“It’s learning from the past, learning from things that don’t work, learning from things that do… embracing all of these new opportunities and channels, trying things, having permission to fail… and sharing our insights as we go along.”
In this podcast episode, I spoke to Richard Turner, Director of Fundraising at Solar Aid, about giving yourself permission to fail.
For many years, Richard and his colleagues have been quite deliberate about the importance of searching for and using the insights that come when things don’t go according to plan. And they cite this as a major reason for the impact the charity has made in recent years.
We also discuss the importance of telling the story of failures and successes to engage supporters and donors.
If you want to share this episode with colleagues or on social media because you think it will help other charities – THANK YOU VERY MUCH! We are both on LinkedIn and on Twitter, I am @woods_rob and Richard is @ifundraiser.
Episode Overview
[02:11] Creating a culture of embracing failure. Richard shares how Solar Aid has embraced failure as part of their organisational culture and the value it brings.
[05:32] Learning from failure to make progress. Richard shares an example of a failure that led to a new approach in providing solar energy as a service in Malawi.
[10:39] Richard explains the value of being open about failures and how they lead to insights and new initiatives.
[10:50] Richard talks about the challenges faced in creating business models in impoverished areas and the need to communicate these challenges to funders.
[16:16] Discussing the role of failure in learning and long-term success. Finally Richard emphasises the importance of prioritising learning over short-term success and how failure can lead to valuable insights in fundraising as well as in your overall mission.
Further Resources
Permission to Fail – a fascinating podcast, which includes lots more about Solar Aid’s approach to failure, learning and growth.
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Transcript of Episode 135
Richard Turner (00:00:00) – Often the biggest insights, the biggest leaps can come where something hasn’t worked. But you start to analyse why and that gives you that moment where you go, Oh, what if we change this and it gives the breakthrough? There are initiatives we’re developing right now and as a result of something we did maybe 5 or 6 years ago that didn’t work, but, you know, made us realise, okay, we need to try a different approach. A good film is engaging because of the pitfalls and the ups and downs along the way and I think our job as fundraisers is to tell that story and bring supporters and donors along with us and the ups and downs.
Rob Woods (00:00:44) – Welcome back to the Fundraising Bright Spots podcast. This is episode 135. My name is Rob Woods and this is the podcast for anyone who works in fundraising and who wants ideas and maybe a little dose of inspiration to help you love your job and raise more money. This time we’re looking at why giving ourselves permission to fail is so helpful to the progress you can make for your charity.
I recently spoke to Richard Turner, who’s the Director of Fundraising at the international development charity Solar Aid. Solar Aid is working to create a sustainable market for solar lights in Africa. For many years, Richard and his colleagues have been quite deliberate about the importance of searching for and using the insights that come when things don’t go according to plan. And they cite this as a major reason for the impact the charity has made in recent years. In fact, there are some brilliant stories of this in their excellent podcast, which is called Permission to Fail. In today’s interview, we hear why Richard believes that the approach is so important, tips for how to communicate it to funders and ideas for creating a culture that is genuinely open to and learns from failure. It was a real pleasure talking to Richard, and I hope that you enjoy it too. Hello Richard. Welcome to the podcast.
Richard Turner (00:02:00) – Thanks, Rob. Thanks for inviting me.
Rob Woods (00:02:02) – You’re very welcome. Thank you for making time to chat. I always enjoy our catch ups and I always learn new ideas when I hear your examples and stories.
I wanted to talk in particular about something that is often talked about but is still really not the easiest thing for many charities to do overall in their culture and their philosophy and also within fundraising. And that is a kind of a growth mindset, a willingness to try things and accept that they won’t all work. And I reached out to you the other day because I heard your organisation’s excellent podcast. I think it is called Permission to Fail. I highly recommend our listeners check it out. And a lot of the theme in that first episode and across the whole series is about a robust approach to the fact that we need to try things if we’re going to really make good progress. I think you mentioned on that one that you really got a sense of that culture within your organisation from early on and a particular story they told you.
Richard Turner (00:03:03) – Absolutely. It was my first day at Solar Aid and I got told a story of failure. Tell you what, Rob It made me think I have come to the right place. And it was a story of how solar had created their first solar light.
So hurricane lamps and the sort of thing you might see in Indiana Jones. And then we’d built a solar light that could fit within it and had a separate panel, and we thought this was genius. And when I show it to people like, Oh, what a great idea. But when we took that to East Africa, people hated it because it reminded them of the problem. And what they wanted was a nice bright bulb, the sort of thing that we have in our ceilings and so forth. And so right from that moment, we thought, you know what, we need to find the best products out there and bring them to Africa. And it changed the strategy from a failure. And think ever since the organisation embraces failure, we analyse it all the time. We get fabulous insights on how people behave, certainly in our programs. Think also our supporters too, now and we don’t put it under the carpet. And I’ve been quite surprised over the years how often I see the voluntary sector seems to not embrace failure.
Richard Turner (00:04:13) – And isn’t that all the more surprising because we’re trying to solve some of the world’s toughest problems? I mean, if they had been cracked, you wouldn’t need us, you know, and therefore, if we’re trying to solve some of the world’s problems, something’s got to change. There’s got to be some sort of disruption or something different. And therefore, you probably have to fail along the way, almost certainly have to fail along the way. And yet there’s this pervading tendency that we can’t talk about failure. Grant funders, just sometimes they’re just as guilty, you know, you’ve got to just put forward success and so forth. And yet often the biggest insights, the biggest leaps can come where something hasn’t worked. But you start to analyse why and that gives you that moment. You go, Oh, what if we change this and give you the breakthrough? And so it is that permission to fail. And that culture, I think, is just so, so valuable. And I’ve come to appreciate it for what it is.
Rob Woods (00:05:07) – Yeah. And a bit later in this chat, I’d love to dive deeper into some of the things that you think help an organisation create that culture. Just before we do that, could you give me, say, one more example of an important failure in Solar Aid’s history? That again, really was an important jumping off point to make things even better and make more progress.
Richard Turner (00:05:32) – So we have an amazing project that’s taking part in Malawi right now. Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, and we’re working in one of the poorest parts of Malawi. And the project came about through an initiative where we were installing what’s called solar home systems. These are really great little modules that people can put in their homes and light 2 or 3 rooms and they were people who were renting these systems. And what we found is there were a whole group of people who just couldn’t keep up the payments. And they try as they would if they really wanted to. And they would pay really small micropayments because we run a social enterprise.
Richard Turner (00:06:10) – We don’t give things away. People pay for them because we find that’s more sustainable and lasting. And what was interesting is the team really analysed this customer behaviour, this consumer behaviour of some of the poorest people, really wishing to have access to energy but not being able to afford it. And then this idea came, which was, well, rather than getting them to pay for these systems, why don’t we just deliver energy as a service like you or I have? You know, you haven’t paid for the cables that are in your home and the infrastructure. You just pay for the energy you use. So we’ve just trialled this now in this community in Malawi, and we’ve had an extraordinary take up. In fact, we’ve had more than 100% take up because local schools said, can we take part? And the idea came about understanding that people can make these tiny, tiny payments. People can buy energy for about £0.06 to activate this system on an ongoing basis. And so at a time when we’re in an energy crisis, a cost of living crisis, we’re helping some of the poorest people in the world by solar energy, no longer having to buy candles or kerosene or burn grass, make savings from it to and having access to clean light for the first time.
Richard Turner (00:07:26) – And I have to tell you, it’s been one of the easiest projects I’ve ever had to fundraise for. We’ve had a philanthropist who’s backed us, who gives us permission to fail because we weren’t sure what was going to happen. And as providers match funding and we’ve got major donors, corporates and trusts have come together and we’re fundraising for the third phase too, to really scale it up. So the insight came from failure. We had a funder that allowed us to fail and develop the pilot, and now we’re into something that we think is so exciting. You know, it could be expanded across the whole of Malawi, which is just extraordinary.
Rob Woods (00:08:02) – And the truth is there are plenty of very entrepreneurial funders out there and maybe some are less so. But for our listeners to find a way to have these conversations to be as open as possible and to handle the fact that one cannot guarantee that this money will 100% deliver these objectives. For instance, what have you learned to help other fundraisers communicate that actually life is uncertain, including the way we do these projects, and to increase our chances that funders will be willing to embrace this approach.
Richard Turner (00:08:43) – I remember going to something years ago and think it was run by the European Philanthropy Venture Association or something, and someone showed this diagram, which I thought was really insightful, and it was simply this that when someone’s giving away someone else’s money, so a government or a sort of foundation committee and so on, they’re less likely to take risk. When someone is giving away their own money? They’re much more likely to do so. And that’s where, you know, where you’ve got foundations, where it’s primarily 1 or 2 people who are behind it, or it’s a major donor. You can talk to them about, you know, what it is, the risk you’re taking. And often, you know, they’re successful business people. They know about risk and they know about what you need to do to sort of have those breakthroughs as well. So my lesson is, understand the difference of funders. You know, if you’re going to someone who is clearly going to be evaluating and they’re going to want evidence, they’re going to want proof and so on and so forth, park them for later down the line.
Richard Turner (00:09:41) – When you’re in the innovation phase, you’ve got to be looking at where you’re talking to. You look, you’re almost looking the person in the eye who’s the individual decision maker and showing them that if you could show this concept works and it might fail, you know, this is the opportunity. And so it’s sort of staggering who to ask at what point. And I love that principle. I do think it applies pretty well. Maybe there are some organisations, institutions out there that are more willing to embrace innovation and failure. But they’re rare, sadly.
Rob Woods (00:10:13) – And presumably over the years, you’re looking after the fundraising element of your organisation’s mission. Presumably there have been times when things haven’t worked out and you’ve needed to feed that back to someone who invested their capital. Could you tell us anything you’ve learned about feeding back when the results maybe weren’t as shiny as they could have been?
Richard Turner (00:10:39) – Yeah, I think honesty always helps. In fact, some people love it. You know, there’s typically a funder who would send a failure report to and they remain a pretty fantastic supporter to this day.
And, you know, what were the insights that it gave us? And often I find that there are initiatives we’re developing, you know, right now. And they’re a result of something we did maybe 5 or 6 years ago that didn’t work, but, you know, made us realise, okay, we need to try a different approach. So there’s an opportunity for me to go back to some of those early funders to say, you know, that that initiative, which didn’t quite come off well, it’s now evolving into something special. I think it’s been open about the challenges. Certainly the environment we work in, it’s not easy. You know, we’re trying to create business models in some of the poorest parts of the world. And there are all sorts of challenges to overcome. I think you’ve got to communicate that to funders and try and get them on board. So they, you know, they understand that it’s not a smooth path and that there are challenges along the way.
Richard Turner (00:11:45) – One of the things we’re obviously having to address as many organisations is the impact of climate change. Every year there seems to be a cyclone that will sweep across southern parts of Africa, and that’s really disrupting this. And we need to share the consequences of that on our main program and the difficulties that cause us to deliver the promises that we’re committed to, to grant funders, that we’re going to struggle to deliver on. But I think, yeah, you’ve got to be as open, as transparent about the journey, but it’s a bit like a good film is engaging because of the pitfalls and the ups and downs along the way. That’s what makes it engaging. You know, it’s not all plain sailing, and I think our job as fundraisers is to tell that story and bring supporters and donors along with us and and the ups and downs and yeah, there will be downs, but generally the direction of travel is usually one that is making progress to whatever goal you’re trying to achieve.
Rob Woods (00:12:40) – Hi, it’s Rob and wanted to briefly let you know that our two flagship in-person training programs, the Major Gifts Mastery Program and the Corporate Partnerships Mastery Program, start again from November 2023.
These programs help you make serious progress through a blend of masterclasses with me, individual coaching support and a bunch of other resources for six months to give you a sense of how they work, here’s a clip from Jessica Minnis from the British Heart Foundation, who took part in our Major Gifts Mastery Program last year.
Jessica Minnis (00:13:12) – It was one of the best decisions I’ve made in terms of investment in me as a major gift fundraiser. And of course, I’m really, really pleased to have gone on. One of the primary benefits has been my confidence and the increase I’ve seen in the way that I approach my role and approach my portfolio and meetings with prospects has improved so much. I’ve secured so many more meetings with people, learned so much more about my prospects and my donors just by picking up the phone. And one great win that I’ve had from this is that I solicited a £50,000 pledge from someone who was previously very unresponsive just because I picked up the phone to get in touch with them.
Rob Woods (00:13:49) – To find out more about either Major Gifts Mastery or Corporate Partnerships Mastery go to brightspotfundraising.co.uk/services and if you have any questions, do get in touch. For now, though, let’s get back to my conversation with Richard.
One thing I observe is that in being so explicit about it, you are attracting people who share the values of growth, mindset and willingness to take risks in order to achieve something valuable. And there’s some people who have that kind of value high up on their list, and there’s others that don’t. But those who are more entrepreneurial in their own lives, they’re more likely to be talking to you rather than another charity anyway. So it’s already sort of self filtered that they’ll just enjoy the having of those conversations and being there for the journey. There’s understandable human reasons why we might not want to talk about a mistake we’ve made personally, or a mistake that a department or an organisation has made in terms of proactively taking steps to overcome those tendencies within your culture as a charity and also within fundraising. I wonder what you’ve learned. Might help our listeners kind of understand are important to plug away to create that kind of culture.
Richard Turner (00:15:14) – I think the great thing is there’s that culture within Solar Aid that encompasses failure and think that ripples through to fundraising and the acceptance to try things. And fundraising done really well has a really important role to play. But it’s learning from the past, learning from things that don’t work, learning from things that do, embracing all of these new opportunities and channels, you know, trying things, having permission to fail, and sharing our insights as we go along. We’ve had some initiatives where we’ve not failed, and I’ve made it clear, you know, whether it’s to align reports or someone who’s I’m managing, saying, you know, make it clear it’s about the learning and what’s the objective of this initiative? Is it to raise the most money or is it to get the most learning? And sometimes it’s actually the latter to get that learning, in which case let’s try this because that might raise the most money. But this is going to maximise the learning and it plays to something we’ve talked about before, which is playing the long game.
Richard Turner (00:16:16) – Okay, we could go for something and it’s a bit like that quiz, you know, take the money or come back next week. Well, actually, if we take our time, we’ll maximise the learning and actually in the long term, we’re going to raise more money, even though in the short term, maybe we could make a bit of a splash. I would really emphasise go for the learning as much as you possibly can. And, you know, even if that learning means that, okay, we know that’s something that we shouldn’t do, you can rule it out. It just gives you focus. And of course, there’s so many, gosh, where do I start? There’s so many things that you can do in fundraising, isn’t there, that, you know, little adjustments here, little adjustments there that can make a difference. And it’s and it’s understanding, you know, which are the ones that really work so you can replicate them and then ideally share them as well.
Rob Woods (00:17:07) – So many good insights there. Thank you again for coming along and sharing your approach and your organisation’s learnings about failure and growth mindset. I really appreciate it. I look forward to catching up with you soon, but for now, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Bye bye. You’re very welcome.
I hope you found our chat helpful. You can find brief episode notes and a full transcript in the podcast section of our website, which is brightspotfundraising.co.uk. If you’re not yet following the Fundraising Bright Spots show, please hit that follow button now so that you don’t miss out on lots more valuable episodes that we’ve got lined up for the next few weeks. And if you’re a corporate or major donor fundraiser and you’re determined to lift your results in the next 12 months, we are now accepting bookings for the next Corporate Mastery and Major Gifts Mastery Programs, which start again in November 2023. To find out more, check out the info on our website, which is brightspotfundraising.co.uk/services
Just before we finish, I’d like to ask a quick favour, which is if you enjoyed today’s episode and you think it would help other people, then please take a moment to share it with your team or on social media. Thanks very much for spreading the word, Richard and I would love to know what you think about the episode. You can get in touch or tag us on LinkedIn and on X (Twitter). Richard is @ifundraiser and I am @woods_rob, thanks for listening today. Best of luck with deliberately finding and embracing the insights when things don’t work as planned. And I look forward to sharing more bright spot ideas with you very soon.
