Storytelling is the golden thread of your charity’s strategy

Charities are being squeezed from many, many angles. People have less money in their pockets, core funding has dried up, corporates are harder to get money from, and funders are closing their books under the weight of applications. Meanwhile, marketing costs are rising, and reaching audiences is becoming more complex. 

It’s no longer enough for a charity to have a broad ambition to ‘help those in need’. Effort, money, and goodwill only go so far without focus. The days of doing things a certain way because ‘that’s how we’ve always done it’ are over. There isn’t the money. There isn’t the time. And there aren’t enough people.

Charities need to be able to make brave, hard decisions, quickly.

To do that they need a clear, compelling story about what they do and how they plan to do it. They need a story the CEO, at the very least, would chain themselves to Number 10 for. And that story needs to be woven like a golden thread into the organisation, not be patched on as an afterthought.

We’ve helped craft many of these stories whilst working with charities over the last 12 years with varying degrees of success. The ones that fell flat were usually treated as bolt-ons to the wider organisational strategy – never fully embraced by leadership, and too often reduced to just another line in a proposal, rather than something of value.

This often goes hand in hand with a well-intentioned but dry five-year plan – organisational strategy, business goals, call it what you will. It will come accompanied by a handful of other departmental plans that don’t quite relate to one another. These are the kinds of documents the SLT spends days discussing, only for them to be used for a short burst and then quietly set aside. They outline what you want to achieve, but say very little about how you get there.

Equally, brand strategies can sit in their own fantasy land, telling wonderful stories of tone of voice with illustrations that bear little relation to what the charity is trying to achieve. You can see it in how the brand is applied, spread inconsistently rather than working towards a clear purpose.

So what’s the answer?

Predictably, it’s complicated. But a very good starting point is to build a story based on specific, tangible truths: 3 million children live in poverty, only 14% of important wildlife habitats in the UK were found to be in good ecological state, etc etc. There are plenty out there.

Objectives and goals can be built around that chosen fact, enhanced by simple, powerful storytelling. The rest follows naturally – your vision and values, how you look and sound, how your teams are structured, and how you’ll achieve those goals. Who you work with to get there. What to measure. Where to focus your energy, and what to let go.

That’s the basis of an integrated brand strategy. It helps you make tough decisions. It shows you where to direct limited resources and gives you the conviction to make change happen. It helps you find and nurture partnerships with like-minded organisations. It helps you fundraise and influence policy. It helps you build resilience and efficacy. It helps you stand out as an organisation that knows what it wants – and ultimately, to grow.

In summary

1. Don’t treat your brand as a bolt-on to your business strategies
2. Build your brand story from facts
3. Make sure this story is woven into every strategy in your organisation
4. With unified strategies bound by a compelling story, hard decisions become clearer and you will grow your organisation 

If you want advice on how to check if your brand is woven though your charity like a well-knitted sweater, get in touch.

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