The 5 worst decisions we've made since starting a charity...

I recently posted what I thought were the 5 best decisions we made during the first 10 years of growing Scotty's Little Soldiers. It's probably even more valuable to revisit the worst decisions we've made and what we learnt from that experience. So here goes, these are the 5 worst decisions I think we've made since starting the charity.

1. Imposter syndrome.  We thought not having a previous background in charity work was a disadvantage.  Over time we've realised that in many ways it's been an advantage.  We've been able to look at every step of the process and ask why it's usually done like that.  It's actually helped us to differentiate ourselves, and in all honesty there's been plenty we've seen which we just don't agree with.  We're trying to build the charity we would want to support as a member of the public.  At one point we did recruit a few people with previous fundraising experience and that turned out to be a mistake.   They brought with them old ideas and struggled with our entrepreneurial style.  It just wasn't a good fit and they've moved on. I'm sure they having much more success at more traditional charities.  We've had better success with team members bringing skills and experience from outside the non-profit world. Also, an extra note on this, just because you don't fit someone else's mould of what a charity, or a person working within a charity should look like, or actually in whatever pursuit you are trying to accomplish, doesn't mean they're right. 
2. You can't justify everything as 'growing awareness'.  Any charity needs to raise awareness of their mission, it's a vital part of engaging with their audiences both to reach beneficiaries and funders.  We found that on occasions we've justified attending certain events as awareness building and in hindsight they didn't deliver enough value versus the effort we put into them.  Having a show garden at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show was probably an example of that.  It was a great opportunity, we engaged with the young people we support at the event, the Duchess of Cornwall visited our garden, and we had some prime time TV coverage.   But it cost us too much money.  We didn't have the relationships with the right corporate sponsors at the time, and when we committed to the event we thought we'd be able to recoup the costs, but ultimately we couldn't.  We did get plenty of donations throughout the event and lots of the work and materials that went into the garden were provided for free but it still made a loss and even with the decent awareness it didn't justify the expense.  Lesson learnt.

1. Being too keen to promote businesses who pledge their support.  We massively value the support we get from business partners and we're more than happy to shout about it. We definitely learnt though that (despite usually being well intended) not every commercial fundraising proposal plays out as hoped. In fact many don't develop at all, and we found ourselves promoting a number of businesses on our Facebook page or website for nothing in return.  Promoting other businesses on Facebook in particular doesn't really work for us, or the business.  It disengages our supporters, because they follow us to hear about our work, they don't follow us to get advertising from other businesses.  What works much better is a story after the fundraising has happened - supporters engage with that much better.  We’re happy to issue press releases and news stories on our website, share the odd tweet and LinkedIn post, but our Facebook page in particular isn't the vehicle most business supporters think it is.
2. Trying to do too much.  I've learnt that sometimes you just have to leave some stuff on the table.  We've been guilty, particularly with fundraising, of trying to do everything and then not doing any of it very well.  We're comfortable with that now and it actually forces us to prioritise and understand where the best opportunities for us today are.
3. Not trusting our gut!  Whether it's recruiting team members, taking up fundraising opportunities, choosing strategies - every time we've gone against our gut and allowed ourselves to be led by other influences it's gone wrong.  Every time.  You got this far by trusting your instincts so why start doubting them now? Articulating our Culture actually helped us to be more aware of what we actually meant by 'gut feel'. We know the personality of the charity and that, combined with our clear mission, helps us make better decisions. Extra note: you can view our Culture Code deck using the link below...

I'm sure we'll make plenty more mistakes along the way and I'm fine with that. It's all part of the journey.

Let me know your biggest work mistake to date and what you learnt from it - I'd love to learn from it too!