Charity Spotlight: Ed Mayo, CEO of Pilotlight

This is an exercise in capacity building: helping charities maximise their impact through developing their skills, instincts, abilities, processes, and resources. This can help them to “survive, adapt, and thrive in a fast-changing world”. 

This interview explores the meaning of building capacity in charities and how the U.K. charity sector can grow its capacity to make a difference through digital technology and new types of funding support. Bringing this together, it considers the many ways that the sector can tackle the shared challenge of climate change. 

Charity Digital: What are the signs that organisations are having capacity issues?  

Ed Mayo: The twin environmental emergencies of our day – climate risk and biodiversity risk (the loss of habitats and species) – can be seen, from a human perspective, as challenges of organisation. Our current system of institutions has accelerated the damage. A new set of institutions has to chart the path towards a more sustainable future. 

The capacity-building gap is therefore urgent and compelling. It is not just that the 6,000+ environmental charities across the U.K. need support to do what they do today (and they do, with frequent weaknesses for example around leadership, governance and diversity). It is that they need to spur and spread and scale in order to do what is essential tomorrow.    

The organisational challenge is one that I know myself. For any environmental charity, it is the question of how you are able to bridge the gap between your mission of a greener future and what they do to help make that happen; in short, what they do on a Monday. 

I found this myself when I started as CEO of a green charity in 1992. The charity was the New Economics Foundation and the trustees had been just about to close the organisation when one trustee, Jakob Von Uexkull, raised funding from a network of philanthropists for three years for someone to come in and take it forward. That was a younger me. 

The mission of the charity was a just and sustainable economy, which is visionary but also a tough ask of a small charity, so what was I to do on a Monday? 

I started by looking at all we were doing, on projects and with volunteers, to see where there was life and energy that I could work with. What emerged over time was a powerful way of working at an exciting time in which the charity developed and promoted tools that could advance a just and sustainable economy. 

When I left, 11 years later, we had over 50 staff and were ‘Think Tank of the Year’ with a reputation for innovation. 

Capacity building is about bringing tomorrow forward. Charities are all about tomorrow’s cause and there are few more unifying causes right now than that of the environment, understood as our shared future. 

CD: How can digital tech improve both capacity and sustainability in the charity sector?  
 

EM: The voluntary sector is relatively low carbon compared to other sectors of the economy, so it might be thought less pressing to improve the sustainability of the sector itself. But charities still have to play their part and they will not be convincing champions for sustainability through innovation or advocacy if their own operations are not sustainable. 

One of the major areas for impact, for example, is through charity investments and pensions. That is perhaps surprising as it is indirect, but it is a reason why it is one call made by NCVO in its new climate campaign is for charities to disinvest from fossil fuel sectors. 

In terms of the way that charities themselves operate, digital technology opens up a wealth of opportunities to become more sustainable.  

At Pilotlight, we have seen some extraordinary examples of charities embracing digital technology over the pandemic to reinvent what they do, not least when moving from local services to more open national and international services delivered through digital channels. 

Done well, digital technology and sustainability go hand in hand, because both call on organisations to learn faster about the future. 
 
 

CD: What is the relationship between digital literacy and capacity building within charities?  
 

EM: Digital literacy is one of the great capacity-building success stories of the last five years, in part prompted by forward-thinking pioneers such as Zoe Amar, Catalyst, Digital Candle, and the Scottish Tech Army, in part prompted by the backs-to-the-wall practicality of the life under the pandemic. Those supporting charities on digital have been in the right place at the right time. 

There is more to do, of course. A persistent complaint from charities is that they can’t afford or can’t hold onto skilled digital staff. When new digital technology comes along, such as big data a few years back or the contest this year between the new general AI applications, charities tend to be at the end of the queue in terms of access and capability.  

The need for digital capacity building has not gone away just because it has been effective so far. 

Right now, we are mapping the field of skilled volunteering support for charities to see where the other gaps are, alongside digital. In 2021, in collaboration with others including Cranfield Trust and Reach Volunteering, Pilotlight formed a new collaborative network, the UK Pro Bono Association, bringing together 34 organisations.  

Together in the last year, these organisations engaged professionals to support 8,300 charities and social enterprises. Seven out of ten small and medium-sized charities say that they are actively looking for pro bono professional skills to support what they do – but only four out of ten find it. 

One thing that excites me hugely is the opportunity for blended programmes of support around digital, such as digital governance and digital volunteering and participation. 
 
 

CD: Pilotlight is partnering with the Garfield Weston Foundation to pilot a new line of funding support. What’s the relationship between capacity and funding in the charity sector?  
 

EM: Through our partnership with the Garfield Weston Foundation, we are running our ninth year of the Weston Charity Awards. Research by the Foundation has already demonstrated that UK environmental charities are not winning the funding support they ought to be. 

This year, for the first time, we invited applications from charities working in the field of environmental action. 

Up to 22 charities, working in the fields of environmental action, welfare, youth, and community, will win a package of support, worth approximately £22,000 including an unrestricted grant of £6,500 and access to the Pilotlight 360 programme. 

We know from our work at Pilotlight what a difference this form of support can make. Pilotlight is a charity that helps people and charities to do more for their world. We do this by bringing charities together with business and business experts who can tackle the pressing issues charities are facing. 

So far, we have worked with around 1,000 charities. And since 1996 we’ve developed partnerships with over 180 of the UK’s top businesses including Barclays, Ipsos, Lendlease, Morgan Stanley, Sodexo and KPMG.  

Our impact results show that two years on from support through the Pilotlight 360 programme, charities, on average, increase their income by 44% and their reach (the number of beneficiaries) by 30%. 

There is an increasing recognition by foundations that making grants to individual organisations on a competitive basis may not be as effective as looking how to build the field of action, often crossing, or requiring collaboration between charities. So far, though, there has been less of a focus on capacity building in that context. 

It is the easy option to write a cheque, but not always the best option. We are hoping to see more funders take up the idea that promoting access to skilled volunteering is an effective way to give by giving more than just money. 
 
 

Of course, even so, the shift to a green economy can’t be delivered by charities alone. It requires individual action, community action, culture change, and state and multilateral action. 

But what charities do is to run ahead of others and show the way, testing what is possible, building constituencies of support, promoting values, and challenging the powerful forces that keep us unsustainable.  

In his inspiring book, Blessed Unrest, the green business writer Paul Hawken talks about the million plus organisations around the world working on aspects of a sustainable future. It is an inspiring, fluid, and open movement — a dose of hope. 

CD: What organisations do you think are doing a great job at leading change?  

EM: My favourite example of the inspiring power of capacity building on sustainability is a European one, the story of which started life as a community project of installing a water mill in Flanders.  

One of those involved, Dirk, started to share the learning with others in Belgium and then reached across to other pioneers across Europe, including the Baywind Energy Co-op in the UK and a generation of farmer-owned renewable enterprises in Denmark. 

Forming a European network, ResCoop, Dirk created a programme of advice and support for people to come together to form their own renewable energy businesses, often non-profit, always community owned.  

The model is now recognised in the framework of EU energy and climate directives, is a significant generator of clean energy, and connects up 1,900 European energy co-operatives, involving over one million people who are now active in the energy transition. 

Last time I spoke to Dirk, he and the team were developing renewable energy grids for island communities across Europe. His own vision is undiminished, building what he terms an “energy democracy” in Europe.