What dose 2012 hold for the chairty sector?

I was signposted to this excellent article by a twitter from Jenny Warner of Charisma Charity Recruitment.

Jane Arnott - acting head of advisory and consulting, Charities Aid Foundation
Commercial: The combination of public sector funding cuts and social investment opportunities will require charities to think in a more commercial way in terms of how they can generate revenue beyond their traditional income streams. Good business skills will be important in 2012 - having an understanding of your market, being able to generate income, developing a strong business discipline so that you're making decisions based on evidence and a clear plan for the future will all be essential. For example, charities will need to think about how can they sell their services or expertise to generate revenue, whether they can make money from their premises or intellectual capital etc.
It requires a more commercial mindset and strong management information to help you understand your costs and where you can maximise value. Social investment: Based on the trends we've seen evolving in the past year, 2012 will see lots of charities looking to diversify their income streams. It's going to be fascinating to see how the social investment space develops - there's a lot of interest in it, but our experience with CAF Venturesome and other projects is that many organisations aren't 'investment ready'. There needs to be a lot more support to get charities geared up to manage debt financing and the income generation required to repay loans. However, our experience also shows that social investment can be really effective in supporting organisations to make a step change.

Diana Mackie - PR manager, Institute of Fundraising (IoF)
Bureaucracy: As a sector, charities have been trying to battle with the red tape that often restricts efficiency and slows processes. 2012 will see a review of the Charities Act 2006. As part of the review the IoF would like to see it made as easy as possible for charities to raise money without compromising trust. It would also be great to see some of the current barriers to successful fundraising, such as unduly complicated solicitation statements, removed.

The basics: New technology will enable a range of fundraising trends in 2012; online giving is rightly a focus but it's important not to lose sight of the basics involved in raising money. Key areas include: consistent communication of your charity's brand, excellent donor care processes and an investment in individual fundraisers' training and development to ensure practitioners are up to speed with the rapidly changing public sector landscape. Ultimately, online is just one channel a charity can use to communicate and raise money. Direct marketing, for example, still remains a useful tool for many charities, as does the traditional donor newsletter (either in hard copy or distributed electronically).

Rosie Chapman - co-founder, Belinda Pratten and Rosie Chapman Associates
Skills mix: The CFDG/PKF risk survey highlighted the following problems in 2011: most respondents (73%) reported greater competition in service provision; 54% said the need for their services has increased; 50% that their costs have increased as a direct result of changes in public policy. Against this backdrop, 41% of charities have not been able to maintain the required levels of investment this year to sustain them in the future and 49% have utilised their reserves to some extent. There are mixed perceptions of how well-equipped trustee boards are to manage new risks - perhaps a good starting point to help this would be for charity boards to discuss their skills mix and identify any gaps. Impact: Impact measurement and reporting will be big themes in 2012. This is partly funder driven, for example, Catalyst Gateway is moving from an input (budget driven) to an outcome funded (paid on the agreement of achieving clear outcomes) model. The recent risk survey (mentioned above) also showed that 53% of charities have experienced increased demand from stakeholders to demonstrate their performance.

Collaboration: Austerity Britain means there will be a continuing trend towards more collaborative working. Some leading national charities, for example, that have federated structures are looking to see whether they should expand their criteria to enable new and different types of organisations to join.

Roberto Kusabbi - community and social media manager, British Heart Foundation
Evolution: The evolution of Facebook and Twitter, and the impact that has on how we engage with users, will become a lot more sophisticated. We're past the stage of knowing it's important - understanding the data and how these spaces plug into existing content/sites will become more prevalent. 2012 should see some much better examples of practice and monetisation will be explored much more. The JustGiving Facebook application, for example, already allows users to donate without leaving Facebook.

Data: Data is certainly one of my trends to watch for 2012. Being able to interrogate the data we have and make decisions that help our organisations will become even more important. In a time when there is more data available than ever before, it's important not to just collect it, but to do something with it and understand it. We did a very small but very useful exercise at the BHF using Facebook data to help us drive our strategy on the platform. This is just one example of using data we already have to help make us more efficient and targetted.

Mobile. Mobile. Mobile: In terms of fundraising, the interesting spaces to watch are mobile and mobile giving. This should not just be an application for the sake of an application, but a better understanding of the platform and what it can do for donations and awareness is required. Near field technology, which allows you to pay for goods on your mobile, will start to play a much bigger part in our lives in 2012. What this means for charities is interesting; will more people donate or pay for events via their mobiles? Could it branch out into a new area? This will obviously be a space for the early adopters, but one to watch in the future for sure.

Sylwia Presley - social media consultant, Voice
Ambassadors: In 2012 we will see more ambassador and blogger engagement programmes but also more involvement from local communities. Charities will discover the real power of online relationships to identify, work with and embrace the potential of their supporters.

Digital: In 2012 there might be more mature usage of digital tools, with case studies and methodology shared publicly and with a more balance approached. Digital technologies and social media tools will be used all across charities - not only for fundraising and marketing. It is really difficult for people working with digital to represent an organisation where social is not fully integrated all across various silos. More digital engagement can save costs on travel and meetings, moving towards online collaboration and communicating internally in a more consistent way. There is a lot of scope for people who are willing to invest time and skills in those areas. As we enter online conversations, we need to ensure that we operate faster, are able to respond to real-time events and that we have the policies and processes to do so.

Jenny Lowthrop - blogger,
Volunteer Addict Mistakes: With regards to impact measurement and reporting, this talks about NGOs admitting failure. This is perhaps something charities aren't so good at, but it is important. We shouldn't be afraid to admit our mistakes and then take measures to change for the better, rather than carrying on down the wrong track because that is what our aims, visions and funding guidelines tell us to do.

Volunteers: There are more people available to volunteer, due to a lack of jobs, but less money and people employed to manage them. This article suggests some useful tips on trying to get over the assumed barriers - charities need to try and put more faith in the volunteers, positive encouragement and more ownership are required to make volunteers to feel a part of the charity.

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