Charities have been urged not to become “too funding-led” at the expense of their cause by a major charity leader at an event today.
Mind chief executive Sarah Hughes warned charity leaders against trying to be “all things to all people”, particularly when their organisation has been offered money to deliver a specific project.
“We get trapped in the sector often of not being so much cause-led, but funding-led, so we take funding because the money is there, and sometimes the money is so much more,” Hughes told the Directory of Social Change’s annual conference.
“The question for me is: Would we do this thing if the money wasn't there? And if the answer is no, then it probably should be no.
“And the reason I say that is because taking funding for things that really aren't in your wheelhouse or not in your priorities, not on your strategy, knocks other things out of whack.
“It's not consequence free, and it creates a dynamic in your organisation where we're all things to all people, and that in and of itself creates problems for the people we serve, and often funding like that demands hidden subsidies from reserves.”
Hughes added that “in volatile, difficult, fast-moving times, there is the huge risk that we will take funding over cause”.
