A few weeks ago, Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) launched The Resilience Fund—a £20m fund that will provide flexible grants for charities supporting vulnerable people and communities hit by the coronavirus crisis. More funding for charities looking to build resilience and manage this crisis is very welcome news. But it is another reminder of the extensive need and ongoing challenges that still lie ahead for the sector.

NPC’s new initiative—‘Rethink, Rebuild’—hopes to help the sector do just that. With this work, we want to champion and support the sector to build resilience and to adapt, but also to be ambitious, and challenge long-held imbalances, inequalities and systemic dysfunctions.

Through the ‘Rethink Strategy Lab’, we want to understand and explore ways to be resilient, agile and adaptive, and consolidate and share our learnings and reflections, so that the wider sector can benefit. This work is focussed on helping charities to weather the storm, but also on helping them create cultures that will sustain long-term resilience and agility. We will:

  • Convene and run a peer network of charity leaders and managers, who are contemplating how to make their strategies more adaptive and resilient. We hope this brings together those in the sector who are grappling with the same challenges, to explore questions and solutions.
  • Reach out to those also grappling with these challenges, to get their perspectives and to talk through the various challenges and possible solutions.
  • Connect and collaborate with other organisations, or existing collaborations and programmes exploring this work, such as the CAF Resilience Programme.
  • Regularly share and disseminate insight and learning, offer practical advice, and invite comments and challenges. We will decide how to do this depending on the content, but expect to run a series of webinars, blogs—or maybe even a podcast!

Read the full article about how funders can be resilient and adaptive during the pandemic by Charlotte Lamb at NPC.