This time of year is an unwanted wake-up call for millions of people. You remember the feeling. Six weeks ago, the long summer holiday felt like it could almost last forever. Suddenly, the lazy summer days were all but over and you faced the looming prospect of going back to school.
 
Digging out your uniform to check whether it still fits. The trauma of setting the early morning alarm clock again. Fighting with other family members for ten precious minutes in the bathroom.
 
Across the UK, kids and parents are gearing up for this annual struggle. We’ve thought of a few things that fundraisers could learn from them:
 
1. Summer is over – so make the most of it
 
The end of the summer holiday always feels deflating. Memories of ice creams in the park, summer camps and days at the beach are suddenly cruel as you face the prospect of lessons, airless classrooms and homework.

But all good things have to come to an end. And there are things to look forward to. Seeing your friends and again and sharing your holiday stories. Playing for the football team again. Not having to keep finding new things to do to stave off the boredom (admit it).
 
Many charities enjoy a golden period, with a supportive multi-year funder bringing rare financial security or a big annual event that keeps delivering. Planning ahead for the harsh wake-up call is crucial. Come to terms with the fact that the money will dry up – maybe sooner than expected – and embrace the opportunities that come with this. Make sure you’re developing other sources of income and building relationships with new funders before it’s too late.
 
2. Stock up your pencil case
 
Coloured pens. Calculator. Compass. There’s something exciting about rocking up on the first day of term with a shiny new set of everything, even if you know it won’t last a week.
 
For fundraisers, there are various vital things that you need in your metaphorical pencil case. A case for support. Regular content for the website, newsletter and social media. A ‘shopping list’ articulating what different donation amounts will buy. You could be a great fundraiser, full of creative ideas and great at talking to donors, but you won’t get far without these things.

​As you come back from your summer break, spare a moment to take a step back and consider whether you’ve got everything you need to do your job properly. If you’re missing a key piece of the jigsaw, have an honest conversation internally about why it’s so important for fundraising, and how it’s holding you back.

3. It’s time for a new pair of trousers
 
Nothing marked the end of the summer quite like trudging to the school uniform shop. Nobody really likes school uniform, but we have to keep buying it because kids don’t stop growing.
 
Charities sometimes outgrow their clothes too. Many smaller charities embark on a new fundraising strategy where one person is responsible for trying a few activities. Some don’t work, but a few things start showing promise at the same time. Suddenly it takes much longer to support twice as many volunteers, or process three times as many event enquiries. What used to take 20% of your week now has you staying late two nights a week. The processes initially set up are now inadequate. Cue fundraiser burnout.
 
This can sneak up on you, particularly if your staff don’t feel confident about raising problems or if you’re not monitoring their work. It’s important to embrace the challenges of growth and realise when it’s time for new pair of trousers, before you’re bursting at the seams.
 
4. Get organised before the chaos begins
 
If your family home was anything like mine, the end of summer marks the onset of bedlam. Angry banging on the bathroom door. Squabbling at the breakfast table. A lost book bag and a misplaced shoe. Car horns and traffic jams. It’s like everybody has forgotten everything they ever knew about working together in six short weeks.
 
Most people come back to work after a holiday with good intentions. They’ve had a chance to gain some perspective and make a list of everything they want to achieve, but this can quickly fall away when the emails and calls start coming in.
 
It takes having a routine and being organised to prepare for chaos. For sowing name labels into shirts, read putting all your funder re-application dates clearly into your calendar. For writing your lesson timetable, read planning your calendar of supporter emails and social media updates. Get organised ahead of time, because it won’t take long until the chaos arrives!
 
5. Success depends on having the right environment
 
My parents always struck a good balance with me. They encouraged me to get my homework done in good time, but they weren’t overbearing and they let me make my own mistakes. They praised me when I got good marks, but punished me if I came home with a detention slip. This helped create the right environment for me to do well at school but grow up at the same time.
 
Plenty of great fundraisers fail because the right support isn’t in place. It’s essential for charities to create the right culture for fundraising:

• Encourage all staff and trustees to recognise the importance of fundraising and support where they can.
• Supervise and invest in fundraising so that it’s done properly and in line with regulations.
• Celebrate your donors as central to your work. Never pressurise or harass them to give money.
• Provide staff with adequate training, support, information and targets.
• Encourage staff to periodically step back and look at the bigger picture – and give them time to do it.
• Accept that fundraising and innovation carry an element of risk and not everything will succeed.

And finally…if your summer isn’t over yet, don’t forget to make the most of it!
 
Working in the charity sector can be extremely demanding, with little time to stop and think. Holidays are a rare and vital opportunity to recharge your batteries and gain some much-needed perspective. If you’re lucky enough to have a holiday any time soon, please make the most of it! Check out our top tips on taking a step back.

​​Just when many charities were wondering how things could get any worse, along came the decision to leave the EU.
 
There were already plenty of worries to keep people up at night. Sustained media scrutiny of fundraising practice and charity governance. A disillusioned public with decreasing trust in the sector. The need to get to grips with new fundraising responsibilities for trustees and a new Fundraising Regulator. Further clouds on the horizon in the form of the much-discussed Fundraising Preference Service and incoming EU Data Protection law.
 
Brexit has now added a load more challenges into the mix. It's confirmed a growing belief that the values of many charities are out of step with a large part of the general public, and emphasised the need to win back public trust. Another financial crisis would mean that your beneficiaries need you more than ever but funding would be harder still to find. The huge uncertainty may make many trusts, corporates and high net worth individuals more reluctant to hand over money in the short term at least.

Are you feeling depressed yet? Believe it or not, the aim of this blog is to make you feel more confident and positive about these challenges so bear with us for a bit longer!
 
The sheer volume of bad news for charities recently can make it tricky to absorb everything, understand how it impacts your organisation and decide what to do next. Every day brings new articles and concerns. But if you can cut through the noise and work out how to identify what really matters to you and what you can do about it, you can feel a lot more confident about the future.
 
Last month we ran a workshop at JustGiving about how to future-proof your fundraising efforts in the current climate. We worked with a range of small charities to explore the biggest current challenges are and how to move forward. A big part of this focused on what tools you can use to understand the impact of external factors on your charity and plan for the future.

Here are four great tools for future-proofing your fundraising in the current climate:
 
1. Horizon scanning
 
There's a big difference between being broadly aware of the challenges facing the charity sector and being able to decide and prioritise what's most relevant to your charity.
 
Doing a horizon scanning exercise is a great first step. Start by brainstorming a list of all the different possible issues and trends that you're aware of. Be as specific as possible – for instance don't write 'Brexit' but focus on individual factors like 'corporates less likely to make donations in the short term due to uncertainty'.
 
Next, estimate the likelihood of these things actually happening and the size of the impact they would have on your charity. Plot them on a grid as follows:

This is a great warm-up exercise to get your staff and trustees thinking more clearly about things and prioritising what requires further attention, because trying to react to everything as a small team is impossible. In the graphic above, the issues in the top right quadrant are likely to be the things to discuss further, as they're most likely to happen and will have the biggest impact on your charity.
 
2. Play to your strengths and win back trust
 
With public opinion in charities at an all-time low, there's a clear need for charities to win back trust and engage with their supporters as positively as possible. Many small charities have a natural advantage here, so it's important to think about how you can make the most of this.
 
While larger charities are currently re-evaluating how they fundraise, most smaller charities that we know are in a better position because they:

• Have never sold or bought supporter data to/from third parties
• Don't work with external fundraising agencies
• Naturally have a personalised approach to communicating with their supporters, driven by a small team of passionate fundraisers.

This distinction isn't very well understood by the general public, so there's a risk that smaller charities get associated with the bad news stories affecting some bigger charities. So what can you do to play to your strengths and communicate them more confidently to your supporters?
 
Developing a public supporter promise is a great way to set out your fundraising values and demonstrate how you're different from the 'bad' charities that your supporters may have read about. This is a chance to explain how you treat donors, how you use their data and how you ensure that any other organisations that you work with uphold your high standards. Here’s a great supporter promise developed by Mind.
 
By all means look at supporter promises developed by other charities for inspiration but it's important to avoid just copying them. You need to decide what values are important to you and how you're going to work behind the scenes to honour your promise. This may require you to review your training, induction and administrative processes.
 
When your promise is finished, publish it prominently on your website and make all your supporters aware of it by shouting about it in your newsletter, emails and on social media.
 
3. Review your organisational culture and governance
 
The Board of Trustees plays such an important role in defining a charity’s approach to fundraising, especially in smaller charities. The Board must collectively understand fundraising, engage with it and care about how it's done. Together with your senior management team, trustees should now:

• Review the new guidance on fundraising responsibilities for trustees and make sure that you understand and can comply with them. This may include evaluating what skills or experience are missing and considering whether to recruit new trustees to cover the gaps.
• Ensure that the Board makes time to periodically take a step back and review your fundraising efforts. When the Board only has time to deal with urgent governance duties and be reactive, fundraising often suffers.
• Develop a whole-organisational approach towards fundraising where every staff member and trustee supports fundraising where they can, even just by sharing key campaigns and making use of their contacts. So many smaller charities are limited by the size of their supporter base and this can put real pressure on fundraisers. Sharing responsibility can help you to reduce your reliance on 'the same old donors' and grow a healthier fundraising portfolio.
• Develop a culture of compliance and transparency in fundraising. Make sure that everyone respects the importance of good fundraising and understands legal requirements and sector best practice. Create an environment where staff feel comfortable raising concerns and queries if needed.

4. Review your fundraising strategy
 
We don't know exactly what the future of fundraising will look like, but we do know that now is as good a time as any to do a proper review of your fundraising strategy and evaluate whether you're setting yourself up to succeed in a changing climate.
 
An initial horizon scanning exercise will have helped you to explore the possible impact of various issues on your fundraising activity. A strategy review will now enable you to identify where you are over-reliant on certain fundraising activities, such as individual giving, and what you can do to diversify your fundraising and reduce your vulnerability over time.
 
Diversifying your fundraising and investing in new areas isn't easy because fundraising growth takes time. However, a strong fundraising strategy will allow you to decide where to invest resources, forecast how long it will take to achieve results and justify the business case for investing now.
 
If you need some help with your fundraising strategy, join our mailing list to access our strategy helpsheets and look out for our upcoming workshops and webinars.
 
We explore all these tools for change and many more in our “Fundraising in a changing climate” workshops. We're planning another one this autumn, so please get in touch with us if you’d like to find out more or provisionally reserve a place.

It’s been just over two years since I waved goodbye to full-time employment and turned Lime Green Consulting from a twinkle in my mind into a bona fide consultancy for small charities.
 
Since then, I've met some incredible people, worked on amazing projects and made a few mistakes along the way. Setting up and growing a small business has many things in common with running a small charity, and many of the lessons I've learned will resonate with charity directors, staff and trustees. Here are my top five tips:
 
1. Be clear on your core purpose
 
If you want to get noticed, it’s so important to distil everything that you do into a simple, clear message.
 
When I started out as a consultant, it took some time to understand how to articulate exactly why charities should work with me. I had pretty broad fundraising experience and wasn't sure what was most relevant. I had a naive belief that I could sit down with a charity, discuss their challenges and find a way to make myself useful.
 
In reality, if you’re not clear how you can help someone, most people will be way too busy to take the time to work it out for you. It was only when I developed a really clear proposition and a small range of headline services that I was really in business.
 
Charities must distil their often complex projects and sometimes technical work into a crystal clear message. Get the what and why right and people will ask about the how and with whom later. Don’t throw everything at people immediately – have the confidence that if you give people enough information to remember you and start a conversation then they’ll want to come back and find out more over time.
 
2. Collaborate and grow your universe
 
When I first started out, I was given some wise advice I've never forgotten: “The most important thing is to meet people and make yourself useful. Don’t worry immediately about making money, it will follow.”
 
This is a great motto if you want to meet amazing people, find brilliant opportunities and grow your influence. I always embrace opportunities to meet and help like-minded people, whether at a networking event or over a coffee, without worrying about whether there’s a quick win.

Some people think "I don’t want to spend time chatting to someone if there’s probably nothing in it for me – it’s a waste of time." Instead I always ask myself: “What if I turn down the chance to meet someone and it could've been the next big opportunity or introduction?”

These days we’re always under time pressure so it’s tempting to evaluate everything in terms of the immediate return. However, it's so valuable to take the time to discuss challenges and share problems with people in a similar position at another organisation - this can give you a new perspective and help you to solve your own internal challenges.

I believe that charities can gain a lot from collaborating with each other, sharing ideas and teaming up for joint projects - there can be too much of a tendency within the sector to view other organisations only as competitors.
 
3. Develop your expert voice
 
If you run a small charity, there's usually so much to do and so little time. We’re naturally inclined to focus mostly on urgent short-term goals, yet we also expect to be capable of thinking big and staying relevant. In reality, we can only do this if we keep one eye on what’s happening outside our organisation.
 
I try to dedicate time every week to keeping abreast of wider issues in the charity sector – reading articles, sharing ideas on forums and social media, and writing blogs. It’s sometimes difficult to fit this in alongside other work. However it means that more people notice me and also helps me to develop my voice and opinions on key issues that people expect me to know about.

Always be on the look-out for key developments and conversations that you can contribute to. This is challenging because you can’t control when things pop up, for instance as the result of a news story, so you often have to make time at short notice. However, get this right and over time people will come to see you as an expert and this brings lots of opportunities.

Being the "go to" authority on a particular topic will make your charity more visible - this can open up fundraising opportunities, attract the people that need your charity's help and enable you to better represent the needs of those beneficiaries as a credible expert voice.

4. Make your content work harder
 
So you’re developing your expert voice and publishing great content, but who’s listening?
 
I read a great tip from Alex Swallow who said that you should spend 20% of your time generating content and 80% sharing it.

With limited time, it’s so tempting to publish something, tick it off the list and move on. However, publishing content is the tip of the iceberg. If blogs are our shop window, then promoting them is the billboard or TV advert that gets people to visit your shop in the first place.
 
When I publish something, I make a big effort to schedule posts about it on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and send personalised emails to people who would find it particularly interesting. Sharing all your content via your mailing list is another great way to keep reminding people that you exist and builds familiarity, credibility and trust over time. Check out our email marketing tips here.
 
I know many charities who could be better at promoting their content and successes to the right people. The next time that you win an award, produce a great impact report or write an insightful article, be sure to share it via all your channels, because it’s no use to you in a dusty drawer.
 
5. Listen to people and don’t be afraid to ask for help
 
It's easy to think that you know what people want, but harder to ask and be led by others. We’re all guilty of something called confirmation bias, where we sub-consciously listen out for information that proves our existing beliefs and ignore anything that contradicts them.
 
So often I hear charities pondering how often to send people a newsletter or fretting about which new event their supporters would like best. Often I say ‘Have you tried asking them?’
 
We often feel the need to present a polished, professional side to people, but involving our supporters in our problems can be a great way to engage people and win trust. Small charities have a natural advantage here as people won’t always expect you to get everything right and will value your ability to be friendly and human. Social media has also made this much easier.
 
If you can ask people for help and make them part of the solution, you create ambassadors who have a natural interest in seeing you succeed, even if this is partly so they feel part of that success themselves!

This blog is based on a version that was first published on The Influence Expert by Alex Swallow in April 2016. If you've enjoyed reading it, please sign up to our mailing list for more blogs and advice.