Empowering Small Charities: Boosting Self-Analysis and Sustainability

Background

Small charities face many challenges which can destabilise them as they grow and navigate the delicate balance between sustainable income generation and the capacity to meet the demand for services, with limited time and resources to support an increasing workload.

96% of the UK's 163,000 charities are small*and we understand that training and consultancy solutions are often based upon principles designed to meet the needs of larger organisations, who operate in an entirely different way.

To maximise the effectiveness, impact and value we can deliver, Action Planning worked with a range of small charities and a team of experienced Associate Consultants to develop a new service designed specifically to meet the needs of smaller charities.

It was important to test the new service before taking it to market, so we went out to the sector with support from our partnership with ACEVO and asked the question: Are you a small charity looking to grow?

Brief

Kara Lee, CEO of Bexley Mencap, a local charity based in London, responded to the call for small charities who might be interested in piloting the new service in the ACEVO newsletter, which she received as an ACEVO member.

“We have limited resources to invest in membership organisations,” Kara said, “but the value of ACEVO membership far outweighs the amount we spend on it. As a smaller organisation it has saved me so much time; the members really want to share ideas and support each other.”

Bexley Mencap provides frontline support for people with learning disabilities and those who care about them. Since Kara came into post, both the demand for the charity’s services and the level of need have increased considerably.

“As a small team, we have built a strong reputation, working hard to really understand the type of services people want and need to make them more accessible to people in the local community.”

However, as with many small charities, budgetary constraints were limiting the opportunities for the charity to shift their focus away from reacting to immediate operational need to focusing more on growth and the requirements for future sustainability.

“We’re at that challenging stage where we were a small charity and now we're moving to be a big one. It's that transition that's a huge amount of work.”

The Action Planning small charity service was designed to support this growth transition and Bexley Mencap were offered a funded place on the small charity service pilot scheme.

Process

One: Small Charity Analysis Tool (scAn)

The first step of the pilot was for Kara to use our scAn diagnostic tool and feedback with her impressions. The tool asks a series of multiple-choice questions designed to explore competency, performance and prioritisation in three core areas of growth: Income Generation, Organisational Governance and Audience Engagement.

Kara completed the scAn tool in around 45 minutes and found the process helped to step back and look at the whole picture – something they don’t often get the time to do. Kara could see the benefit of doing this on a regular basis with the team to get their views.

“The process in itself is helpful, having that tool,” Kara said. “I think sometimes when you're just thinking about things, you might think that you're good at something, but when you have to answer lots of questions about it, it makes you think a bit differently. I think there were a couple of areas that I thought oh, actually I'd thought that we were all right there but looking at it, maybe we do need to do some work there.”

 

Two: Report and Recommendations

The scAn findings form the foundations of the report and recommendations, highlighting key findings relating to the three key challenges of income generation, governance and audience engagement.

The report provides an objective reflection of performance priorities and skills for your charity which can help to inform strategy, share a clear understanding of what’s important, provide reassurance regarding the direction for change and inform a case for support or funding application.

“The report was easy to understand and make sense of. We shared it with the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) to help us to decide the best area to focus on.”

The findings in the report identified three potential priorities for the half day of focused consultancy support – Impact, Governance and Financial sustainability.

“I liked having the flexibility around what we want to focus on,” said Kara, “and it's helpful that you have that understanding of small charities, that we probably have lots of development areas but only have time to tackle one at a time!”

Kara was driving the internal governance work and as fundraising was a bit of a skills gap, she chose to focus the four hours of consultancy on financial sustainability and methods to cover core costs more effectively. 

 

Three: Targeted Consultancy Support

The aim of the small charity pilot was to deliver a service that is tailored to meet the needs of a smaller organisation. To achieve this, we identified the right expertise and experience from our network of over 160 Associates – in this case Kathryn Kendall – to deliver a short session of high-value consultancy support in a style that is focused, relevant and applicable to the needs of the charity, enabling them to take immediate action.

“Kathryn was great, and it was really helpful to meet first alone,” said Kara. “I could speak openly about some of the challenges, she was aware of my thoughts and, working in fundraising, she could bring an independent perspective, reinforcing ideas with the team in our next session.”

At the time, Kara and the team were in the process of writing a bid, which Kathryn reviewed and identified an area of eligibility that the team had not picked up on, saving them from submitting a bid that automatically didn’t meet the eligibility criteria.

During the consultancy sessions Kara and the team were also able to ask questions identifying several options to confidently present to the Board, helping the charity to take the next steps to implement their Fundraising strategy.

Outcome
Kara proposed the hire of a new Development Manager to help with fundraising for one year, and her Board accepted.

To create momentum for growth and build on the consultancy support, the new Small Charity Service offers an affordable monthly subscription providing access to the extensive knowledge and experience of the Action Planning network, consisting of over 160 Associates with expertise in Strategy, Governance, Fundraising, Marketing, People and Performance.

Following the pilot process, we offered Bexley Mencap a continuation package of support.

Consultant’s Insight
It was a joy to meet Kara and her team, to learn about the impactful work Bexley Mencap does, and to bring both fundraising strategy and practice together. 

Our first session reviewed fundraising strategy and priorities, with a focus on generating core funding. The second session with the wider team reviewed pipeline planning.

We worked together as a group to analyse a couple of recent bids, including one in progress, which led to some great discussions and insights.

It’s wonderful to hear the news that the charity will soon have a new Development Manager coming on board to support their growth and to know that the work we did has had a positive impact.