Culture eats strategy for breakfast lunch and dinner
Howard Lake | 18 June 2015 | Blogs
Peter Drucker was famously the first to coin the phrase ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. I’ve also heard that culture eats strategy for lunch. I’ve seen culture devour strategy for dinner and I’ve experienced culture munching on strategy as a snack between meals.
Enough of the food analogies. The point is that any charity may have a super smart fundraising strategy, or an incredible theory of change model or an innovation process to rival Apple’s. While all of these things are important, if your organisational culture does not support these plans, models or processes then your chances of delivering them successfully are slim.
The dictionary defines culture as; the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society. It also talks about culture in relation to maintaining (tissue cells, bacteria, etc.) conditions suitable for growth.
So if we take a mash up approach (see what I did there) a culture of fundraising could be defined as, ‘the behaviors of individuals that form teams that provide conditions for fundraising growth’ I also describe culture simply as ‘the way we do things round here’ and its importance in enabling organisations to deliver their plans and ultimately achieve their mission is often overlooked.
Part of the challenge for fundraising directors and managers is that it is more tricky to measure a good or successful culture that often has ‘soft’ measures like understanding of values, than a fundraising campaign which is primarily about income. Intuitively we know that if you have a team that works well together, has permission to be creative, works collaboratively with other teams, has shared values and is focused on achieving their shared goals – they will have a greater impact on the bottom line. However for many directors and managers responsible for delivering fundraising plans, securing investment to develop the right culture to support their fundraising delivery is a difficult negotiation especially when often they are under pressure to show return on investment in one year. It’s harder to tick the return on investment boxes for culture and values and so culture if often perceived as a bit fluffy (like a well made soufflé).
Similarity in fundraisers’ cultures
Over the last few years I have worked with teams to help them think differently about their fundraising in order to deliver greater impact. In the teams that do drive their ideas forward I have observed some similarities, not in their fundraising plans or innovation processes, but in their culture.
Primarily they have a ‘can do’, or entrepreneurial attitude and are all focused on and committed to their end goal; the purpose for the charities existence. I have also observed how these teams spend time getting to know and support each other and are also accountable for their actions in a way that is different from the teams that easily revert to or are ‘too busy’ with business as usual.
When the culture is right stuff happens.
Survey into what makes a thriving fundraising culture
Myself and my colleague Jacob Rolin, would like to ask for your help to sense check some of the things that we have both observed about what makes a culture where fundraising thrives, as well as the biggest barriers that stop fundraising and innovation happening.
Please could you take a brief 5 minutes to fill in this quick innovation fundraising survey.
For your time, not only will we send you a summary of our findings that will have some practical advice and reminders about how to shift your culture to a more entrepreneurial one, but we’ll also enter you into a prize draw to win a signed copy of my new book The Innovation Workout which will be hot off the press in September.
And finally if you are in London and attending the Institute of Fundraising Convention you can hear more about our observations first hand at our session ‘How to be a fundraising entrepreneur’ on Monday 6 July at 4.30pm.
Lucy Gower blogs at Lucy Innovation.
Photo: cutlery by Chris Tefme on Shutterstock.com
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.