Innovation Champion’. We have lots of routes for people to feedback and I really encourage my team to use those routes if they don’t agree with something – be active, get involved. I get frustrated bypeople who moan about things after the event – if you don’t tell anyone at the time, then you don’t have a leg to stand on. How can the organisation do anything in retrospect? Be present at the time if you want to challenge something.Also, don’t be afraid to celebrate failure – I don’t think you can be innovative if you’re not willing to take risks. If you are brave enough to take risks, you’re going to get some of them wrong and that’s ok. It’s about learning from that experience and having that acceptance – if you do something and it doesn’t work, you’re not going to get into trouble. I would rather be brave than just stay within the same parameters all the time. If you just do the same things, you get the same results and it’s a challenging environment we are operating in.What do you think are the biggest challenges to innovation?As part of a national charity, people do sometimes move on because of the perceived barrier of not having their voice heard – they don’t feel that they have enough freedom and flexibility. At Marie Curie, we’ve gone through a change process over the past twenty years. Back in the old days people had lots of autonomy, but weren’t always making commercially sound decisions based on ROI. There has been a natural process that a lot of organisations go through of tightening up, and once you’ve done that, then you can relax a bit.I think trust really does come into it. We take recruitment very seriously; we bring in the right people with the right skills who we trust to get on with the job. I really trust my team and always try to come from a place of trust. Of course, you have performance issues from time to time that you have to deal with, but you don’t have to earn my trust (although you can lose it!).Our Innovation Manager is really good at coming out and speaking to us, so we have a really open dialogue. That wasn’t always the case, but definitely is now. We’re not just existing in our own little vacuum in the North of England, but respecting the fact that we have four regions with very different opinions.You have to accept that you can’t take every single idea and suggestion forward. I think if we present ideas in a logical way and we’ve thought it through, quite often our colleagues in London will listen to us because they respect that we are the experts on the ground talking to volunteers.Developing a positive culture of innovation throughout the organisation is a big challenge. I spend a lot of my time challenging decisions and encouraging people to really listen. Developing an innovative culture doesn’t happen overnight and it is something you have to work really hard at. As a leader, sometimes you have to think how much you want to expose your team to – you want to be open and transparent, but also know people have to work together and there is a fine balance between the two.Can you give us some examples of innovation within your team that you are really proud of?I want to manage expectations here – these aren’t going to be ideas that raise millions and millions of pounds! I really do think innovation is more about us challenging ourselves to do things differently. The Daffodil Appeal is obviously huge for Marie Curie, so a good example would be how we have changed the way we work with supermarkets. We were really panicking as we weren’t getting the quantity of high value collections we had in the past, so in some instances we were just collecting anywhere no matter how high thefootfall. We had an army of collectors willing to give their time, but needed somewhere to harness their generous support. In some instances we were putting in so much energy, but getting such little return.So we did two things… We challenged our perceptions and thought about ROI much more – not just paid staff, but volunteers too. Our Yorkshire Fundraising Manager looked at the data and found that she raised the majority of her income from half the team’s collections. So we decided to put half the resource and time somewhere else and that is something we have implemented across the North. The Yorkshire team are now smashing their targets because they are thinking about it differently, so I’m really proud of that.The other thing I am really proud of is my team’s response to something that I’ve said to them. I was at the IoF convention last year and the take-away theme was ‘fundraising is all about relationships’. Yet we talk about our progress based on monthly financial targets and the two can be polar opposites. At Marie Curie, we talk a lot about putting the supporter first and we do really mean it. I felt on the one hand I was saying put our supporters first; listen to their motivations and interests. But on the other hand I was focused on internal pressures: what campaign is our current priority?; where are our gaps in income?; what have we committed to against each activity in our budget?. I felt that I was giving potentially conflicting direction about what our focus and priority should be. I think those internal pressures can sometimes prevent us from putting our supporters first despite our best intentions.I started to think about how we could marry up our supporters’ motivations and interests with Marie Curie’s key priorities. The way that we currently budget using each individual income stream (e.g. collection tins) made people feel quite restricted and hemmed in, rather than concentrating on the needs of our supporter relationships and the long term results we could deliver by working together on what is the right activity for them, by matching it up with their interests and motivations.So we are currently piloting a different way of working in the North – we have stripped out our individual income stream targets so that our fundraisers just have one figure to worry about to give the individual more autonomy and control, which in turn makes us so much more agile. I’m proud of the fact that (as far as the way Marie Curie operates) we are trying something new and different.What is next for regional community fundraising? How do we keep it living and breathing in new and exciting ways?That’s a really interesting question! I do believe you either love community fundraising or you don’t really understand it; externally, I’m not sure that it is ever viewed as new or exciting. There is so much uncertainty in fundraising at the moment. In the post-GDPR world we will be working in, the depth of relationship is going to be absolutely key and critical to a charity’s success. That’s our strength in community fundraising, so I hope that it will be our moment to shine – our chance for people to realise the depth of relationship we are building will really help the charity. People absolutely trust the personal relationship they have with their Community Fundraiser.So much starts with community fundraising; from legacies right through to the brand awareness of staff from potential charity partnerships. If you’ve got a strong network of community fundraisers and volunteers, it can really help support the aims of other departments and charity wide objectives. The ambassadorial relationship we have is so important in spreading the message and I think people are starting to respect that more.Community fundraising has traditionally been seen as a ‘jack of all trades’, but I truly believe we are experts in relationship building with people from all backgrounds. And that’s what differentiates us from other fundraising disciplines. An average day for a Community Fundraiser might be a school assembly talking to a bunch of four year olds, then meeting the managing director of a company, and then a church hall talk to a WI. It is so varied and you have to be skilled in building relationships with so many different kinds of people. You have to be confident in the social situations most people want to avoid!We also seem to be seeing lots of people who are looking for flexibility in their work; perhaps from having seen family members working to live and wanting something different. Community fundraising can offer so much flexibility for people, so I think that’s another change we will start to see – people valuing the flexibility we can offer. Yes, it’s a challenging role and there are core activities and hours that need covering, but the nature of community fundraising lends itself to flexible working in ways some other professions can’t. I hope that will see us attract some really exciting talent in the future.In terms of what the next big thing is, I think we have to diversify. It isn’t my job to try and guess what the next big thing is. As communities change, we will adapt and change too – you have to be led by what your community wants and needs. We’ve considered looking into virtual fundraising groups, but our fundraising group programme continues to expand as people want to keep the social aspects of volunteering. Whilst people continue to want that, we will continue to ask people to join our fundraising groups. I personally think people will always want that personal connection; you only have to look at recent events in Manchester & London to see that community spirit is still very much alive and people do still want and need to come together.

​After five years at Cats Protection, Emily Casson is Digital Marketing Manager.There aren't many digital specialists in the regions. How did you get into digital fundraising?I started out straight from university joining the charity sector and into a policy and campaigns role. I started doing a lot of social media around campaigning and that then led into social media training for various charities. I set up my own 'Introduction to Social Media' training courses for charities training hundreds of people. Back in 2010, Facebook and Twitter were very much up and coming, so it was the absolute basics. When I first started doing these courses, some senior people knew nothing and were really scared of it. They saw social media as a young person's game and didn't see the benefits to their charity. Much of the course was about the benefits of how they could use social media, but also breaking down those barriers. The courses were primarily attended by Trustees, CEO's and Directors, who wanted to know the opportunities and risks of social media when their staff came to themabout new channels.One of the issues is often that people don't understand what we even mean by digital. Digital is any sort of online communication including mobile, website, social media and email. I would also include innovative products like touch screens and contactless collection tins, but my role is very much about getting the basics right. I think people sometimes see my job title and think I'm off doing all these amazing virtual reality things, but a lot of my role is still websites and email. Digital is just another way to communicate with our supporters. An easy way to understand digital and breakdown the barriers is to realise that this is something every charity is already doing - you're already talking to your donors! It's just another platform to be able to do that.There are so many benefits to using digital and making it work for your organisation. For example, you can organise an event and find all your volunteers online. It is really cost effective and the scalability means that you can test things so easily on digital channels. You don't have to have a yearlong plan - you can test things week-to-week and make changes accordingly. It is so much more flexible and adaptable than any other fundraising stream.When I moved into fundraising, I was in a Regional Fundraising role for Cats Protection covering all the different local fundraising streams. I was always championing digital, doing a lot of Just Giving appeals and promoting text giving. Digital was my baby and something that I looked after as a side project. I feel very lucky that Cats Protection allow all their regional fundraisers to dedicate 20% of their time to a particular specialism e.g. volunteering, events, or digital. I started looking at digital more seriously through that and it just went from strength to strength. The figures started to show that we were getting more income from my work in digital than the community fundraising. My Director saw the potential in that and created a digital fundraising role. This way of working with specialisms creates real knowledge, talent and energy within the team and means that everyone in the organisation knows who to approach for advice and support in each specialist area. This has created home-grown talent for Cats Protection in a number of areas including digital and events, as well as helping with staff retention.A couple of digital roles later, I am now Digital Marketing Manager and in 2018/19 my team has grown from just me to five of us, so the phenomenal growth is still continuing. We now have a formal digital strategy that sets out our key channels in priority order and key fundraising areas that will gain the most from impact from digital. This is channel-specific due to the different audiences, for example my fundraising priorities for email are different to my priorities for social media and website. It really helps having that structure in place.When I look back at our strategy from 2016, it has changed so dramatically. It is completely, off-the-scale different! We thought back then that by 2018 we would be recruiting around 2,500 new regular givers from digital and in actual fact we recruited nearly 25,000 in 2018! This is a complete step change and the growth in the digital income stream has been phenomenal. We had 1,746% growth last year in some digital channels so it is on a completely different planet now! For example we started Facebook Advertising around two from scratch and that is now a multi-million pound income stream forus. I'm lucky to have had great backing from my manager, Director and the Trustees in terms of investment and budget because we wouldn't have had that growth otherwise. We have been able to demonstrate the benefits to support investment with impressive ROIs - some of our campaigns break even by month three.Is investment important for digital? Do you need investment, where and how much?You don't need huge investment to set up the basics. In terms of Facebook Advertising, we did some for the IoF conference using an image for £50 so not that much at all. You don't need a big budget. The beauty of it is that it's all about testing and learning and then scaling it up and anybody can do that.It's about knowing your core audience and testing that. I know that certain audiences will respond well to certain copy and therefore I can target them with the right messaging. For example, with our lottery campaigns I know from testing and learning which audiences will respond best to need-led or prize-led messaging. Need-led would be an emotive cat image that would have a direct request message like 'Please support me'. A prize led would be 'win £10,000'. Need-led tends to work much better for us at Cats Protection. I am lucky to work with a cause that resonates well with audiences, but at the same time we are working in a saturated market. There are so many images and videos of cats out there and that makes it difficult to stand out. How do we motivate people to convert? We can track and test how people are responding to our content, for example, we had more than 170 million impressions on our Facebook campaigns last year, but what we actually want ispeople to click and convert. That is what we optimise towards, rather than likes and comments.There is a difference between engagement and conversion. There are certain campaigns that we do online that are amazing in terms of engagement, but there are others that work better in terms of raising money and compelling people to give. I work in fundraising so I'm looking for more than just likes and clicks - I'm looking for people to take action!What makes a good digital fundraiser?You have to be able to work in a very fast paced environment and be able to adapt. We set our annual plans as ever charity does, but I know within 3 months things might have completely changed. There will be a new opportunity that we want to jump on or something that isn't working as well that we need to review. I think the key thing is to have the confidence and ability to change things and make decisions.Being able to translate digital language for the everyday person is also important. There are very few digital fundraisers, particularly in the regions, so you have to be the bridge between the technology and the rest of the team. Don't talk a load of digital jargon that baffles and confuses people. I wouldn't say 'SEO'; I'd say 'we're going to tweak some words on the website so we appear higher up in search rankings'. It's about simplifying and making it easy to understand so that we can all work together to get the best results. Meeting another digital fundraiser and being able to throw out all the acronyms is fun! On the flip side, you also need to be fairly technical in speaking to web developers and know enough about coding to have a proper conversation with them.Digital fundraisers definitely need to be highly motivated and passionate to be able to drive all these new things through. You will often find yourself as the sole digital person in your organisation so you are constantly championing and pushing to do more. As the digital champion within your organisation your mantra needs to be 'we should be doing more digital!' It is about making a strong case and really driving it through. Learning to push back is also a really important part of being a digital fundraiser - you need to have confidence in your decisions and clarity on why you are making them. You will often get people asking about innovative products they have seen other charities using and questioned on why you aren't moving forward with it. You have to explain that there is often limited capacity and that budget and time is invested in core channels. There are always lots of new, shiny toys, but there is a fine line between being willing to take measured risks and being too risk averse. There are always plenty of decisions to be made in digital!Things happen so quickly in digital fundraising that you have to be able to make quick decisions. You can't go back once you have missed an opportunity, so you need to be to analyse things quickly and effectively and then make a decision on how to move forward. Digital is seen as a high- risk area because it is often the unknown and there is potential for things to go wrong. On the other hand, it is low-risk because it is so flexible and scalable. In certain parts of fundraising, invest and you might expect to see a return in the next five years. I get daily and weekly reports and I know exactly when someone is tapping on one of my contactless boxes. I can see things in real time. I know what's working and what's not, which means I have a lot more control.How has digital fundraising developed in the past few years?There has been a complete step change in terms of income growth, but that's digital generally (not just in fundraising). If you look at online shopping and buying online, people are so used to spending money in this way. It would have been unimaginable a few years ago to think people would feel secure enough to type their details into a computer without the safety of a pin number.Everyone is second-screening and looking at things on their mobiles. Digital fundraising has been shaped by that, but is also shaping that behaviour. 80% of my emails are now read on a mobile device, which is massively different to the stats I would have given you five years ago. We now need to be thinking about whether creative content is mobile optimised; using a different mindset and thinking in different ways.People want more of a two-way relationship, particularly with social media. People might email after a big campaign, but will continue that conversation on Facebook. Charities have a lot of catching up to do in terms of whether their database is even able to deal with that. We get hundreds of comments every day on Facebook because that's how people want to interact and they expect a response. In the early days of digital fundraising, it used to be much more one-way conversation: 'we are emailing you' and 'we are talking at you'. Now, it is very much a two-way conversation and donors have that expectation. Charities need to quickly come round to that idea and see the huge benefits. You can build up great relationships and build a better picture ofall of your supporters - they are coming to you. They want to talk to you and you can see what they're talking about on social media. You can follow hashtags on Twitter and piggy-back on things like that to engage with your supporters in a meaningful way.The other side is to make donating as easy as possible. I've worked with charities that make it far too difficult for donors to give. If you put a Facebook post up asking someone to send a cheque, it just isn't going to work. Text to donate is such an easy call to action. Social media is great at inspiring people. You can really drive donations through emotion with easy ways to tell your charity's story - you need to use an easy way for them to give.The challenge for all charities is to ensure that digital multi-channels are synchronised. Does it all match up and make sense to people? A supporter wants to be able to opt in and out of their preferred channels. They want and need complete choice over what messaging they receive. The beauty of social media is that people are actively coming and opting in to you. They are liking your Facebook page and following you on Twitter, which means they want to receive your updates. But, how do we work with that? There are challenges from an infrastructure and database angle around capturing people's data from things like text giving to identify where they have come from, but that's the nature of such a new, fast-paced environment. It makes it a very exciting area to be working in with opportunities to learn and develop all the time.What are the key trends we can expect from digital in the next year or so?Growth, growth and more growth! (Although, I do keep putting a caveat on this at work and explaining that we're not always going to see a thousand per cent growth! It will eventually plateau and we will see the usual ten and twenty per cent increases.) Because it is so new, many charities starting from scratch can expect to see phenomenal growth. Having said that, the competition has increased too. When we started using Facebook advertising campaigns a couple of years ago, we were one of only a handful of charities doing it. Now, practically every local hospice charity is using Facebook to advertise their lottery, so it is also about making your cause stand out. You need a clear call to action and to be completely transparent about where the money is going. How do you inspire people?Innovation and new ideas can often be found through agencies - I get approached almost every day with lots of new shiny toys that will completely revolutionise your life! One agency claimed they could give me a billion pounds of income! We have a trial at the moment with contactless collection boxes and have been testing it. We've had the usual challenges with training volunteers up and how to use them, but we are definitely going to movetowards these more digital ways of giving. That will be the norm in a few years' time. However, there will always be people who want to put their penniesin collection boxes - how can we make that more exciting? We are going to have collection boxes that 'meow!'Talking to other digital fundraisers is a great way to share and grow new ideas collaboratively. For those other charities lucky enough to have innovation teams, we want to know what's on the horizon and what they're thinking about. Some of our agencies are pretty good at letting us know about what's coming up. I attend conferences and networking events and there is loads of information to pick up online. There are loads of digital Twitter, Facebookand WhatsApp groups where fundraisers are sharing information about virtual reality and digital headsets and all sorts of brand new ideas. Clipboards are now a thing of the past and everyone is signing up face to face recruits on iPads. Some charities are already using virtual reality to engage people in the cause and show supporters where their money is going.However, I would suggest spending 80-90% of your time on your core channels and making sure you are getting the basics right. Innovation will always be part of a digital fundraiser's job description, but you need to invest your time wisely as well as your budget. Big charities are able to take more risks and that's why they are able to invest in specific innovation teams. For me, the focus for most charities should be on doing the basics better. We need more data analysis and creating more of a bespoke instead of a generic donor journey. We're already doing that well with email welcome journeys in terms of responding to individual preferences. We can find out so much about the donor based on their behaviour through analysis, but are we taking that a step further and changing the way we communicate with them? We know what subject lines they react well to - could we look at making that bespoke?There is a lot of fascinating work to be done around human behaviour and psychology and the impact that small, subtle nudges can have. We can anticipate behaviour and act according. When are people likely to cancel their direct debits and can we send targeted communication the week before to show the difference their money is making? There are so many nuances to the way you manage your website - a change of colour can have a huge impact! All the little things you can tweak, monitor and build on those learnings to make a big difference to income. Do people prefer being contacted by their first name or surname and is there a demographic divide in age? Do we make a generalisation that those under 30 want to be addressed by their first name? Test it! I have got to the point where it is so granular that I know which colour cats will perform best!How can a small, regional charity make a big digital impact without a big budget?My first question is always why do you want to use digital? The key benefit of digital with a small charity is that you can just do it and have a go. There are so many barriers with other types of fundraising where you definitely do need a budget, whereas you don't with digital. Changing mindsets is hugely important. It's not just about setting up a channel or a Facebook page. You need a strategy, a plan and to know what you want to get out of it. There are a lot of charities that set up Facebook and Twitter pages, post a couple of things and then give up thinking that social media doesn't work forthem.What are the top three things you want to achieve? Do you want to recruit new volunteers or sign-ups for a challenge event or advertise an appeal? If you think about it from this mindset and have really clear goals, you don't need a budget to make it work. Basic versions of email and MailChimp software are free so you can email your database and set up Facebook effectively. A half hour brainstorm with the team will get your three goals - you just need to make sure they are SMART and establish how you're going to measure them!One of the biggest barriers for most charities is time and they see it as an extra task to do on top of everything else, but done properly it could actually save you time in comparison to more labour-intensive channels. It's the perfect thing to get skilled volunteers in to do. There are also so many digital marketing companies that will be happy to get involved on a pro-bono basis. A lot of small, regional charities don't try because it seems like a mammoth task. My advice would be to start with one channel and go from there. Choose one and start there. You don't have to set up on every single channel - focus on one and master that first. The other biggest barrier for lots of small charities is actually confidence. I used to be a trustee for a small charity and I knew Twitter was working when a volunteer hundreds of miles away did an event for us. The results will speak for themselves! I have recruited so many volunteers on Twitter for challenge events. The beauty of social media is that you can reach brand new audiences. In a small team, you can get sign off quickly, move fast with a new campaign and gain traction really quickly - you just need to give it a go! You have the benefit of knowing your supporters really well already. You don't need to look at a huge spreadsheet of behaviours - just talk to them and find out what they want!

​Jane joined NAVCA as Head of Member Engagement in September 2016, and in 2017 took on the role of Chief Executive for this national charity and membership organisation. She is able to draw on a substantial career leading engagement and communication at the most senior level, across the NHS, the Civil Service, and the public and private sectors.Tell us a little bit about NAVCA and the current key areas of focus for your organisation?NAVCA is the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action. The 'for' is important because we are part of a movement for local social action rather than just an external body. We are a membership body for what were traditionally CVS organisations, but are now more generally known as local infrastructure. They are organisations that are very much place-based; working in a local area to support, promote and work with the multitude of very small, local voluntary and community organisations that are the lifeblood ofcommunities across England.If you think about the world with its big public systems like the NHS, civil service and local authorities, the organisations our members support get into the cracks between those big players. They see a need in their local community, step up to the plate and do something about it! Our members are there to help them to do that effectively. That help might be helping a new charity to set itself up and making sure they get the governance and structures right, or making sure they stay up- to-date with what's new in the world (digital skills, fundraising challenges, or regulatory issues). When an organisation has the will and need, but perhaps not the capacity or experience, our members are there for support and to help navigate the way through.NAVCA is there to support its members. Local infrastructure organisations are the experts and exceptional at what they do. NAVCA's role is to help promote local infrastructure with two main aims in mind: to build and maintain the network or NAVCA family (200 members all in very different contexts doing very different things), and to give an important voice at national level. Policy makers at national level and those who are influencing the way the world works need to think about and understand the situation for the smallest local charities and voluntary groups, and NAVCA is a key voice in that debate.We are keen to change the narrative from traditional big system thinking. Big systems have lots to do and currently rely on charity to plug the gaps. We want to flip that round so that we start with community and community groups. What do they identify as the issues and see as the solutions? Looking at it from that angle you can completely transform the perspective on things like health, justice and education. You change not only the funding, but also the thinking. It's a difficult thing for people who work in big systems toget their heads around. That's where organisations like NAVCA and our members can help to start a different conversation.Please can you give us a health check on the social, local and community aspects of the third sector? How is it faring through austerity and greater need?We have been going through austerity for seven years now. Whilst there are definitely still major pressures, I suspect that we're now in a place that if people have survived this long they will continue to do so; certainly we're seeing our members across the country finding innovative and resourceful ways to work with commissioners and funders. I hope they are feeling more hopeful, resilient and better able to handle the current landscape and the uncertainties.That's not to say there aren't some real challenges out there, but organisations are finding ways to survive, cope and negotiate their way through. We know times are tough for us, which means they are an awful lot tougher for the people we are here to serve. Our ultimate beneficiaries and people living in disadvantaged communities are struggling really hard, perhaps more than ever when you look at issues such as universal credit and the housing crisis. It hasn't eased up at any point in the last seven years.Because of Brexit, the one big cloud in the middle of all this is that we don't even know whether we have hit the hardest point yet. Three years ago, my husband and I did the pilgrim walk to Santiago in Spain over five days. The third day was a really tough day climbing hill after hill after hill and it took hours. Feeling relieved, we got to the top of the final hill and then we discovered we still had three hours to go to get to where we were staying - over even more hills! I worry that is where we are now. We think we have been through the toughest bits, but because of Brexit we just don't know that for sure. That is a very difficult position for the sector to be in.Having said that, lots of lessons have been learned in the last few years and some of those lessons needed to be learned and changes made. I'm really interested in the Lloyds Bank Foundation's digital skills programme. It is worrying that so many organisations in our sector still haven't caught up with the opportunities digital capability offer them. For small organisations, they may be able to free up an extra day a week just by being more digitally confident and working digitally. Who wouldn't say yes to that?! Not to mentionthe resilience that a small charity can gain by making sure you are mobile and flexible and having the digital platforms to allow you to do that. NAVCA itself is actually a small charity; we punch above our weight as a national body because of the advantages working digitally gives us.What are the biggest challenges and opportunities currently facing the organisations that NAVCA supports?The whole principle of working collaboratively and seeking out meaningful partnerships is so important. We need to find ways to negotiate over and around the genuine difficulties and issues there can be, whether they are political or economic. There are some brilliant examples of organisations willing to set their differences aside for the sake of the bigger picture and that is all down to leadership. I am certainly seeing this happen within our membership.Getting better at telling our collaboration success stories loudly and clearly is critical right now. It's the classic marketing technique of 'do it well once, tell people a hundred times'. Not something we are too familiar with in the sector, but it's actually a relatively simple thing to do. Telling the story of local infrastructure is a specific strand of NAVCA's work, helping our members to tell their stories and making sure their voices are heard by local and central government, policy makers and commissioners.There are some very damaging perceptions about local infrastructure that it is ineffective and unwilling to change, but that is absolutely not what we are seeing among our members. They have changed enormously and are making difficult decisions and a huge difference. However, it is tough for local infrastructure organisations to demonstrate that impact because they are a step removed from the front line. Sometimes there just isn't going to be hard, meaningful evidence that no one can argue with. We have to educate commissioners and funders on how to view 'impact' realistically and effectively. Sometimes it comes down to having to trust in seeing a difference being made and people feeling that they are being better supported. Turning the conversation around and imagining if these organisations weren't there anymore can be a useful way of changing perspective and helping people to realise the relevance and importance local infrastructure has in connecting, convening and bringing people together.A big part of my job with NAVCA is to make that case. I am keen to do more work on gathering evidence, data, stories and case studies to support our family of members. I think back to my previous life in PR where the mantra was 'numbers tell, stories sell'. It doesn't matter how much data you offer to somebody; the cold, dead hand of the Excel spreadsheet means nothing, unless you have a story to tell with it.What role does volunteering have to play in our future communities?As an outsider, one of the things that struck me coming into the sector is that you tend to presume that volunteering is all about the benefit to the organisation or their beneficiaries. Actually, for those involved professionally in the community and voluntary sector, I am finding that they are very focused on the benefit to the volunteer. I think this is hugely interesting - and entirely valid - and certainly raises a few questions for me as CEO of NAVCA in terms of our thinking going forward.There is a really interesting move away from people wanting to volunteer and therefore helping once a week in their local charity shop for the next 10 years. Now, busy individuals who want to do something worthwhile are able to ask 'what can I do to help?' in many different ways. That could be a village clean-up or helping at a school fair. I think there is an awful lot of informal volunteering that goes on that no one would necessarily consider to be volunteering.In some ways, that is where you can see the divide between 'organised' volunteering that supports the volunteers and 'disorganised' volunteering where people do it because it's their kid's school or local church. And there are some very fine lines between whether volunteers are doing it for others' benefit or their own. I remember years ago, I used to volunteer over Christmas with a local homeless shelter and realising that it was sometimes very hard to tell the difference between the volunteers and clients. Many of the volunteers were there because they didn't want to be on their own at Christmas. And that was as true of me as it was the others.There is some very interesting work starting to happen that links up with the wider digital conversation. We are having some important conversations post-Grenfell around volunteering and disaster recovery. The British Red Cross have a fantastic example of this. They have a critical role to play in emergency response and have a formal role in responding to community crises. One Sunday morning I spotted a Tweet from the BRC Community Response Team promoting an amazing volunteer programme allowing people to sign up to volunteer as and when needed for emergency situations. Within four minutes I had read the Tweet, clicked onto the link showing a video explaining how people are needed within communities to be pulled in to help in an emergency situation. This isn't necessarily just for huge disaster recovery, but perhaps in the event of a flood or local community issue. You might not hear from them for ages, but they have your details for when you are needed and will alert you by text when you are. I filled in my details and then passed the link on to my husband and he did it too. What a fantastic call to action delivered in such a slick and smart way! I am now a British Red Cross community volunteer and I didn't even have to put do