Strengthening innovative thinking in charities

For charities, navigating uncertainty has become the ‘new normal’. This month’s rise in National Insurance, the living and minimum wage, means that British pockets – and charity budgets – will become even more strained. Charities are yet again having to deliver more with less. We have all sadly become accustomed to reading daily headlines about redundancies, restructures and shrinking budgets.

Given this ‘new normal’ of uncertainty, organisations are constantly under pressure to innovate in order to find new solutions to adapt, become resilient and thrive under ever challenging circumstances. For more than 10 years now charities have been investing in in-house innovation teams to find solutions in a variety of functions that range from their fundraising efforts to the services and products delivered to beneficiaries. Innovations have ranged from transformational to incremental ones.

Innovation has become a buzzword that often conjures images of big, new, shiny groundbreaking ideas and products. Implicit to this perception is the idea that innovation is mainly practiced by organisations with large budgets to invest in it. However, this perception of innovation is limited.

Innovation – what is it?

Innovation is fundamentally about generating new solutions to problems, however big or small.

What does the process of coming up with new ideas to solve problems look like in charities, particularly in those without in-house innovation teams? And how can charities’ ability to be innovative and to ‘think outside the box’ be strengthened, especially in the context of shrinking budgets and headcounts?

Improving collaboration

There is no easy answer to this question, but one area to focus on is on improving collaboration between team members, whether from the same team or from different teams. Organisations need to recognise that every team member, regardless of their level of seniority, can bring something to the table.

By virtue of their work and personal background, each team member has their own insights on what they see working and not working in their day-to-day efforts. They each offer unique angles into the challenges that the charity faces, whether that be fundraising or service delivery, for example. This wealth of perspectives offers the potential for ideas and it’s important for leaders to allow these perspectives to be voiced.

Two key steps to ensure this happens are to, firstly, embed psychological safety in their teams and secondly, to encourage curiosity and provide space for staff to exercise curiosity and voice their ideas.

Psychological safety

Psychological safety is the ability of team members to feel safe to speak up, to share their ideas, ask questions and be themselves. According to Daniel Coyle, author of The Culture Code, psychological safety is one of the three pillars that form positive and high performing organisational cultures, along with purpose and vulnerability. Building psychological safety requires deliberate intention from leaders. Here are some key practices that charity leaders can engage in to embed psychological safety throughout their teams:

Invest time in team building

It is tempting to think of team building activities as a waste of time given the priority of hitting targets. However, getting to know colleagues, and ensuring that colleagues get to know each other, is an investment in their performance. Team building should therefore be intentional. Enabling colleagues to learn about each other’s backgrounds, values and working styles builds trust and belonging, and enhances the potential for team members to feel comfortable sharing ideas or concerns.

Examples of team building activities can include incorporating ice-breaker questions during team meetings or dedicating sessions to understanding team members’ different working styles. The key is to make these sessions enjoyable. One activity that I’ve seen that has worked on numerous occasions is to get team members to interview each other to build their personal user manuals. Just like instructions manuals for objects, these personal user manuals are descriptions of people’s working and communication styles and preferences. Doing this exercise enhances people’s self-awareness, and it shortens the learning curve for new employees joining a team.

Curiosity

For charities to successfully navigate uncertain and volatile times, they need to remain curious.  In the series of articles for the Harvard Business Review titled The Business Case for Curiosity, Francesca Gino demonstrates how curiosity – a fundamental human trait – is more important to an organisation’s performance than previously thought. She offers strategies for bolstering curiosity within organisations, including hiring people who are naturally curious, emphasising learning goals and organising days for staff to focus on generating “Why”, “What if?” and “How might we” questions. Despite this being within a corporate context, these strategies are also relevant for charities to consider. While having whole days to brainstorm is a luxury at many charities, there are certain practices that charity leaders can implement to get the most out of the brains trusts inherent in their own teams and other teams.

Organise cross-team brainstorming sessions 

Whether working online, in-person or in a hybrid manner, one key practice that leaders can engage in is enabling their teams to have brainstorming sessions. This can be a way of unearthing ideas to persistent challenges. To break silo-thinking, sessions can include different teams to ensure a challenge gets addressed from different perspectives. Framing challenges as “How might we” questions is a helpful way of orienting team members to think about solutions.

Truly inclusive sessions are structured so that participants are given some minutes to think individually and write down as many ideas as possible, before sharing them in smaller groups and then in the wider group. This ensures everyone, both introverts and extroverts, get a chance to voice their ideas.

Ultimately, strengthening charities’ innovative muscles comes down to enabling curious and collaborative cultures in which colleagues from all levels of seniority can learn from each other and feel safe to share their reflections and solutions to problems. Leadership plays a key role in modelling inquisitive behaviours and promoting co-creative team cultures.

At THINK, we have lots of experience in supporting charities to create cultures where collaboration, curiosity and innovation can really thrive. If you are in need of some inspiration or would like an initial conversation (no strings attached!) please do get in touch.

Inés Alvarez-Gortari, THINK Consultant
April 2025

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