Author: Andy

In recent conversations with our mission-driven clients and partners, a recurring theme has emerged: a feeling of disengagement and disconnection from the forces and conversations shaping the future. 

This is understandable. Organisations are under pressure, balancing tight resources with increasing need. People are less focussed on shaping the future, and more focussed on surviving the present.

But if you don’t create the future, who will?  

If the general sense within your organisation is that everything is getting worse and nothing can be done about it, then you might have a Futures Gap.

Continue reading “Do you have a “Futures Gap”?”

As the team looked back on the last year, we reflected on two themes which consistently emerged in our most interesting conversations. These themes surfaced in our work on climate, health, scientific research, humanitarianism, and other areas.

If these themes are related, it is because they ask questions beyond the scope of what is normally expected from “strategy”, even for organisations focused on social impact. Most strategy is about organisations and most strategy is rational (or at least pretends to be).

The strategic questions that kept coming up in 2023 were about networks and emotions. They invited us to think about pace, agency and power. These questions shift the focus of strategy from a single, rational organisation. They ask us to look outwards to the network, and inwards towards the personal.

Continue reading “Two difficult strategy questions for 2024”

We are delighted to announce that we are now officially certified as a B Corp.

Firetail was set up to help clients working on the world’s most challenging problems. Our purpose is to help impact-driven organisations realise their ambitions for society.

Certification is an important achievement for us as a business, as a team, and for our clients and partners. As we celebrate joining this movement, we wanted to explain why being B Corp Certified is important to us and how we got here.

Continue reading “Firetail is now a B Corp”

• A “theory of the state” can be thought of as a clear idea of the society you want, and the role of government in making it happen.
• Charities should have a clear “theory of the state” that describes how their relationship with the state supports their wider theory of change.
• Thinking about the role you play as a charity relative to the state is likely to be critical in the face of cuts to public services and the wider crises facing the world.

Continue reading “What is your “theory of the state”?”

A Theory of Change can be a powerful tool. It can tell the story of how the world can be a better place, what it will take to get there, and how you are going to help make it happen.  

Yet in practice they are often “nice-to-have”. An abstract academic exercise that has little impact on the day to day challenges of running a social progress organisation.

Over the years we have developed a tried and tested approach to take teams through a process to deliver a Theory of Change that is practical and useful.

This article shares four common mistakes, and four lessons learned about doing it well and making it stick.

Continue reading “Common mistakes and practical lessons for developing a Theory of Change”

The Charity Commission is the regulator for charities in England and Wales. It is funded by the Treasury but independent of government.

Its purpose is:

”To ensure charity can thrive and inspire trust so that people can improve lives and strengthen society.”

It is both the registrar of charities and regulator of charities. Which means it keeps a list of all the charities and investigates the bad ones. It deals with complaints, helps trustees be good trustees and occasionally shares its opinion about “charity”.

It does all this — keeps a list of around 170,000 charities and regulates £81.2bn of charity income — on a budget of £29.3m.

So for every £1,000 of charity income in England and Wales, 36p is spent on regulation by the Charity Commission.

As the tenure of the current Chair comes to an end, others have written thoughtful articles about the skills the incoming Chair should have. However, the problem goes deeper than the person at the top and has for some time.

It may be time to abolish the Charity Commision.

Continue reading “Is it time to abolish the Charity Commission?”

We recently wrote about the death of fundraising and the threat to traditional ideas of charity as people embed ideas of impact and purpose into every aspect of their lives.

As with other long-term trends, this accelerated during the pandemic. Everything has become fluid. Governments have made unprecedented interventions and businesses are getting serious about their social purpose. Charities in the UK have asked for (and mostly not got) additional support. 

This raises some big questions. What is the proper role and relationship between the state and charities? Between business and charity? What can these sectors learn from each other? What’s the role for the voluntary sector if more and more “non-charities” are moving into this space? What’s the difference between a charity that earns some of its income and a business with a social purpose? Does it even matter?

Importantly – and practically – should charities stay in their lane when no-one else is?

Continue reading “Beyond fundraising: New business models for social progress”

(originally published at www.firetail.co.uk)

• Scenario planning is a strategic tool designed to help organisations prepare for a range of possible futures. It is not about predicting the future. Fundamentally, it is about accommodating uncertainty.
• The obvious temptation is to wait for the ‘next normal’ to emerge before thinking about the future. But what if you’re waiting for the dust to settle – and it never does?
• Thinking about the future should reveal the work you need to do in the present.

Continue reading “Scenario planning for a post-crisis world”

Even before the pandemic, traditional charity fundraising was stagnating.

The pandemic has turned a conversation about the challenges of long-term decline into one about short-term collapse. 

Thinking about “fundraising” in a silo misses an important bigger picture.

When it comes to fundraising income, charities do not compete with other charities. They compete with everything else a person might be trying to do to lead a meaningful life.

There is a big prize here. Charities need to think urgently about this wider framing, especially in the face of the current crisis

Continue reading “The death of fundraising”

[This is based on a quick twitter thread we published]

“We’re out of the whack-a-mole phase” according to one CEO I spoke to this week.

As organisations move beyond the day-to-day crisis mode of the last few weeks, they are starting to turn to longer term questions.

The tools you use to make decisions in the first phase of a crisis are different to the ones you need to plan for the future. Crisis planning tends to be inward-looking. Longer-term thinking must be outward-looking.

This needs a different set of questions and a different set of tools.

Continue reading “Choices in a crisis v choices for renewal”