Abnormal Normality - Charities, Communications and Covid-19

While I’m typing, I can hear the noise of a housemate cluttering bowls in the kitchen. He’s an Account Manager by day and is known to be a fan of the odd microwave meal. No bowls broken yet, though.

I’m working from home, and I feel surprisingly zen. For a headhunter who actually enjoys the face-to-face interaction element of his job (of course, it’s important, but I must admit I take great interest and pleasure in the conversations I have), the prospect of working from home every day, indefinitely, isn’t particularly enticing. But hey, I’m listening to David Suchet on Classic FM and I’ve got a plan.

Though I’m loath to use the word ‘unprecedented’ (a pet peeve of mine is over-repetition of particular words in news media – long story), both the immediate and longer-term consequences of Covid-19 seem incomprehensible. Businesses are already going, well, out of business. The number of fatal cases seems to continue to snowball. Social isolation, particularly for the elderly, sick and disabled, will have negative impacts on mental health and accessibility to much-needed services.

And then we have conditions specific to the third sector; the postponement of fundraising events such as the London Marathon, for example. The Institute of Fundraising and the Fundraising Regulator have recently put out a joint statement, claiming that “if no further face-to-face fundraising happens in 2020-2021, we predict there would be a loss of 800,000 supporters…through door-to-door, street and private site fundraising. This could lead to hundreds of millions of pounds in lost income for charities over the next few years.”

Even further, I'm sure the fact that the charity sector (as a generalisation) has been slow to not only grasp digital capabilities but harness them too is at the forefront of most sector leaders' minds.

I could go on, but I’d really only be voicing and repeating what everyone already knows: the proverbial is hitting the fan.

All things considered, though, I would like to be cautiously optimistic, at least from a charity perspective – not that I’m a natural optimist, because I quite frankly am not. Rather, in spite of the government’s serious shortcomings in its response (or lack thereof) to civil society, the third sector is both rallying and getting creative, with an apparent mass comms strategy at its heart.

Just today, for example, the National Emergencies Trust has launched its first appeal to raise funds for UK charities amid the coronavirus outbreak to “provide vital support to people in the quickest way possible.” The Liberal Democrats are rapidly mobilising thousands of their members -for a taskforce, Chaired by Sir Stuart Etherington, to help the most vulnerable deal with self-isolation and basic supplies during the coronavirus outbreak, as well as sharing ideas on best practice. The Voluntary Community Sector Emergencies Partnership (they really need a shorter name, don’t they) has been working tirelessly to boost resource capacity ahead of when disasters strike.

Funding bodies are also rising to the occasion, with organisations like Nesta and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation assuring their support and adjusting and/or suspending conditions to support charities most at need. On a similar note, there’s a great deal of collaboration between funders and umbrella bodies, according to sector figures like ACEVO’s Vicky Browning.

Perhaps, with all sense of irony, this crisis is already acting as an accelerant to force the sector's hand to recognise how crucial digital capacity is to not only its work but its wider survival.

It must be said that it isn’t just charities who are rising to the occasion. Former footballers Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs, for example, have opened their Manchester hotels free of charge to NHS staff for the next two months. Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovitch has offered a similar scheme, where NHS workers can claim free accommodation at the Millennium Hotel near the football club’s Stamford Bridge ground. Corporates like Brewdog and Louis Vuitton have repurposed production lines to produce free hand sanitiser in light of mass shortages.

And that’s the point of all this, isn’t it. The third sector is overstretched and under-resourced, but it’s not simply a defence. Instead, it’s leading from the front on promoting the ideals of ‘civil society’, of collaborative human solidarity. In my view, the sector is showing that it’s not just there as an essential service provider, not just as a vital campaigner, but also as a shining beacon on a hill to show industries, sectors and people that society is more than just the sum of its parts – that for once, we really are all in this together.

Surely this is the heart of an effective comms strategy: clarity, openness, agility, creativity and collaboration. Yes, there’s obviously a heavy dose of crisis comms at the moment; but the third sector is also presented with an opportunity to communicate through different channels, to break the cycle of institutionalised communications practices and find new ways in which to make change happen. After all, the stakes could not be higher.

For myself, as a headhunter to the third sector, I’ll be chatting, interviewing and offering advice over email, phone and Skype; and Green Park’s wheels continue to turn, providing the high-quality, progressive and impact-driven service that we’re known for. Yes, we’ll have to do things slightly differently, but again, this is an opportunity for real creativity and diversity of thought to shine. For the charity sector, rocky times are ahead, but the spirit of collaboration, solidary and creativity that is so evident, hand in hand with effective communications, can only give encouragement.