Developing organisational resilience
Organisational resilience is something that charities and funders alike want to see. During Covid and in the aftermath, many funders – from ACE to CAF – have offered resilience funding, providing much needed core support. But what does resilience actually look like and how do organisations get there?
Here are 5 areas you can focus on to strengthen organisational resilience:
1. A clear mission, delivered through robust strategic planning
Is your vision and mission still relevant and ambitious or does it need updating or refining? Everyone in your organisation needs to understand it and understand how their role/team contributes to it. Your strategic planning process (annual and multi-year) should involve the whole organisation, understand the wider environment, and identify tangible and measurable activities. If done well, planning helps build internal engagement as well as looking ahead to identify problems and opportunities.
2. Effective leadership
Your board of Trustees is crucial to your resilience. Perhaps your organisation could undertake a governance review or Board skills audit to identify areas for development? Or you may need to prioritise trustee recruitment and training. Investing in developing effective leadership amongst staff will also build resilience.
A crucial area is ensuring your organisation has an effective approach to managing risk, for example through a risk register, which is regularly reviewed, updated, and acted upon.
3. Financial sustainability
Resilience isn’t limited to fundraising, but genuine resilience isn’t possible without building and prioritising firm fundraising foundations.
Steps you can take to improve sustainability include developing your fundraising strategy, ensuring you have a mix on income streams, identifying income generation activities (whether through venue hire or social enterprise).
4. The right operations and systems
From IT systems and digital capability to HR processes and impact management, organisations can also build resilience by establishing or improving their operations. Such operational areas may be overlooked in stretched, under resourced organisations, but without addressing them, organisations can be limited or create future problems.
5. People and culture
Organisations need to attract, retain and develop their staff
and k to develop your diversity, equity and inclusion practices, collaboration and partnership working, co-production, staff training and development, staff wellbeing and resilience, recruitment and retention,
