Charities must innovate and take risks to create change

The core purpose of any charity is to make change happen. Charities are set up because an urgent and important need is not being adequately addressed. Whether they tackle health, social or environmental problems, or a combination of all three, the fundamental reason for a charity's existence is because no other individual, group or organisation is solving the problem fast enough.

Charities are not set up because everything is OK. At some point a group of passionate people, the charity founders, get together and agree that the current situation is not acceptable and that something must be done. Galvanized into action by injustice; the need for better services to help more people, and often so that no one else has to go through a situation that they themselves have experienced, they are ruthlessly demanding in making the required change happen. They pledge to do whatever it takes. They set up a charity to disrupt the way things are currently done.

So when I hear about risk aversion in charities; that they are reluctant to invest in fundraising for fear of failure and criticism about investment, or slow to test new ways to deliver services in case they do not work, it makes me sad. I feel sad because somehow, the cause and the passion of the founders to make change happen has become diluted or lost in the complexity and politics of day-to-day charity management.

What has happened to the relentless spirit of the founders to make change happen no matter what? When did being risk averse form part of their master plan? It should be the aim of every charity to solve the problems they were set up to tackle so that they are not needed any more. Only then will their work be done. To do that they must take risks. Have charities become too safe, or too comfortable? Has the drive and passion of the founders become diluted over time so that working for a charity is just another faceless day job?

Over the last year charities have been under scrutiny, they have come under criticism for paying their chief executives significant salaries, and in BBC's Panorama several well known charities were exposed for unethical investments that conflict with the ethos of the work that they do. Charities of course should be transparent in how they operate, be open and bold about their investment decisions and stand up to the scrutiny of their accounts and operating procedures.

It will always feel safer and easier to stick with what we know. The charity sector can feel small as fundraisers, move from charity to charity as their careers develop. They take the same ideas, approaches and ways of thinking with them from one charity to the next. This can result in a lack of fresh perspectives and a lack of insight and inspiration from outside the sector. Some charities actively recruit talent from different industries, but this appears to be the exception rather than the rule and in the meantime the workforce rotates in ever decreasing circles, sticking to what it knows and yet expecting the results to be different.

The end result is a saturated fundraising marketplace, with many charities seeking small variations on traditional fundraising methods to invigorate their fundraising; a different ask by a face to face fundraiser, a new script for the telephone fundraiser, or replicating successful campaigns like the Macmillan Coffee Morning or Movember – but who is searching for and prepared to invest in new fundraising approaches? It's not happening enough because new is perceived as too risky.

Yet charities do not really have a choice, if change is going to happen, they must take risks. But what is the real risk for a charity? There is a risk in developing a new fundraising or service delivery idea because something entirely new might not work. But is it not at least as risky, to continue to churn out the same ideas, and the same activities over and over again when the world is changing fast?

The hard truth is that whatever charities do, they might fail. If charities continue to do the same activities under an illusion of safety because these activities worked in the past they are fooling only themselves.

An entrepreneurial approach to risk could help charities. Entrepreneurs start small and involve their customers. They manage risk by testing quickly, learning and adapting. When they fail, they fail fast and fail small. Then they learn and quickly move on. They are not side tracked by bureaucracy, business cases, plans, risk analysis or decision by committee.

They test small, keep testing and adapting until the idea works and then they build from there. They don't wait to be perfect.

Charities need to be bolder and braver. Change doesn't happen because there was a robust risk register and sign off process. Change happens when a group of brave and passionate people identify a problem and commit that something must be done.

Lucy Gower is innovation director at Clayton Burnett.

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