Listing Services Instead of Inspiring Action
“We provided 400 hours of counselling, delivered 50 warm meals, and ran a weekly drop-in centre.” True. Fundable-sounding, even. And it tells the reader precisely nothing about what actually changed for a single person because any of it happened.
This is the most common fail in third-sector copy, and it’s not because charities are bad at their work. It’s because logistics feel safer to write than outcomes. A number of sessions delivered is a fact you can evidence with a spreadsheet. “Sarah stopped dreading Mondays” is a claim about a human life, and it feels riskier to say out loud, even when it’s true and even when it’s the actual point of the 400 hours you just listed.
People don’t buy logistics. Donors, funders, and the stranger scrolling your website on their phone are not moved by the fact that a drop-in centre ran weekly. They’re moved by what happened to someone because it did. “We do X” describes an activity. “Because of Y, Sarah was able to Z” describes a transformation, and transformation is the only thing that has ever actually made someone reach for their card details or pick up a pen to sign a grant approval.
Run the “So What?” test on what you’ve already written.
Take a sentence describing what you do, and ask “so what?” out loud until you land on a person and a specific change. “We run a weekly drop-in centre.” So what? “People who were isolated have somewhere to go.” So what? “One of them told us it’s the only conversation she has all week that isn’t with a screen.” That took three “so what”s, and now it means something.
If this territory feels familiar, it should. It’s the same discipline behind the 15-second funder pitch: if a stranger can’t tell what changes because of your work within one sentence, the pitch has failed regardless of how accurate the underlying activity list is. Worth reading alongside the Grant Readiness Checklist and the earlier post on passing the 15-second test, because the underlying problem, leading with what instead of why, is identical whether you’re writing a webpage or standing in front of someone at a conference.
Audit everything you’ve got out there using nothing more than the So What test: your website, your funder reports, your leaflets, your social media bio. That doesn’t mean rewriting all of it in one sitting. Most charities don’t have the capacity for that, and pretending otherwise just means it never gets started at all. Pick one sentence, the one that gets the most eyes, probably the first line of your homepage, and fix that one first. When you’ve got another five minutes another week, pick the next one. The facts still matter, they’re your evidence.
Evidence without a story attached is just a number nobody remembers by the time they close the tab.
