read time: 4 minutes
The Fax Machine Mentality is About to Get You Fined
Continue readingRight. Last week I told you about Emma and Haven House, and how saying no to £200,000 turned out to be the smartest decision they ever made.
Now comes the tricky bit: how do you actually make that call when the money’s sitting there and your budget’s looking thin?
Because it’s easy to read a nice story and think “yes, that makes sense.” It’s much harder when you’re staring at a funding opportunity that could solve your financial problems, even if it doesn’t quite fit what you do.
So let’s build you a toolkit. Not a complicated strategic framework that needs a consultant to interpret—just some honest questions that’ll help you spot mission drift before it derails you.
Continue readingEmma was halfway through her third coffee of the morning when the email pinged through. A major foundation. £200,000. Three years of funding. She read it twice, then immediately rang her chair of trustees.
“We’re not applying,” she said.
There was a long silence on the other end. Then: “Emma, are you alright? That’s two hundred grand.”
Let me tell you about Emma and Haven House—they’re not real, but their story is happening in charity offices across the UK right now, probably in one near you.
Continue reading🛑 STOP Being Stupid: Week 4 of 40
Living Hand-to-Mouth is Not a Business Strategy
There’s a stupid idea floating around the charity sector that the most virtuous charity is the one that spends every single penny it receives the second it lands in the bank. This is often driven by a misunderstanding of what a healthy charity budget looks like.
A charity with no financial reserves is a time bomb.
Continue readingRead time: 5 minutes
Right, if you’re a charity that works with kids, vulnerable adults, or even occasionally has staff or volunteers interacting with them, this week is about safeguarding.
And frankly, this shouldn’t even need to be a post. It should be a flashing, siren-wailing sign in your boardroom that says: “CHECK YOUR BLOODY VOLUNTEERS.”
Yet here we are.
Because a shocking number of charities—particularly the smaller ones run by busy, well-meaning volunteers—still view the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check as tedious paperwork. A box to tick. An admin burden.
It is not.
Continue readingHow one grassroots charity turned three years of rejections into £13,500 in eight months — and what your organisation can learn from it.
Sarah is a dedicated trustee of Oakdale Community Sports Hub, a grassroots charity with a £250,000 annual turnover. She joined the board three years ago after volunteering as a coach for their youth football programme. While she works full-time as a primary school teacher, she dedicates her evenings and weekends to helping the Hub thrive.
Oakdale runs multiple community sports programmes from a modest facility they’ve gradually improved over their 12-year existence. They’ve created a vibrant space where local children and adults can access affordable sports activities. The sessions are packed, the testimonials are glowing, and the community impact is obvious to anyone who walks through the door.
But the organisation is perpetually caught in a financial balancing act.
(A quick note: Yes, Oakdale turns over £250k—but if your charity is working with £25k, £50k, or £100k, this guide is absolutely for you. In fact, it might be even MORE important for smaller organisations, because you’re often competing against larger, better-resourced charities for the same pots of money. Everything in this guide scales down perfectly. The principles don’t change whether you’re managing £25k or £250k—you just need fewer trustees and simpler systems. Don’t skip this thinking it’s not for you. It is.)
Continue readingRead time: 4 minutes
Right. Let’s talk about your Treasurer.
They’re usually the hero of the hour, aren’t they? They volunteer to wrestle with spreadsheets while everyone else suddenly remembers urgent appointments. They understand debits and credits. They turn up to meetings with actual paperwork. And generally speaking, they’re a decent human being.
We trust them. They’re part of the team.
This trust is exactly where the stupidity begins.
Continue readingRead time: 6 minutes
This is the final piece in a three-part series. In Part 1, I shared my personal journey into self-employment, and in Part 2, I explored the lessons learned. Now, let’s apply those insights to third-sector governance and organisational resilience.
My journey from redundancy to building a successful consultancy—a story of fear, faith, and finance—might seem purely entrepreneurial, but the lessons are profoundly relevant to the challenges faced by charity trustees and third-sector leaders today.
My experience navigating personal precarity mirrors the funding precarity many organisations operate within. By applying the lessons I learnt about support, cash flow, and flexibility, charities can build truly resilient, mission-driven governance structures.
Just as my mother created a critical personal safety net, third-sector organisations must cultivate their own organisational support systems before periods of significant change.
Question for your board: Have you built relationships strong enough to support you through a major organisational pivot?
My uncle’s wisdom to focus on cash coming in—not just invoices going out—has immediate and vital implications for third-sector organisations.
Question for your board: Do you know exactly how long your organisation could operate if its next expected payment was delayed by three or six months?
My ability to adapt my work around caring for my mother offers a powerful model for charities considering their internal structures and values.
Question for your board: Does your organisational culture truly align with the values you promote to the world?
Gather your board and senior team and work through these steps to map your organisation’s true security profile:
1. Map Your Internal Safety Nets
What resources, skills, relationships, and unrestricted reserves exist within your organisation that could support bold moves or weather a crisis?
2. Identify External Safety Nets
Which funders, partners, peer organisations, or key community supporters could provide crucial backing during transition periods?
3. Assess Your Safety Net Gaps
Be ruthlessly honest. Where is the organisation most vulnerable? What critical supports—financial, knowledge-based, or relational—are missing right now?
4. Create a Safety Net Development Plan
Outline concrete, practical steps to strengthen your weakest areas before you need them. Focus on building reserves, diversifying income, or formalising partnerships.
5. Design a “Bold Move Proposal”
Now, using your newly mapped and strengthened safety nets, what strategic opportunity could your board now consider pursuing that previously felt too risky?
This exercise moves you from feeling vulnerable to feeling ready. It’s the difference between reacting to a crisis and having the internal confidence to steer your mission effectively.
Missed Part 1? Read it here – https://theartofstupidity.com/2025/10/31/article-1of3-tough-decisions/
Missed Part 2? Read it here –
https://theartofstupidity.com/2025/11/04/article-2-three-key-lessons/
Read time: 5 minutes
Right. Let’s not mess about.
There’s a new piece of mandatory compliance that’s about to land your charity in a proper mess if you ignore it. And I mean the kind of mess that makes accidentally double-booking the village hall look like a minor admin blip.
We’re talking about mandatory Identity Verification for Companies House.
Continue readingRight, listen up.
I’ve spent too much time watching well-meaning charities make world-class, utterly avoidable, administrative disasters.
We’re talking about the simple, everyday failures that put your funding at risk, land your trustees in legal hot water, and make the whole sector look like it’s being run by people who found their job description in a Christmas cracker.
I’m calling time on pretending everything is fine.
Continue reading
The Art of Stupidity 