ABSTRACT
Today’s charities operate in a world which is more complex than ever before, and which is changing at a gathering pace. Charities rarely have the opportunity to take stock of their work, to re-evaluate and re-plan, because the complex interaction of their funding and projects and stakeholders makes it incredibly difficult to pause the tanker that is their business-as-usual, let alone to turn that tanker around. Consumers’ expectations will be set by their online interactions with for-profits and will bleed across into their expectations of charities. Charities, like businesses, need to take the future seriously and prepare for it, investing in horizon-scanning and in research and development. Charities can be held back by onerous and duplicative separate impact reporting requirements; by dealing with sniping about salary levels and hand-wringing about the latest ‘scandal’. The boundaries between charities and businesses are becoming more blurred.
