Cool Earth won the Environment and Conservation category at the Charity Awards last year. Chloe Rickard expounds the virtues of simply entering, let alone winning.
In the vast charity landscape, Cool Earth is tiny. We are just eight years old, and our office is barely bigger than the average sitting room. Our income is less than a fiftieth of the largest environmental charity in the UK.
But when you’re small, it’s much easier to see the impact you are making. We worked out earlier this year that we are helping indigenous communities keep more rainforest under 24/7 protection than any other charity, NGO, or government. It’s not a shallow boast and reflects what you can achieve if you have a straightforward aim and keep it simple.
Still, we didn’t think we stood a chance at being shortlisted for a Charity Award, let alone winning one.
But I would recommend even the smallest charities enter. Even filling in the application is such a brilliant exercise. Having to distil exactly what was great about a project has so many applications in other areas of the organisation. It can help with future planning and wider communications, and is great for showing your teams (and donors) that what they invested time and resources in really worked.
The best bit for me was filling in the Hallmarks of Excellence – ten attributes that show your organisation is up there with the best. It wasn’t easy to write, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dipped back into the application since applying, because the stuff I wrote about how we display these attributes is proving indispensable for charity of the year applications, web copy, and annual reports.
There’s even a guide for each Hallmark with examples and in-depth analysis about what you should be doing to achieve them. I would recommend anyone working for a charity reads and answers these challenges – from directors and trustees to HR and fundraising. It’s really illuminating.
Getting a phone call inviting us to an interview as a shortlisted charity was a wonderful surprise. And we were completely blindsided when our name was called on the night. It turns out that not only are we quite good at saving rainforest, we’d managed to pull together a successful entry for an award too. So with that in mind, here are our top tips:
Get everyone involved
I worked closely with our director and projects teams to make sure the stats and figures were 100 per cent correct. Our brilliant trusts manager helped me with tone and suggested some inclusions that hadn’t occurred to me.
Be honest
Use rigour in assessing your success. If something didn’t work out how you thought, explain why, and explain the lessons you learnt. Especially for a young charity, it can really help to describe your journey, with ups as well as downs.
Write well
The judges have to read a lot of applications. Yours will stand out if it is clear, concise, and interesting. If it’s stuffy, full of long clauses, or – heaven forbid – grammatical errors, they’ll lose interest quickly. Write persuasively but conversationally. And get someone to proofread forwards and then backwards, one. word. at. a. time.
Get down to the nitty-gritty
Remember when you were taught about SMART objectives? Make your results SMART as well. Instead of saying: “We improved the lives of women in the rainforest” say: “The 46 women in our Ashaninka project saw a cash income rise of 70 per cent within one year of the partnership.” Specific, measurable, relevant, timebound. And now brilliantly achieved, of course.
Tell stories
Working in the charity sector we have a huge advantage over our corporate brother and sisters. Whereas they have to scrabble around for remarkable, personal stories, we’ve got them on our doorstep. So while facts and figures are vital, don’t forget to let the story of why you’re doing what you do shine.
And lastly, be brave
Don’t think, like we did, that you have no chance of winning so there’s no point in entering. Even if you’re not lucky enough to be shortlisted, I guarantee you’ll find the process of entering fantastically worthwhile. And you never know, you might just be lucky…
Chloe Rickard is communications manager at Cool Earth
