There were 170,383 charities in the UK in 2022. All of them are reliant on supporters, not just to operate, but to actually achieve their goals.
If you’re one of them, this is probably a really daunting number. How do you stand out with competition like that?
The thing is, it’s not that difficult.
Let’s take that big number – 170k. How many of those charities are in the humanitarian sector? How many in health, poverty, sport or family sectors? How many are in your sector?
Your real competition is a much smaller number. You don’t need to be the best, or the biggest. You just need to be good at what you do. When you combine these things:
1) Getting really clear on the space you’re taking up (and who isn’t in that space)
2) How you communicate to your specific audience
You’ll find meeting your goals much more achievable, realistic and rewarding.
But here’s the thing that stops people succeeding.
Charities (and most businesses) will often revisit their goals, strategy and team responsibilities to move forwards. But they don’t often revisit their audience.
Is this something you should do? In short, yes. You might have launched a charity, or joined the team of an existing one with a clear audience, and it’s probably assumed that the audience doesn’t change that much, if at all. It’s not even a conscious assumption most of the time, we just carry on with goals and strategy and team focuses instead.
But audiences do change. Audiences are just people, and people change constantly.
Let’s say your audience is men in their 40s. They generally might be parents of young children, work full time and have a family-led lifestyle.
Now, what if that audience was identified ten years ago? That puts them in their 50s, with older children, and in a different stage of life altogether. All of a sudden, your messaging surrounding young families don’t feel as relevant. You’re no longer speaking to your audience, so they lose interest, and you lose their support.
It’s that simple. Know your audience and know your relevance.
My new workshops are audience-focused and ask all the questions you need to get you thinking about what’s really going to drive your charity forward.
Here’s how they work:
- Half day in person or over Zoom
- Suited to small teams 2-5 attendees
- Deep dive into your current strategy, recent campaigns and KPIs
- Close look at team collaboration and how to utilise it best
- We’ll start to form the content strategy you can rely on for the next 6 months
- Analysis of your audience and how to understand their needs
Workshops are £500 and available until autumn 2024.
Would you like to start standing out today?
If this post has got you thinking, you can contact me for a casual chat here.