ABSTRACT
This chapter explores why demonstrating the difference that charities make is so important to their development and future. At the homelessness charity Crisis it is the board of trustees that hold the charity to account and ensures that it stays true to its values, including ‘fearlessness through independence’. Crisis is unusual in that a significant proportion of its funding comes from a large number of individual donors rather than a smaller number of large funders or commissioners. Charities clearly need to do more to demonstrate the positive difference they make, but the sheer range of charities and their very varied reasons for existing mean that they end up taking widely differing approaches. Competition is a dirty word in the charity sector. As a result charities can find themselves in competition with one another and with the private sector to deliver the lowest unit cost on contracts.
