Urgent vs. Important

At this time of year my working day frequently feels like a face-off between the urgent and the important tasks on my to-do list. And just to make things extra-fun, there's a fair few items that meet both criteria. Whilst I appreciate how limited a resource time is - more so than ever at my current life stage, being the 'filling' in the middle of an inter-generational sandwich - and try to steward it with care, I will hold my hands up to mis-allocating my time on occasion.

It is oh-so-easy to become diverted from the important, perhaps longer-term projects and tasks that require some deep, uninterrupted focus time by the trilling urgency of something or more usually, someone, who has arguably done a great job at convincing you that their emergency is actually YOUR emergency.

I have spotted a few posts and articles on this subject on this platform recently - perhaps it's a Q1 thing? - so I'm not about to add to the pantheon of generic advice on this. What I want to do here is to reflect on how the battle between Urgent vs. Important is largely won by strategy, rather than tactics, and relate it to my day-to-day of running a grant-making foundation. Managing my to-do list is tactical, as is putting 'firebreaks' into my weekly calendar, but the principles that shape our grant-making activity at ShareGift are very much strategic.

It is worth stressing at this point that smarter minds than mine were responsible for putting in place our grant-making principles, but pretty much every day of the week I find myself thankful for their foresight.

The combination of our cause-neutrality, unrestricted funding, upfront due diligence and the diverse range of charity suggestions from our share donors, coupled with our own research into charitable causes, means that we have the agility and flexibility to respond to urgent charitable needs and appeals without losing sight of the longer-term important and structural change-related work undertaken by many charities.

Our latest distribution of grants is a case in point. We were able to honour the charitable suggestions of our many donors in the usual way whilst also giving a significant six-figure sum to charities operating in and around Ukraine (there was significant overlap between the two groups in any case). We were also able to respond to the cost of living crisis in the UK and make a round of grants to charities engaged with a range of work in this field, from longer-term research and policy influence through to emergency grants to individuals in poverty, and advice on heating and energy bills.

This is far from a 'scattergun' approach: we are proud of our flexibility, our commitment to unrestricted funding, and especially our cause-neutrality, because they collectively enable us to respond to emergencies as well as longer-term charitable causes. Whilst there remain strong arguments in favour of specialism and deep expertise, I would love to see more grant-making foundations in the UK adopting a flexible approach; this may take time to embed, but the covid pandemic has forced many to reassess their grant-making principles and to embrace new practices. This will be to the benefit of charities, their causes, their beneficiaries, and arguably their supporters too, if we can help continue this momentum.

You can find further information about ShareGift on our website, and we are always interested to speak with potential supporters and charities, too. Do get in touch.