Too many organisations in the sector focus their communications on the need of their beneficiaries and not nearly enough on the efficacy of their services, according to this year’s Charity Awards winner John Rendel.

Rendel, the founder and chief executive of international development charity Peas, which won the overall award at the Charity Awards 2013, told a gathering of prospective Awards applicants recently that the best way to win an award – and to continue to develop their organisation - is to invest in monitoring and evaluation.

He was speaking at a Charity Awards reception hosted by Civil Society Media and Charities Aid Foundation, to promote CAF's Pass on the Baton campaign to spread the learning from the projects honoured in the Awards.

Rendel said: “I believe there are too many organisations in the charity sector, and particularly the development sector, that are very conscious of and talk a lot about extremity of need of their beneficiaries and don’t talk enough about the efficacy of their programme design and their solution.

“If we’re going to build credibility we need to stop out-competing each other on the former and start outcompeting each other on the latter,” he said. “That’s very difficult because the quickest way to fundraise is by pulling heartstrings about what the need is. But there is need everywhere, what really matters is what are we doing to alleviate that need.”

Rendel said that when filling out his application form for the Awards, he strived to demonstrate the impact that Peas has had on the communities where it works in Uganda, and also to press home the sustainability of the project.

“I wanted to get across how sustainable we are - how much do we turn each pound into not just impact that year, but impact in five years’, or in ten years’ time.  One thing we wanted to concentrate on most when we applied for this Award, was that Peas by 2022 would have set up a network of hopefully 100,000 students in Uganda where the schools themselves are funded under their own revenue streams.”

Positive morale boost for staff

Rendel himself was lying under a mosquito net in Kampala, checking the live Awards Twitter feed – #CharityAwards – when he learned Peas had won.  He told the audience that while he did not set up the charity in order to win pats on the back, winning the Charity Awards mattered to him because of the positive impact it had on the organisation.

“I knew when we won it that it was going to be game-changing.  Unfortunately we didn’t have all the comms team we needed in place to fully throw it at the world so we could maximise the return.  But it doesn’t matter that much because we are now investing in comms; we will be the current Awards-winner for a year, and a past Award-winner for the next five years, so there is a huge long-term sustained impact from the credibility you get from this Award.”

Using the Award to thank donors

And, he added, one thing Peas was able to do immediately was to promote the win to all its existing donors.

“We made sure they realised we couldn’t have won it without them, and so from a perspective of building those relationships it’s been hugely important.”

The 15th annual Charity Awards, organised by Civil Society Media with Charities Aid Foundation as overall partner, opens today for entries. Entry is free and open to all charities of any size based anywhere in the UK.  Click here to find out how to enter and click here to find out more about the Hallmarks of Excellence which the judges use to score each application against.

The deadline for entries is Friday 7 March 2014. The awards will be presented at a gala dinner on 12 June 2014 at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel.