🛑 STOP Being Stupid: Week 9 of 40
The Charity That Couldn’t Prove It Worked
Why Good Intentions Alone Won’t Save Your Organisation
Right. Let’s talk about one of the most dangerous phrases in the charity sector: “We know we’re making a difference.”
Maybe you are. Your volunteers might be incredible, the people you support might genuinely love what you do, and none of that would surprise me. But here’s the uncomfortable question underneath it: how do you actually know? Not how you feel about it. Not the lovely comments under your Facebook post, or the photo of everyone smiling at the end of a session. Because good intentions are not evidence, and a charity that can’t prove its impact is putting itself at risk whether it realises it or not.
The Charity That Was Doing “Amazing Work”
Most grassroots organisations start for the right reasons. Someone sees a problem, wants to help, brings people together, and builds something brilliant. For a while everyone’s happy. The sessions are busy, the volunteers are committed, and people keep telling you that you do such amazing work.
Then the funding application lands. Or the annual report is due. Or a trustee asks, in a meeting, “how do we actually know this is working?” And suddenly everyone’s looking at the floor, because what they’ve got is a pile of stories rather than any evidence. They know the name of the person who gained confidence. They remember the child who finally joined in, the family who said the project changed everything. Those stories genuinely matter. But stories on their own don’t run a charity, and they don’t survive scrutiny either.
The Three Demons of Delusion
Every charity that struggles with impact measurement is usually wrestling with the same three demons.
Demon Number One: “Everyone Loves Us.” This one sits on a pile of Facebook comments, “fantastic project,” “keep up the amazing work,” and whispers that you don’t need numbers because look how much people like you. People liking your work is wonderful, but it doesn’t tell you whether the project achieved its purpose. A sports club can have hundreds of members without a single one of them getting more active. A youth project can run hundreds of sessions without any young person gaining a scrap of confidence or opportunity. Activity is what you do. Impact is what changes. Those are not the same thing, and this demon wants you to forget that.
Demon Number Two: “Busy Means Successful.” This one loves a spreadsheet full of impressive-looking numbers, 500 sessions delivered, 2,000 meals provided, 300 people through the door, and dances around insisting that’s the impact. It isn’t. Imagine two youth projects, same cost, same 100 sessions delivered. Project A can show that 60% of attendees improved their confidence, gained a qualification, or moved closer to employment. Project B has no evidence at all of what changed. Which one would you invest in? Busy tells you what you did. It never tells you whether it worked.
Demon Number Three: The Funder Rejection. This one turns up every year clutching an email that starts “thank you for your application, but…” Funders aren’t paying for your activities, they’re investing in change, and if your application only describes what you do rather than the difference it makes, you’ve told them nothing they can act on.
The Annual Report Disaster
One of the most common mistakes charities make is treating their annual report like a scrapbook, lots of photos, lots of nice stories, lots of description of what happened, and very little evidence of what changed because of it. Your trustees’ annual report isn’t a marketing brochure. It’s your opportunity to explain how your activities actually achieved your charitable purposes, and for registered charities, doing that properly is part of demonstrating good governance, not an optional extra.
The question isn’t “did we do things.” It’s “did those things create the change we exist to achieve.”
The Art of NOT Being Stupid
None of this needs expensive software, a data analyst, or a complicated evaluation framework. It needs better questions, asked consistently.
1. Decide what change you actually want to see. Stop writing “we aim to support people’s wellbeing” and start asking what improved wellbeing would actually look like. More regular exercise. Reduced isolation. Increased confidence. A better job. Make the change visible enough that you’d recognise it if it happened.
2. Measure before and after, not just satisfaction at the end. “I enjoyed the session” tells you nothing about what changed. A simple before-and-after question, “how confident do you feel,” followed up months later with “are you still using what you learned,” gives you far more than a mountain of feedback forms ever will. If you want a fuller refresher on building that kind of framework properly, I’ve written about it before, the Sarah from Oakdale example in that post is one I keep coming back to, because the sector doesn’t seem to tire of learning this lesson the hard way.
3. Collect stories and numbers, not stories instead of numbers. Don’t throw away the person whose life changed, the young person who made friends, the volunteer who found their feet. Those stories show the human side. But the strongest charities can point to the person and the data at the same time, “here’s who changed” alongside “here’s the evidence this happened across the whole programme.”
4. Make it everyone’s job, not a three-week panic before a deadline. A five-minute survey, a simple spreadsheet, a follow-up phone call. Small habits, done consistently, build the evidence you need long before you’re asked for it.
The Real World Warning
The collapse of Kids Company remains one of the most discussed cautionary tales in the sector. The organisation supported many genuinely vulnerable children, and plenty of people involved believed deeply in its work. But subsequent reviews raised serious concerns about governance, financial management, and the strength of the evidence used to justify claims about its effectiveness. The lesson for smaller charities isn’t “don’t dream big.” It’s this: if you can’t demonstrate your impact yourself, someone else will eventually question it for you, and by then it’s a much harder conversation to have.
Final Thought
Nobody starts a charity because they love spreadsheets. They start because they care, they see a problem, and they want to fix it. That passion is genuinely valuable. But passion without evidence is fragile, and the sector doesn’t need fewer people who care. It needs more people who can prove the difference they’re making.
Because one day, someone will ask how you know your charity works. Make sure your answer is more than “because everyone tells us it does.”
Put the kettle on. Open the spreadsheet. Find the numbers.
Free Resources Worth Five Minutes
National Lottery Community Fund — Tools to Gather and Use Evidence Practical, free tools from one of the UK’s biggest community funders, built specifically to help you capture the difference your project makes without drowning in paperwork.
NCVO – Impact and Evaluation Guidance Free, step-by-step guidance on building an evaluation approach that’s proportionate to your size, written for the voluntary sector rather than adapted from corporate KPI frameworks.
GOV.UK / Charity Commission — Prepare a Charity Trustees’ Annual Report Official guidance on what your trustees’ annual report legally needs to contain, including how to report on achievements against your charitable purposes.
They cost nothing. Not knowing whether your charity works costs a great deal more.