Charities need to hand over their message to their community

When I started working with charities, over a decade ago, I was introduced to a simple truth which has stuck in my mind since: "People give to people"

People don't give their time, money, or voice to charitable "brands", "organisations", or "institutions". It is the cause they're inspired to support – be that transforming the wellbeing of other people, other species, or the precious world we all depend upon. By recognising that "people give to people", we tell ourselves as charities not to get in the way. Don't put ourselves before the cause. Try to be the catalyst and facilitator, the inspiration and means by which people can change the world.

I believe that truth still holds today (and that as a sector, we're still not good enough at keeping to it). But increasingly, I've recognised a complementary truth running alongside it: "People give with people".

At heart, people are social animals. Our society is founded upon, and develops through, the transfer of ideas, emotions, connections and experiences between people. We're happiest when we're acting with others. We thrive in groups.

At Friends of the Earth, we aim to change the world through connecting ideas and people. We've been transforming the way we involve people, building on these insights to find ways to connect people directly with their real world impact, drawing on their existing communities and/or introducing new ones.

Though this can often be easier said than done.

For example, we realised that there was a great opportunity to connect our geographical communities with each other and a wider online community through the magic of the worldwide web. Our misstep was to then build our own exclusive digital site for social networking, when it transpires there are a fair few social networking sites already out there - not least Facebook - providing much of the facilities we tried to design in-house. It's too easy to fall into the trap of believing "if we build it, they will come".

Yet I'm still happy we tried. It's critical that charities are testing new ways to connect people with people. It's OK to fail, as long as you learn and do it better next time. We're now finding ways to evolve the tool we built, and join up with a suite of other tools already out there, so that our groups can then make their own choices about what to use in what context. Pleasingly, it's a combination of staff, volunteers and group members who are working together on improving our approach.

And this last point is perhaps the most significant. We are at our strongest when we're empowering others to run with their own ideas to deliver on our message, to form their communities and actions that can deliver the change we seek. It's crucial that the charity sector improves at talking with people, not at them, freeing up communities to thrive as they deliver with us our collective mission for a better world.

Joe Jenkins is director of fundraising, communications and activism at Friends of the Earth

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