Balancing the scales of impact and sustainability

As a not-for-profit which generates almost all of our income through commercial activities, how do we get the balance right between operating one of the UK’s most successful activity camps whilst also creating maximum impact for the children we serve??

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THE BALANCE?

At Kings Active Foundation, our core mission is to improve the lives of children through sport and activity. It’s literally why we exist. It’s all we talk about, measure and plan for. We do this by generating 99% of our charity’s funding through our UK-wide sports and activity camps - Kings Camps - and herein lies the balance challenge.?

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Is there an inherent conflict between the need to operate a successful, high quality, revenue-generating ‘business’ in a highly competitive market whilst aiming to deliver the maximum charitable impact possible??

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We’ve recently seen our ‘2024 Early Bird’ period come to an end at Kings. Every year Kings Camps applies an automatic 10% discount on all bookings for any camp weeks booked before the end of February. Each year this period generates around 25% of our annual expected income and is a ‘vote’ from parents on the type of sales year we expect to have.?

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And this year it wasn’t quite as successful as we had hoped.?

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After much digging into the data, we discovered that, although our revenues were below where we expect, the number of children who had been booked onto our camps had actually increased vs 2023. In fact, it was a really good number. The disparity between the number of children booked onto camp and the income generated was, in the main, because this year, through our Supporting Families programme, we’ve worked really hard to increase the number of children we accommodate onto our camps who couldn’t normally afford a place. Giving access to the benefits that our camps can deliver to as many children as we can is why we exist.?

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This is where I felt the bite and the challenge around balance…???

1. The need to generate revenues (the more the better) and doing this in a highly competitive and commercial market?
2. The simultaneous need to then give away or sacrifice revenue to achieve our mission?

So, my first conclusion is that revenues are good – but they can also be seductive?

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Conclusion 1. Don’t let money become the point?

TARGETS?

?The need to remain financially stable is an imperative for any charity and means that we must set sales targets (amongst a range of financial and non-financial targets); targets that represent growth because, for us, growth represents impact.?

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We also have other targets in 2024:?

1. 10,000 free activity sessions in UK schools?

1. 550 subsidised weeks on camp for children facing adversity?

1. 2,500 subsidised weeks on camp for children of military families??

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My second conclusion is, therefore, that targets are good - but multiple targets can be contradictory and difficult to achieve in tandem.?

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Conclusion 2. Have a hierarchy of organisational targets which align to your mission?

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SERVICES?

Over the years, we’ve gained a reputation for being experts in engaging children in activity and that’s because we’ve learned this through working with literally millions of children during our 33 years of delivery.?

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During the course of our existence, we have worked in many different sectors in the UK and abroad and with many different types of company, NGO or organisations. Some of these partnerships were highly profitable for us such as overseas work, licensing or programme design for others. However, we have learned through experience that this work can be distracting and can shift our focus from our core mission. We have therefore taken the challenging decision to decline these approaches or opportunities because they would dilute, and have previously lessened, our focus. Making money is not our mission - getting children active is, BUT we need to remain highly focused on both.?

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Conclusion 3. Not all business is good business for our mission?

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?TALKING TO THE MARKET ABOUT US?

Choosing what work we do and for whom is one internal challenge, but we also have another challenge which is how we describe ourselves to the wider world. Kings relies on partnerships to deliver our work, mainly the independent schools and universities we work with who host our camps across the UK.?

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Establishing new partnerships involves discussing our impact and conveying our mission to external parties in anticipation of finding common ground that allows us to work in partnership. This again comes hand in hand with its own challenges and poses its own questions:??

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How do we establish connections with a school bursar, for example, and speak to them about Kings and what we do, with the possibility that they assume we’re not the best commercial partner for them because we use the word CHARITY???

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How can we find a balance between ensuring we are, in fact, seen as a valued commercial partner, whilst conveying that making money is not our mission, getting children active is??

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Will parents who are selecting which holiday camps they use be put off choosing Kings Camps because of the word ‘charity’??

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Kings Camps exists and competes in an already saturated and competitive market; therefore, I feel we have often shielded or under-communicated who we are and what we do in trepidation of losing support of our members or partners, potentially leading to less children attending camp than previously. As an organisation, we want parents to know about all the things we do and where their money goes but, in this sense, does ignorance work in our favour? Would communication around this be counterproductive - putting parents off and encouraging them to send their children elsewhere in the school holidays? Would this reinforce our philosophy that making money is not our mission, getting children active is, or would it portray the contrary??

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Conclusion 4. Who we are, what we know and why we do it is a STRENGTH, we just need to describe these benefits clearly?

So after much reflection I’ve concluded that I still very much believe in our model. I think the challenge of having to be a highly commercial and competitive organisation improves us and the delivery of our mission. I also believe that our model of camps and the culture we have around them is a gift that we should use to improve communities in the UK and abroad. Our success will not be measured by our sales figures, but rather by the number of smiling, active and engaged children we serve this year.?