Why are charities struggling to innovate?

With more and more charities looking externally to innovate, and with social impact organisations now playing such an active role in fundraising – what can charities do to bring a bit of the magic back in-house?

The blockers

There are numerous blockers at play here: from simply not knowing where to start, to fear of board and trustee reactions, and crippling accountability.

A 2022 survey by the Charities Aid Foundation found that 41% of charities reported needing help implementing digital strategy, and 30% reported needing more skills and expertise. The culture piece should not be underestimated – the values and behaviours of an organisation being set up to innovate are essential. Teams must be supported to take risks, do things differently and challenge the status quo.  

It’s not uncommon to hear “this is how we’ve always done it” as a justification of the current strategy and a reason for not innovating. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t cut it. If you’re constantly banging your head against the proverbial brick-wall internally, why not first look outside your organisation for some inspiration? What tools and techniques are building success elsewhere?

The power of agility

‘Agile’ is a word that terrifies many within charities – it’s seen as a dark art and something that startups do, not us. In reality, being ‘agile’ is simply a way of working that tries to get things done by going fast and failing quickly. The idea is to test in principal whether something works before fully committing time and resource to a wider project.

A huge proportion of technology businesses now use an agile philosophy across their development teams, working in weekly/fortnightly sprints. Many organisations are going further than development and taking an ‘agile’ approach with teams across the business.

If your charity isn’t quite ready to use the framework in its entirety, why not just take a few guiding principles? For example:

• Identify a problem or area for improvement within the organisation and then run a serious of small tests to try a variety of potential solutions. Inviting in stakeholders from across the business to gain different perspectives can be particularly useful.
• Make time to get together regularly to discuss progress, share learnings and problem solve as a group (make everyone feel part of the process).
• Most important of all, remember that it’s ok to fail – the beauty of doing this over a short window of time is that  you’ve not wasted masses of resources. If it’s not worked just stop, re-group and start again. Every failure is beneficial in that you’ve learnt something.

It’s ok to ask for help

If you’re struggling to find like-minded stakeholders for change in your organisation, why not approach some third parties who you can use to spark ideas? Use your charity status for benefit – many individuals will volunteer time to a charity if asked in the right way, so why not put out a few cheeky requests? There are a huge number of digital agencies, design/UX agencies, software businesses, developers and insight businesses that could add massive value.  

Take inspiration

Inspired by the love of punchier marketing campaigns so prevalent amongst Gen Z, some charities are doing really impressive things.

Just last year, the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) launched its largest-ever advertising campaign, “See the person, not the sight loss,” to raise awareness of sight loss and the support that people with visual impairments might need. This campaign aimed to change public perceptions and encourage inclusivity. It featured real stories from individuals with sight loss, highlighting their experiences and challenges. The campaign was widely shared across social media platforms, sparking conversations and increasing public understanding of visual impairments.

The takeaways?

Charities can take forward many learnings from these young startups:

• Think first about the problems you need to solve, gain insight, talk to people and map a true journey to the solution.
• Have no fear, Gen Z doesn’t so why should you? Be brave, don’t be afraid to try – remember failure is a good thing it equals learnings!
• Find your eco-system of like minded people in your organisation to collaborate with.

Lastly, if you want someone to bounce ideas off, gather additional insight from or just have a coffee with, remember our door is always open.