Today I took my teenage son to Comic Con. For those of you who don’t know, it is a convention for video gamers, board gamers, anime enthusiasts, cartoon enjoyers, cos-players, comic book readers and many other people who haven’t completely grown up yet. It had a big impact – and not in a good way! It was very overwhelming. There was so much trying to grab your attention all at once. My son, the video gamer, was only interested in a few things and completely ignored all the other ‘noise’.

The experience could be compared to the impact many non-profits have on their beneficiaries, sector, donors and environment. There is too much going on that we haven’t a clue what they actually do. They’re trying to achieve everything and succeeding at very little. Either as a result of unfocused ambition, shifting donor mandates or expanding beneficiary needs, the organization has branched out into a multitude of different areas and have lost their identity. The image I have in my head is of a slime monster, oozing out and absorbing things indiscriminately, always growing and spreading.

To really make a lasting impact you need to have a very clear focus, that can be easily understood by others. There may be many ways (programmes) to achieve that goal that will change over time as certain activities lose their relevance or external factors force your organization to evolve, however, everything that you do can be tied to the main purpose for existing. If you hone your expertise, skills and experience in your focus area you become the masters at addressing that need, making change and creating impact. You’ve worked out what doesn’t work, what works best and the people you need to do it so that you can quickly have the biggest impact.

What if the change you’re trying to make is impacted by a problem you don’t address, such as a literacy programme where kids who are hungry struggle to learn? Don’t start a nutrition programme, don’t be a slime monster and annex another focus area to your already overstretched organization! Rather, collaborate with an organization who has made that THEIR focus area, who are the masters of it, and together you can have a much greater impact that you would independently.

If you feel like you’ve oozed out all of the place and lost your identity, please get in touch. I love finding the golden thread that pulls everything together, or helping you define the boundaries of your organization around your core focus.