The Charity Model Canvas is all about future-proofing your charity in a rapidly changing world.  Based on Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas, a tool used extensively and successfully within the private sector to document, the Charity Model Canvas has been developed with a similar approach but tailored to suit the needs of the the third sector – through additional elements suggested by our research for the Future Charity Report, combined with a clear distinction between customers and other audiences to which a charity has to deliver value. The report and charity model were created in partnership with Manifesto and Massive.

How to use the Charity Model Canvas

Is your organisation’s purpose clear?

If the answer is NO we suggest spending some time defining it before moving forward to the next step. 

This could be through creating variants of your purpose and testing them with your different audiences through a series of workshops and focus groups. 

Who should be part of the discussion?

The outcomes of the canvas will lead to revelations about where your organisation is now, and the direction it should be going. 

By using key stakeholders from different departments, the entire organisation can become united in working towards a common purpose.  This collaborative approach can help build consensus and create priorities within the organisation.

The Canvas can also be used to build consensus on a single representation of you as an organisation. This would be through a facilitated session involving key stakeholders, each major function and audience represented. Within this small group, we recommend printing a large copy of the Charity Model Canvas (with space for sticky notes in each box).

You may wish to start with small groups, discuss the differences between each group’s canvas, and then use this to create a consolidated one.

Ready to get started?

Work methodically through each of the areas of the Canvas:

Vision

Describe the purpose of your organisation and what needs to be changed to implement it.

Key Activities

Record important activities your organisation carries out as part of delivering value to beneficiaries, supporters and other stakeholders

Key Cause Differentiators

Consider what makes your organisation unique compared to commercial organisations operating in the same space?

Key Challenges

What are the greatest challenges to delivering your purpose.

Measures

How are you measuring your success at delivering against your purpose?

Landscape

Existing Partnerships

Who do you currently partner with to help carry out our key activities?

Desired Partnerships

Who has the resources to help you carry out your key activities, but isn’t currently a partner?

Key Competitors

Who’s competing for the time, attention and resources of your audiences?

Potential Mergers

Who could you merge with to carry out some, or all, of your key activities more efficiently or effectively?

Audiences

Who are your most important audiences? This might include supporters, beneficiaries, researchers, volunteers, fundraisers etc.

Needs

What do they need from your organisation? How does your organisation benefit them?

Channels

How do you reach and engage them?

Finances

Top Income Streams

What are your most important sources of revenue and how have they performed over the last three years?

Cost Structure

What are the main costs associated with your current model?

What next?

It is important that key stakeholders regularly revisit the organisation’s purpose, and ensure the key factors contributing to it’s success are focused on.

For more insight into why this Canvas is essential to your organisation, take a read of our report on the Future Charity.

Extensive research into the major challenges facing charities in the UK, including extended conversations with people who work in the sector, it describes those challenges in detail and provides suggestions on how to overcome them.

For help completing the model, please reach out.

Two years ago, we set out to discover why charities weren’t making enough headway in their ambitious plans to transform. And, as consultancies working with the sector, we wanted to know what we needed to do differently to really make a difference.

We gave ourselves six months to find out why digital transformation wasn’t going much further than a shift to new technologies and re-wrap existing fundraising products, and (we secretly hoped) to find the ground-breaking innovation that would lead to the sector disruption we’ve all been waiting for.

Six months later, we weren’t nearly close to an answer...

When we set out on our journey, Brexit had an end in sight, children weren’t striking for climate change, and the crisis the charity sector was already facing wasn’t talked about that much.

Two years later, everyone that’s close to the sector knows that a bold new approach is required, if it’s to stand up against the rapid pace of technological and societal change. But, to know that isn’t enough. Indeed, to talk about it isn’t enough. To hide behind it definitely isn’t enough.

“We are falling behind and we don’t know what we don’t know.”

But what we have discovered are people who, despite being hampered by cultural inertia and a fear of getting it wrong, are filled with passion and ideas. This piece of work has drawn on these ideas and tried to turn them into practical steps for overcoming the fear, helping organisations build confidence, try new things out, and to look at their existing challenges through a new lens.

Our research has taught us that the change that is required applies to every single one of us that interacts with the sector. It requires us to be brave and take risks. It requires us to think about how we collaborate beyond borders, who we work with and how, and how we measure our impact.

Major cultural shifts are needed within charity organisations, and across the sector as a whole

These won’t just be organisational risks, they will be personal risks, and sometimes it’s going to feel uncomfortable.

But breaking through the barriers is the only way we’re going to have a sustainable, positive impact on humanity. And that’s going to feel incredible.

Take a look at the full report to see how you can be part of the change.