29 July, 2015

Every cloud has a silver lining, right? But those linings are a bit trickier to find since the election result in May left a lot of charity’s plans and projects looking shaky, if not completely shelved.

When budgets are being cut, service pressures growing, and grants and contracts threatened, it’s only natural to want to bunker down and focus on fighting your own corner, protecting your patch, and getting the job done. But this response, while seemingly pragmatic and efficient, holds significant risks in breaking down the strength that lies in partnership working, engagement and collaboration that exists across the sector.

It can be easy to dismiss those talks you were having with another charity working with the same client group as a luxury you don’t have time for now. It’s understandable if the idea you had for a joint campaign with a like-minded organisation seems too much to handle at the moment. But these are the things that build strength, resilience and influence in the not-for-profit sector, which help amplify voices and spread best practice. Communications is both a vehicle and a driver in many of these situations, so we’d urge comms professionals to work hard to make the case for stakeholder engagement, in all guises, as strongly as possible in these difficult times.

At Amazon we know that inspiration, motivation and energy are just a few of the essential ingredients the voluntary sector is so good at supplying, and we don’t want to see them diluted by a bunker mentality. Remember, strength in numbers!