External awareness is one of six key characteristics, that through our work and research with charities, we have identified as pivotal to an organisation’s potential to be resilient.
Charities operate in complex environments and being able to anticipate and respond to external factors ensures the organisation is relevant, responsive and resilient. Maintaining external awareness is necessary to shape change and respond effectively to economic, environmental, political, technological and social shifts. Being aware of external shifts means charities can better serve their communities and build a sustainable foundation for the future.
Why external awareness is crucial to your charity’s resilience
It enables you to adapt your service
Research on charity service delivery through the COVID-19 pandemic found that adaptive organisations demonstrated good external awareness and collaboration; being knowledgeable of the wider needs of communities alongside developing strong partnerships allowed charities to swiftly adapt their service to best meet the needs of their communities.
It strengthens your credibility and long-term sustainability
Charities are often recognised as experts in their field with live knowledge of trends, challenges and opportunities being central to the organisation’s credibility. Demonstrating strategic foresight and an ability to recognise and respond to change is appealing to funders who are looking for well-informed, impact-driven projects. Being proactive, rather than reactive, to change is important for long-term sustainability and impact.
It helps influence outcomes
Most charity leaders (79%) that responded to CAF’s Charity Resilience Index survey agree that charities should have a strong political voice on issues that concern them. We know from other research and stakeholder surveys that leaders from other sectors want charity leaders to speak up and bring their unique perspective to important issues. Having a stronger voice in policy decisions and shaping the direction of travel begins by being aware of live debates and how your organisation can have an impact.
Four key steps to increasing your charity’s ability to adapt
1. Simplify the complexity
We can be overwhelmed by information, as lots of events and phenomena are interconnected and occur simultaneously. Knowing how aware to be and what to respond to can be difficult and time consuming. A structured process such as trend mapping, landscape analysis, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis or a PESTLE (political, economic, social, technical, legal, environmental) analysis can help you to prioritise external factors by considering the impact on your service and community and the likelihood of the shift or event happening.
2. Optimise how you stay aware
Charity resources are stretched and staying externally aware can drop in the order of priorities if demand is increasing and income is falling. It may feel like the organisation lacks the capacity to respond to external changes, even if they are identified. In this case, light-touch activities (attending a webinar by a relevant infrastructure body or membership association or reading through previous newsletter editions) can be useful ways of staying on top of developments while the organisation improves its sustainability and capacity to monitor and respond to external changes. For example, Civil Society Media and Third Sector Magazine report on important sector-wide issues and developments.
3. Empower your team
It could be useful to consider where adaptive capacity may come from. Adaptive capacity is the ability to appropriately adjust an organisation’s operations and approach in response to new challenges or opportunities. Consider which staff or volunteer roles would be able to respond to new challenges or opportunities and how you would support them to do this effectively. By fostering a culture that values innovation, creativity, collaboration and ensuring that staff wellbeing is prioritised, staff and volunteers will be better placed to respond to rapid shifts in their operating environment.
4. Leverage trustee expertise
Internal operations can take priority, especially if an organisation is experiencing rapid growth, increased demand or has had a change of staff. When internal operations are a priority, having a diverse and active board of trustees can help serve to reorientate discussion towards external factors that they identify as being significant for the organisation. Taking time during board meetings to consider external factors and trends may support the senior leadership team with awareness of important developments.
Building your charity’s resilience
This is one of a series of six articles that give charity leaders ideas on how to build the resilience of their organisations. View the full series on our resources for charities page.