# The magical ingredients of great charity people – what you said

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2012/06/28/magical-ingredients-great-charity-people-what-you-said/
- Published: 2012-06-28T20:00:18+01:00
- Author: Kevin Baughen

Following my[ recent blog](http://bottomlineideas.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/the-magic-ingredient-to-great-charity-people)
on the ‘magic ingredient’ qualities that make great charity people great, plenty
of other people have added to the list via twitter, email and – would you believe
it – the good old-fashioned phone.

I promised that we would share the collective in another blog so here goes.  By 
the way, several folks suggested the same qualities so clearly they are important
to us but I’ve aggregated here to keep this short and sweet.

To recap, the original idea was that the passion charity people inherently have 
could be more than just raw ‘passion’… that it probably had constituent elements
or at least slightly different ‘slants’ to make it useful as well as motivating.
Consequently, I suggested that energy and empathy were key and this is what other
folks added:

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 * Ambition – not in the cold commercial sense but to be able to do amazing things
 * A drive to right injustice – we recognise there are some things wrong with this
   world we live in and feel motivated to do something about it
 * A desire to be successful – I think this underpins so much of what we do in the
   charity world because success means helping causes we feel strongly about and
   it’s all about action.  Perhaps the difference between feeling strongly about
   a cause and actually doing something about it?
 * Sharing – knowledge, time, funds, beliefs; all to help others feel just as passionate
   and motivated to act
 * Caring – sounds trite but it’s still true.  Charity folks tend to care about 
   what they do at a level beyond delivering their objectives and collecting their
   pay packet
 * Clarity of vision – knowing where you want to be and what you want to achieve
   is key to the right kind of action ie; the right channelling of our passion and
   energy
 * Listening – goes hand in hand with sharing I believe
 * Flexible – in thinking, attitudes to work, problem-solving
 * Optimistic – the underpinning state of mind which allows us all to believe that
   things can be made better by our actions

And my personal favourite…

 * Being creative – being able to think around problems or barriers, being able 
   to do more with less, making the impossible actually happen.

Thanks to all who contributed (too many to name) to this excellent perspective on
what qualities great charity people possess.  If I possessed and could harness half
of them as well as some of the folks who shared their ideas, I’d be a very capable,
driven and successful charity chap indeed!

Inspired by these responses, I’m thinking about pulling together views on what qualities
we think the charity world doesn’t possess enough of that we could seek from perhaps
other sectors… opening bids anyone?

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