Let's Talk Fundraising

As charities move into the busiest fundraising period of the year, the pressure on teams to deliver ramps up too. In this episode of Let's Talk Fundraising, the official podcast from the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, host Tim Beynon is joined by co-host Katie Docherty, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, and guest Graham Allcott, author of KIND: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work, for a timely conversation about kind leadership and fundraiser wellbeing.

Tim and Katie open by discussing why the run-up to Christmas is such a demanding time for fundraising teams, covering burnout, donor abuse and the support available through the Chartered Institute's work on donor codes of conduct. Graham then joins to unpack the difference between being nice and being kind, drawing on research linking kindness to trust and psychological safety, and offers practical starting points for building a kinder culture, even in small charities with no dedicated HR function. It's a conversation with genuine, practical relevance for any fundraising manager or leader trying to support their team, and themselves, through the festive crunch.

Meet the guests

Katie Docherty is Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising. She brings a sector-wide view of the pressures facing fundraisers, from wellbeing and workload to donor behaviour, and speaks to the Institute's ongoing work on codes of conduct and support resources for charities.

Graham Allcott is one of the world's leading providers of productivity training and consultancy, and the author of several bestselling books, including How to Be a Productivity Ninja. His latest book, KIND: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work, explores why kinder, more human-centred workplace cultures drive stronger performance, and brings that thinking to the fundraising sector in this conversation.

Useful links

Chartered Institute of Fundraising - How to get started with a donor code of conduct: https://ciof.org.uk/library/resources/how-to-get-started-with-the-donor-code-of-conduct/

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Produced by The Good Studio - thegoodstudio.co.uk

Creators and Guests

Host
Katie Docherty
Chief Executive, Chartered Institute of Fundraising
Host
Tim Beynon
Tim has spent 20 years heading up charity comms teams and today runs The Good Studio, producing content - including this podcast - for charities and purpose-led organisations.
Guest
Graham Allcott
Author, KIND - The quiet power of kindness at work

What is Let's Talk Fundraising?

Let’s Talk Fundraising is the official podcast of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, the charity that champions a lifetime of impact, a career in fundraising. Exploring the issues, ideas and debates shaping fundraising today - it's hosted each month by Tim Beynon, together with a rotating co-host. From sector news and current affairs to ethics, wellbeing, leadership and best practice, each episode brings practical insight and thoughtful discussion with fundraisers and experts from across the UK. Whether you work in fundraising, lead a charity, sit on a board, or simply want to understand how fundraising supports charities to change lives, Let’s Talk Fundraising is your place to listen, learn and be part of the conversation.

**Tim (00:08)**
Hello and welcome to Let's Talk Fundraising, the official podcast from the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, the charity that champions a lifetime of impact, a career in fundraising. From your very first fundraising role to decades of experience in the sector, this is the podcast that gets into the conversations that really matter — the challenges facing fundraisers today, the opportunities and everything in between.

I'm Tim Beynon, and every month I'm joined by a guest co-host and some fantastic voices from across the fundraising world to dig into what's really going on in our sector right now. And joining me for this episode, I'm delighted to welcome Katie Docherty, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising. Katie, I know how busy you are, so I'm pleased you could join us for this really important episode as we look ahead to Christmas and discuss how fundraisers can look after their own wellbeing during what can be the busiest time of the year.

Before we get to that and to them, how are you?

**Katie (01:04)**
I'm great, thank you, Tim. And thank you so much for having me on the podcast. This is such an important space where we, as you said, have the important conversations that really matter to people. And this is a great way of being able to reach as many fundraisers as we can. So I'm absolutely delighted to be here. Thanks.

**Tim (01:23)**
Fantastic, lovely to have you. And we've got a great interview coming up with Graham Allcott, author of *Kind: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work*, which takes a closer look at the principle of kind leadership and the difference it can make to managers and fundraisers. Are you a kind leader, or do you work for a kind leader? Stay tuned to find out what being kind in the workplace really means. And if you haven't already, please make sure you subscribe to the show on your usual podcast platform and leave us a rating so other fundraisers can find us. It just takes a few seconds, but it really does make a big difference.

So Katie, before we hear from Graham and find out what makes someone a kind leader, let's chat a bit more about this time of year — September to December, crunch time. It really can be such a hectic time of year for fundraisers, can't it? Christmas is just around the corner and the pressure's on.

**Katie (02:19)**
Absolutely. For many charities, the Christmas campaign can be the biggest and most important source of income in the entire year. And although we're calling it the Christmas campaign, people have been working on this for months, and it's critically important. And the thing that we all know about fundraisers is how much they care, right? They work too many hours because they care. They worry about meeting the target because they care. They worry about their supporters because they care. And this puts a huge amount of pressure on fundraisers, because they want to do the absolute best that they can for the cause they care about so much. So, huge time of year.

**Tim (03:06)**
Absolutely. And that pressure comes in all shapes and sizes, doesn't it? It comes from the fact that they care and they want to do the best they could possibly do for the charity and for the people that charity supports, or the cause that charity supports. But with all that pressure — which could also come from targets and all those kinds of things — how does that pressure manifest itself negatively? Are we talking about fundraisers feeling increased stress at this time of year, or exhaustion? How does it manifest itself?

**Katie (03:35)**
Absolutely. It can have a real impact on wellbeing, physical and mental health, because of all that pressure to raise the money, the extra hours that they're putting in, pressure from other parts of the organisation, because it is such a critical source of income. And the fundraisers are the people who end up feeling that pressure, and the toll it takes on them personally can be quite big.

**Tim (04:05)**
Absolutely. And do you think that senior leadership teams are always aware of that pressure? Is this something they should be more aware of, in terms of the demands being placed on their fundraising teams at this time of year, to ultimately make sure those appeals are a success — that every raffle ticket is sold and that every opportunity is taken? Do you think SLTs need to do more, or do you think they perhaps aren't aware of what the pressure looks like at the coalface?

**Katie (04:32)**
I think the answer to that depends entirely on the organisation. You hope that SLTs do understand it, but we know that a lot of senior leaders don't actually understand fundraising at all, and therefore they don't understand what their fundraisers are experiencing — and as a result, they're not putting the support in, but they're also maybe piling the pressure on. But at the same time, let's remember senior leaders are people too. And they have their own pressures that they're under, that maybe their teams aren't aware of. And they're possibly feeling all of that pressure and stress themselves. But the best organisations are ones where leaders do invest in wellbeing and make sure their staff are supported. And fundamentally, that improves the bottom line. If your fundraisers are supported, they'll do a better job and they'll bring in more money. So being kind and being a good leader isn't just about being nice — it's also about doing what's best for the organisation, I think.

**Tim (05:42)**
Interesting. I think we'll hear from Graham talking about the difference between being nice and being kind a little bit later on — really interesting conversation with Graham coming up. But we've talked before on the show about fundraiser wellbeing. I remember — I think that might even have been in the first episode of Let's Talk Fundraising — that we touched on wellbeing. And of course we've also talked about the need for a donor code of conduct, and we've touched on the sort of frightening level of abuse that fundraisers can face.

I wonder if that's heightened more at this time of year — is that something we see more of? And talking of abuse, second part to this same question: in light of what we've seen in the news recently about the abuse and threats that RNLI staff, volunteers and fundraisers have been facing in recent weeks, what support is available to fundraisers from the Chartered Institute and elsewhere at this time of year?

**Katie (06:34)**
Absolutely. And while you mentioned the RNLI — I was fortunate enough to speak to their Director of Fundraising just the other day, and to pass on to them that everyone in the fundraising sector has got their backs, and that we appreciate the work they're doing. We wanted to share with them our absolute solidarity and support for what they are experiencing right now.

Yes, this raises the wider issue of when fundraisers experience inappropriate behaviour. That might be the situation the RNLI are experiencing at the moment, with abuse and harassment, with politics mixing with saving people's lives — but also other fundraisers experiencing inappropriate behaviour just day to day. We've been doing a lot of work with Rogare, the fundraising think tank, on developing a code of conduct, and their recent research found that a significant proportion of fundraisers had experienced inappropriate behaviour in the last year or two — which means this is something that is happening all the time. So a donor code of conduct is about showing fundraisers that their employers have got their backs and will support them. It tells a fundraiser what to do if something inappropriate happens, it reassures the fundraiser that they will be believed and supported by their employer, and it gives the employer the policy framework to be able to tackle inappropriate behaviour. Unfortunately this is an issue that keeps going, but hopefully by developing resources like a donor code of conduct, and having these kinds of conversations and keeping this on the agenda, we can start to improve things for people in their day-to-day work.

**Tim (08:38)**
Yeah, so important. Do you think Christmas is a time of year when those risks to fundraisers are heightened — when the chances of them experiencing abuse and experiencing the kind of things those statistics demonstrate happen? Is Christmas a time when that's more likely?

**Katie (08:55)**
It has the potential to be more likely, because there is more in-person interaction between fundraisers and potential supporters or donors. We still have the old problem of the Christmas party situation and the social events that happen with alcohol involved. So fundraisers are more likely to find themselves in situations where something could happen. That's why it's really important that organisations put together things like a code of conduct, so that it's part of the risk assessment, part of the plan, part of the support mechanism — first of all, to try and stop it from happening in the first place, which is the ideal situation, but secondly, so that everybody knows what to do if it does happen. But it isn't just at Christmas — it's all year round, sadly.

**Tim (09:49)**
Yeah. And I'm assuming the Chartered Institute is somewhere people can turn to if they want support developing those kinds of processes and principles.

**Katie (09:58)**
Absolutely. If people go onto our website, they'll find templates, case studies — there's a wonderful case study from Scottish Ballet on how they went about developing it in their organisation — and tools. And there's a webinar coming up soon, and details for that will be on our website if people want to find out more.

**Tim (10:18)**
Absolutely. I think it was Antonia Brownlee from Scottish Ballet who came onto the show a few months back, so we'll signpost that in the show notes as well, so people can catch up on that interview if they'd like to. Coming back to pressure — what would you say to a fundraising manager who feels caught in the middle a little bit, under pressure from their own leadership to deliver, while also wanting to protect their team and act as a buffer to shield them from some of that pressure?

**Katie (10:46)**
So they're navigating a tricky path, aren't they? In terms of their own leadership, they need to manage upward — they need to make sure they're explaining to the people they report to what their staff are experiencing, what the impact of that is, and what's needed to help support those staff navigate those challenges while also bringing in as much money as possible. For the colleagues they're supporting, it's about being a listening ear, keeping regular check-ins, keeping in touch with your staff, hearing what's going on, providing support to help them navigate those challenges — being a good leader and a good advocate for their staff.

**Tim (11:39)**
And I think that links really well into what we're about to hear from Graham, because this all comes down to leadership, as Graham talks about. What do you think kind leadership should look like in practice, especially during these busy, high-pressure months?

**Katie (11:53)**
I think it's a blend of empathy and being a really good listener, listening out for those cues and what's going on — then being completely honest, because you might not be able to do what somebody wants, you might not be able to make anything better, but being honest with them so they understand what is possible. I think it's bringing those three things together — empathy, listening and honesty — that is being a kind leader. Making false promises, or not making decisions, that's not being kind. That's not going to help anybody. So that's what I would suggest.

**Tim (12:37)**
Fantastic. So thanks, Katie. This is such an important conversation at this time of year — after all, Christmas is the season of goodwill, to use a cliché. So kindness from leaders should be a given at this time of year, and our guest today, Graham Allcott, is just the person to ask. Graham is the author of *Kind: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work*. The blurb on the back of the book tells us that the most successful leaders and organisations recognise that kindness builds empathy, trust — as you mentioned — and psychological safety.

It goes on to say the outcomes in many businesses of kind leadership are more creativity, better quality decision-making, safer critical thinking, higher levels of staff loyalty, flexibility and retention, a heightened sense of engagement, and higher productivity and profitability. What a list. But does all this play out in the same way when it comes to kind leadership in the third sector and with fundraising teams? Let's find out.

**Tim (13:41)**
Graham, welcome to Let's Talk Fundraising. It's lovely to welcome you onto the show, and a really important conversation we're going to be having today about kindness. I'm looking at you on the screen here, and for those who are listening, I'll describe what I'm seeing — right behind you is a picture with the word "kind" in great big letters. So a great big clue for what we're going to be talking about today. So it's lovely to welcome you on to talk about how kindness fits into the charity space. We've already heard from Katie on the show — she and I talked a bit about the pressures fundraisers face at this time of year especially. Your book makes the case that kindness isn't just a nice-to-have, but something that really drives real outcomes — things like trust, creativity, retention and the loyalty that supporters feel. Why do you think kindness can sometimes get overlooked as a leadership skill, especially somewhere like the charity sector, where you'd probably be right to think it was something that just comes naturally to everyone who works in a charity?

**Graham (14:46)**
Yes. Okay, so let's talk about why it's overlooked first, and then I'll tell you about my own experiences with the charity sector after that. I think why it gets overlooked — here's the thing. If you think about the archetypes that reflect work, the perception most people get about work is the business baddie, right? It's like *Dragons' Den*, *Shark Tank*, *The Apprentice*, Mr Burns in *The Simpsons*. And you can date this right back to Ebenezer Scrooge and Shylock in Shakespeare and things like that. So there's this assumption that, within business — and probably more widely within work — the way you get success is by being selfish and by being probably a little bit evil. There's this assumption in society, which I think has really escalated in the last five to ten years, that there's this bunch of evil overlords who are ultimately going to save us, but we have to let them be evil to make that happen, right? Whether it's AI or billionaires or whatever's in the news, there are just so many examples of that.

Often those people aren't the proof that unkindness leads to success — they're the outlier, the exception that proves the rule. If you take Steve Jobs as a really good example of this — one of the things about Steve Jobs's reputation that really follows him around is the idea that he would dress down the entire company in an all-hands meeting, dressing down one person who'd done one thing wrong, shouting and screaming, behaving really badly. And a lot of people then say, "Well, that's how I become successful. That's how I get the next Apple — I just have to be like Steve Jobs." But the thing about Steve Jobs is he was a really brilliant, intuitive designer — that's the thing that made him successful. And you could probably argue — and I've interviewed some people who worked directly for Steve Jobs — that Apple would have been an even bigger success, or would have had success quicker, if he'd been a kinder leader. So there are all kinds of things in our human culture that I think point to unkindness as being a thing that drives success. But actually, if you look at the data — particularly the data around the worlds of HR and learning and development and people and culture — there are some really strong correlations between cultures that are kinder, and leaders who behave well, being the cultures that drive success.

There's a very big study that was done as part of Jim Collins's book *Good to Great*, twenty-odd years ago, that basically tracks the S&P 500, the top five hundred companies in the States, and found that the ones that invested more in both the people who worked for the company and the people who were their customers had better results than the ones that didn't invest in policies around those areas. And there are loads more recent examples that back that study up. So it really doesn't matter what sector you're in, or what kind of work you're doing — if you are a people-centred organisation, you are more likely to succeed. And the opposite is also true. So when you take that data, there's a very clear case to be made for kindness.

The thing that often works against kindness — which is why, behind me on the wall here, I have "kind" in massive bold letters — is that kindness is often something that acts quietly. Kindness is often felt in the heart, not the head. We've all got those stories of people we've worked with who we'd just do anything for, because they've got our back and they've really been there for us in moments of need. We feel that so deeply in our hearts, not our heads, and it's very personal. So the thing that would make that story really remarkable for me is probably stuff I either don't want to share, or if I did share, wouldn't actually be that memorable or useful to someone else. It acts very quietly.

And the other thing, coming back to the charity sector — it's mission-driven, and often it's very people-driven, obviously, because there's a sort of notion of who the people are that you want to help. My experience — I ran a charity a long time ago called Student Volunteering England, which then became part of Volunteering England, and that became part of NCVO in the end — I also worked at a couple of other charities. I think there's a bit of a fallacy that, because we're good charity people, and we're perhaps choosing to forego a bit of salary to make sure we can sleep at night and do really great work, that automatically makes the culture of our workplace kind. And the reason I say that is that often what you're dealing with in charities is lots of people coming in with lots of subjective passion and drive, wanting to push certain things forward. And sometimes there's a bit of overlap, or rupture, or not quite alignment in terms of what you want to see come to the fore in that organisation. And when you've got people who really care about stuff, that can actually lead to much harder-working cultures than places where you just turn up and it's really simple what you're trying to do — it's just the numbers on a spreadsheet, are they going up or down. Of course you have that in the charity sector too, in terms of targets, but you also have this sense of "what are we trying to achieve here, what are the messages we're trying to drive forward the most, how do we prioritise those things." So I think it's always really important to be humble and recognise that just because we're in the charity world doesn't let us off the hook. Just because the work we're doing out there in the world might be improving kindness in the world for other people, that doesn't let us off the hook with being kind to each other, and it doesn't let us off the hook in terms of our leadership either.

**Tim (21:15)**
Sure. Gosh, there's a lot to unpick there. Just listening to you talk — you were talking about perceptions, and it's really interesting when you talk about that "baddie" culture in terms of how people think about business. I immediately thought of shows like *The Apprentice*, with Lord Sugar sat at a table tearing people's ideas apart.

**Graham (21:42)**
Contestants are worse.

**Tim (21:44)**
True, true, true. I'm absolutely not likening the charity sector to *The Apprentice*, or anyone who's been on it! But you're absolutely right about that kind of image and perception — that in business, to be successful, you've got to be a Lord Sugar type. But on the other side of things, I think there's this public perception of charity as being a place where — I've talked to people in the past who can't believe people who work for charities get paid. "Surely you must do it just out of the love of doing it, surely you're doing this fantastic work because you care so deeply about the cause" — and to a very large degree, that's true. But when it comes to kindness — and businesses and charities are essentially both businesses at the end of the day, they've got to make money in the same way as businesses do, albeit not for profit, but they're still organisations that work in a similar way — is kindness the same in both a pure business environment and a charitable environment, or are there distinctions between the two?

**Graham (22:51)**
I think it's the same. A good charity makes a profit — they just call it reserves or surplus. Having worked across both — I've set up my own businesses, I've worked in a lot of big corporates, I've also worked with a lot of charities, big and small, both as a paid consultant and pro bono — I've seen a really broad range. I think there can be a lot of misconceptions between one and the other, but fundamentally, when you get down to how people are managed, how people agree what the work looks like, how people come together and collaborate on how to push stuff forward, it's just the same. And I think there's probably more opportunity now than ever to cross into those different worlds — to come from the corporate world into the charity space and vice versa. There's so much transferable skill between the two.

**Tim (23:51)**
For sure, yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that really struck me in the book is where you talk about kindness being quieter and less visible than things like bullying and bad-boy behaviour, as we've talked about. So how does a leader actually demonstrate kindness in a way that's felt, rather than just seen as a token gesture?

**Graham (24:15)**
I think there's a couple of different things here. It's a bit like customer service, right — everyone tells the story of bad customer service. Bad behaviour gets the headlines, everyone's interested in it, they want to gossip about it, and so on. But there is real virality to the stories we can tell around kindness too — we always see those things online, where someone gives someone some money or whatever, and those clips go viral. So I think we need to think about the stories we're telling.

Timpson is a really good example of a company that does this. They have a kindness-to-customers policy — everyone in the company has this policy and the authority to just do kind things for customers when they come in. There's a really famous story where a guy comes in with his daughter, and his daughter has a prosthetic limb, and the limb is broken. It turns out you can fix prosthetic limbs using the same machine you fix shoes with. The guy working in the Timpson store figured this out because he could see the guy was really stressed and his daughter's limb was broken — so he fixes the limb, the daughter's delighted, the dad's there with his credit card going "just take whatever you want," and the guy working at Timpson's says, "That's on us." This really beautiful moment. And what Timpson have really got down is a kindness-awards programme that works regionally — so that manager is then sharing that story with all the other branch managers in that local area, and it goes out nationally. How many times have I told that story, right? So those really viral stories of kindness tell us a lot about the expectations we have as a culture, the kind of things we want to promote, the kind of behaviours we're really looking for. So I think it's incumbent on all of us, as managers and leaders, to really think: what are the stories we want people to be telling about what it's like to work here? So thinking about the storytelling and the virality of kindness is really important.

It can be really difficult, though, because often, let's be real — the kindest things a manager has done for me in my career are often things that are slightly against company policy. It's like, "Graham, you're in a real bind here — my policy is really only to give you a day or two off, whatever — but take the rest of the week, I won't tell anyone, see you Monday." And you're like, "Okay, thank you so much." That's the kind of thing I'm not really going to tell anyone else about, because I don't want to get my manager in trouble. But it's the kind of thing where, in someone's time of need, that's the biggest opportunity you have to say to that person, "I've got your back. I really appreciate and respect everything you've done in the last few years, and the way I can repay you for that is right now." And it's about doing it at the time it matters most. So I think, for a number of reasons, kindness can be quite quiet — but I think we can all sprinkle it around, and use storytelling as a way to really bring it to the fore and make it part of the culture we're trying to build.

**Tim (27:33)**
It really is such a fascinating subject. One thing that springs to mind as I'm listening to you talk is the idea that leaders might sometimes struggle with kindness out of fear of crossing a professional boundary. I was thinking about David Brent in *The Office* — all he wanted was to be mates with all the people who worked for him.

**Graham (28:18)**
Yes.

**Tim (28:18)**
And so he's trying to be kind and be nice, but I'm thinking about leaders — and especially charity leaders, fundraising leaders, senior leaders — who often have to make hard decisions that impact teams. We saw it in *The Office*, David Brent had to tell them they might be facing redundancy.

**Graham (28:18)**
I was trying to think about moments in that show — I'm a big fan of *The Office* — moments where he was actually trying to be kind. He definitely wanted to be liked, and he definitely wanted to be seen as comedically funny, but—

**Tim (28:33)**
Yeah.

**Graham (28:36)**
The moments where he actually wanted to be kind — the only one I can think of, which shows how much of a geek I am about that show, is when he tries to sing the Princess Diana song to Dawn. That's him trying to console Dawn. That's probably the one — but there aren't many moments like that where he's genuinely trying to be kind. He's definitely trying to be liked, which is an interesting distinction.

**Tim (28:59)**
How difficult is it for managers to be kind when they've got bad news to give — when there's a decision that has to be made for the sake of the business that could impact staff negatively, and there's no way to sugarcoat that news? Is there a kind way to deliver that news?

**Graham (29:19)**
Yes. I think a really important distinction to make here is between "nice" and "kind." The thing that differentiates the two is truth. I often say being nice is about telling people what they want to hear, and being kind is about telling people what they need to hear. Kindness is about truth and grace — people respect the truth if it's delivered with enough grace, with enough consideration for the effect it's going to have on that person. It's a bit like salted caramel — why is salted caramel the best food? Because you've got the truth, which is the salt, and then the caramel, which is the sweetness. If you've only got sweetness — if you're just trying to be nice and people-please all the time, and you're shirking the truth — niceness gets sickly very, very quickly. It's not good to be around. I've seen that in lots of organisations — I think it's probably more prevalent in charities than in commercial businesses, this idea of "let's not rock the boat, let's just make everyone as happy as we can" and shirk those bigger truths. Probably less so in fundraising, where you have lots of targets, but certainly in other parts of charities I've seen that. But also, if you have too much truth, too much salt ruins any food, right? So it's about getting that combination right — the salt and the sweetness. I think people see through sugar-coating and the "shit sandwich" approach very, very quickly. If you open a management or supervision conversation with, "Well, the good news is..." people are just waiting for the bad news that's coming in the middle of the sandwich.

**Tim (31:08)**
"The good news is my job is safe."

**Graham (31:10)**
Yeah, it's back to David Brent — "the good news is, I have been promoted." But I think the way of doing that authentically is very personal to each person. There's no script I can give you for that — it has to be delivered as you. I would deliver it differently to how someone else would, and there'd be pros and cons to all of that. But I think it's got to feel personal — part of that "truth and grace" idea is that it has to feel authentic, it has to feel like you genuinely care, and there's no substitute for that. You can't pretend to care — if people sense you're pretending, the game's over, and it falls flat very quickly.

I've had more than one occasion in my career where I've had to lead redundancies, and I can think of examples where there's the business decision — here's the transparency and clarity around "guys, this is where we're at, I've got to make a decision, and we've got to prioritise keeping the show on the road" — but also, in that moment, what can I do to help? I think the way *not* to deal with that with grace is to deliver that news via a text message, which happens — or even to deliver it in a way that comes as total shock, because you've given people no context in the weeks or lead-up to it. There are ways to do it that are genuine, transparent, fair, honest, and also really kind and caring — "I want to make your transition as smooth as possible, I want to give you the maximum number of weeks' notice that I possibly can."

I think about the last time we did that at Think Productive, a good few years ago — we had to let somebody go, and there were three of us in the room: me, the MD, and that person. All three of us cried in the room. That person still works for us on a consultancy basis now. So I think there are ways to do that which are genuine, transparent, fair, honest, and kind. And I think that's also where people start cutting corners as managers, particularly when finances get tough — but it's always worth thinking not just about the extra couple of weeks of money you're giving that person as part of a redundancy, but that I'm paying that extra money I don't need to pay contractually, because it's cheap. It's not expensive — it's cheap because of what it tells everybody else who's still there: this is a place that values me, this is how we look after people. The times it's toughest are the times when choosing kindness tells the best story and gives the best signal about the care and the way you want to operate. So I think there are always ways to do that stuff.

I run a programme every year or so called Kindful Leadership, and I remember one of the questions I got on it last year was — one of my principles in the book is "people first, work second, always" — and one of the questions I quite often get with that is, "Well, is that just not going to be abused? Are people going to take the piss?" There's this whole idea that if you show too much kindness, it turns into niceness where there are no boundaries. And I can honestly say that if you show that level of trust in people, they show it back. I've had probably one, maybe two situations in twenty years where that approach has led to someone not quite being on the same page about what that looks like, and not wanting to show the same level of commitment back. And to me, that's a price worth paying. I think you can do that, and once you notice it's happening, you can have that conversation. Other than that, for me it's just always been the best way to work.

**Tim (35:51)**
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to talk a little bit about this — when this episode goes out, we're steamrollering towards Christmas, and in the charity world, it's full steam ahead for Christmas at the moment. In terms of fundraising, obviously there's lots of pressure on fundraising teams, and in your book you talk about psychological safety and the link between kindness and psychological safety. I'd like to dig into that a little — what might psychological safety actually mean, and what might it look like day-to-day for a fundraising team under a ton of pressure in the build-up to Christmas? Is that all about how mistakes are handled, how asks are made, how teams are communicated to, or is it something bigger than that?

**Graham (36:38)**
Yeah, so in the book I wanted to make sure there was a big section on the science of kindness, because I was very aware that the people who were probably going to buy the book were people who already thought of themselves as being on Team Kind — it probably wasn't going to be bought by the Steve Jobses of the world as a user manual for change. But they'd buy the book and give it to their bosses and say, "Hey, this is how I want the culture to be, what do you think?" and it would start a conversation. I've had loads of feedback that that's exactly who's bought the book and what's happened.

So I put this big science section in at the beginning, and it turns out that when you look at what kindness leads to — kindness and empathy work in a bit of a loop. The more empathetic you are, the kinder you are, and vice versa. If you set people kindness challenges, they become more empathetic — so you've got this lovely virtuous circle. But kindness and empathy lead to trust. Trust is a one-to-one transaction — I trust you, I don't trust them, whatever, it's just a personal thing. But trust leads to psychological safety, which is a one-to-many transaction. It's about saying, "I think this room, or this group, is safe enough for me to stand up and take an interpersonal risk — to say a difficult truth, to share an idea that might be a bit harebrained or out there and see whether it lands, or give really difficult feedback." All of that requires a sense of psychological safety — not just trust between you and your boss, but something that exists within the room.

Psychological safety, it turns out, is one of the key drivers of performance. There was a study done at Google called Project Aristotle — you can look this up. Google were building all these teams, and a lot of the stuff at Google — Google Maps, Google Keep, all this — came out of giving employees half a day on a Friday, or one Friday a fortnight, just to play. And these amazing things came out that weren't on Google's radar or in the strategic plan — just talented people building things for fun. So Google got fascinated with how to build teams, and what they found was that the most successful teams weren't the ones with the biggest targets, or more or less staff, or a higher level of talent. It had nothing to do with the size of the team. The single biggest factor in their success was whether the team felt psychologically safe — because as you're building and innovating, there needs to be a lot of truth in there.

**Tim (39:25)**
So—

**Graham (39:25)**
There needs to be a lot of "I like the direction you're going, but half of this stuff doesn't work" — and we need to make that decision and fail fast. We need to really own mistakes, but also never attach blame to those mistakes. All of that requires this sense of psychological safety.

When it comes to fundraisers in the lead-up to Christmas — and really any busy environment — one of the biggest sources of accidental unkindness is busyness. Because that's the moment when, because we're busy, we stop listening to each other quite so much. We might miss the cue that someone's struggling, or we might deliver something a bit hastily, a bit sharply, a bit snappily because we're tired, and it goes down the wrong way. So I think often the moments of busyness are the moments where you really have to take a step back and think, "how am I really coming across?" I do this too — I've written a whole book about it and I still fall for all the same mistakes, it doesn't make me immune. But there are things you can do, particularly around the rhythm or cycle of meetings — you can just use that moment in a meeting to get everybody to slow down a little bit, or just breathe. Doing that in the parts of the year where that's just not really possible much elsewhere, because there's so much going on — that's a real gift you're giving those people.

I'm really influenced by the work of Nancy Kline when it comes to meetings — she wrote the book *Time to Think*, and has a whole methodology around the thinking environment. It's very influential in a lot of charities actually — Nancy's partner, Christopher Spence, used to run Volunteering England, and I worked with him directly quite a bit. Fiona Dore is also a facilitator for Nancy Kline's programme and does lots of work with charities around London. That model, around treating meetings as a space where everybody is a thinking partner, and everybody has an equal stake in the meeting no matter their sense of hierarchy in the organisation, is really huge for developing psychological safety and can really help bring out the best ideas.

**Tim (41:47)**
Yeah, interesting about busyness — and obviously the build-up to Christmas is a really busy time of year, and fundraising leaders in particular often focus on targets and metrics at this time of year — the board wants a forecast, the trustees want their numbers, all that kind of stuff. Is there a tension there between that performance culture, where people are looking at the spreadsheets, and finding the space for kindness — or can the two coexist? What would your advice be for charities feeling that pressure?

**Graham (42:18)**
I think the two can coexist. The spreadsheets are important, the numbers are important, the targets are important — there's no getting away from that. One thing — and this is something Fiona Dore taught me, back to Nancy Kline and the Time to Think approach — was creating targets and acknowledging effort as well as results. The number of hours someone's worked on something, the way someone's really gone overboard to get a proposal in on time or deliver the best pitch they can. Whether you win the pitch is important, but it's almost irrelevant to the kindness of that moment — you're rewarding and praising the effort, not just the results. When you're very target-driven, that becomes something we can lose sight of, I think.

The other thing is: where you've got targets that, as an organisation, you might not be quite meeting, but you know the team is doing everything — you've got to build the kindness into that. There are two ways of looking at a target. If you're behind on a target, you can think of it as someone pointing at you, going "the target," or you can think of it in a different dynamic, where the two of you are sitting side by side, both pointing at it, going "what do we do? How do we do this differently?" So trying not to make those things subjective, and things we're attaching blame to, is really important, because you still need that drive, you still need that sense of working towards the target — but doing that in a way that's also kind. I think the two can absolutely coexist.

**Tim (44:12)**
Closely aligned to that — I felt this myself as a manager over the years — sometimes there's a lot of pressure from above on a department, and as a manager, sometimes you want to shield your team from some of that pressure, so you absorb it yourself. Is that right or wrong? Is there a way to stay kind to your team and look after them without absorbing all that pressure yourself and burning out as a result?

**Graham (44:48)**
I think the answer is: it depends. It depends on the situation. My business is called Think Productive, and I think there's often a mismatch between what we're trying to sell people in the room when we run workshops — that you can be resilient, have a good work-life balance, and here are the productivity skills that let you leave work on time, so your balance is better, your stress is lower. But of course, when we go into organisations, what we're really being asked to sell is people going faster on the hamster wheel. We'll sit there and say, "we don't deliver faster on the hamster wheel, we deliver more sustainable human productivity," and people will go, "yeah, cool, faster on the hamster wheel, let's book it." People will always be down with that.

So I think, given that's the reality, you've always got to think about who's got the most resilience in the bank. Some people will already be approaching Christmas feeling very frayed and used up and depleted, and other people have just come back from holiday and are bouncing. You've got to think of those things as part of an interconnectedness. It's actually one of the things that's probably shifted for me on a philosophical level — my first book, *How to Be a Productivity Ninja*, did really well, and productivity's been this big theme for me, but really at the heart of that book is the idea that there's this other world out there, information overload, and my job is to survive — it's very individualistic. Whereas *Kind*, as an idea, is very much about being interconnected, not independent. That's probably the biggest philosophical shift I've made in my work in the last five years or so — really starting to think about how we frame the world as all connected, and interdependence as the highest value, rather than seeing the world as independence being the highest value, being self-reliant, doing everything yourself, it's all about the self.

Recognising that there's probably a time when I'm up and you're down, and I've got more energy and you haven't — I think we have to see the world like that, because that cooperation is not just what makes high-performing teams, but also what makes life more interesting and more beautiful, actually. It's the moment where you really feel like someone's got your back, or someone's really appreciative because you didn't quite realise the strain they were under, but they were. That's the stuff that, certainly, lights me up. Whenever I've done keynotes around this book, and talking about kindness and the quiet power of kindness at work, people really get that, because I think often those moments are so unexpected. I tell a story in my keynote about being stressed — weirdly, since we're talking Christmas, it was the week before Christmas at Euston station, an absolute bun fight to get on the train, and I'm there with my autistic son, and we get halfway down the aisle of the train and he has an autistic meltdown. On top of the stress of just wanting to get home for Christmas, my son's having a meltdown, and I'm feeling the daggers of eyes of every other person on the train, judging me as a bad parent. And this one guy just got up from his seat and gave me his seat, and I sat down with my son on my knee, and we spent an hour having this amazing conversation. It turned out his son had autism too, so he recognised what was going on, and we had this amazing connection. I got off the train, never saw that guy again, but I remember that moment so vividly, and it stayed with me for weeks and weeks. I think those moments — COVID's a really good example of this, where we realise quite how interconnected we are and how codependent we are, versus all the rubbish we're taught, basically in every bit of marketing, which is about how you optimise for yourself, how you go one step further than everyone else, how you beat the crowd — it's all propaganda, and the reality of the world is much more interconnected than that, I think.

**Tim (49:54)**
I mean, that's a beautiful story, and I really love that — but also part of me, hearing that story, is a bit sad, isn't it? That it's a surprise that someone would do that — that's not the norm necessarily. All those other people, all those eyes looking at you on the train — it's just the one guy who made the difference and was kind to you and offered you that seat. Kindness isn't a default for everybody, is it? It's not something everybody thinks of. So when it does happen, and you have beautiful stories like that, it seems such a shame that that's just the way it is.

**Graham (50:29)**
Yeah — but back to my phrase, the biggest source of accidental unkindness is busyness. And there's nowhere busier than a 7pm Friday-night train out of Euston, the last Friday before Christmas, right? What was so interesting about that particular experience was that I went into it so heads-down and individualistic, I wasn't ready to receive his kindness when it came, because I was just like, "gosh, don't look at anyone" — kind of in that mode. So I think we're just kind of set up for that, aren't we? Those things sadly become the default setting in society, and I think charities are a really good example of systems we're trying to create to bust us out of that. But we need more of it.

**Tim (51:24)**
We need more. Which segues nicely into my next question, about charities, especially small charities. If a listener runs a small charity, maybe with a handful of fundraisers, a small team, but perhaps no HR function to fall back on — what's a realistic starting point for them in terms of building a culture of kindness into that organisation? How do they go about starting that?

**Graham (51:53)**
I think a really useful place to start is just to have a conversation about it — which sounds really simple, but I've done some really interesting work in companies and charities in the last couple of years where bringing me in has been an excuse to have a conversation that either felt uncomfortable, or just hadn't been had for a long time. People have differing ideas about what a kind working world would look like for them, and because of that it can feel like a risky or difficult thing to broach. But what I'd say to people is: be brave and start that conversation. Often, once people get over the initial "slightly icky, God this is a bit touchy-feely" feeling, they get really energised by being involved in decision-making around what the culture looks like — it brings a sense of ownership just from having that conversation. So that's a really good starting point. I'd obviously say go and buy the book and experiment with it — there are eight principles in the book, all really based around how you be a kinder leader, manager or colleague, with exercises and things you can do.

The third thing I'd say is think about the various elements of culture — you can pin culture down to a few different things. What are the rituals and stories we're telling? What are the milestones we're expecting, and how do we communicate those? How do we meet? How do we collaborate, how do we get together? Going through those different elements of culture, those are often the places where you can start to get practical with it. Kindness is quite an esoteric idea, it can mean lots of different things to different people, but if you can start to get practical and think, "okay, what would a kinder meeting look like" — it probably looks like having a few minutes to check in and how we're feeling at the beginning, it probably looks like more listening than talking, more participation and autonomy in how we make decisions. Through that one example, you can start to think about what the practicalities look like. You're probably fine if you start the conversation at the beginning around what a kind working environment would look like — that will get you half the answers, and then you go from there.

**Tim (54:39)**
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think one of the traps a lot of charities fall into is being so focused on supporting their service users — especially benevolent organisations — that they don't take the time to lift their head up and look around at how they are with each other internally. Have you seen that kind of thing?

**Graham (55:00)**
Yes. And to go one step further on that — I was working with a big aid organisation a year or so ago, and they were dealing with people in huge crisis situations. All the people working for that organisation were burning out themselves, partly because of the things they were seeing and the hours they had to work, and that sense of "I want to work twenty-three hours a day, because there are people here who need me, who are in a worse position than me, and that's my calling, that's why I'm here." I can totally empathise with that if I'm in a war zone doing really difficult work — this is super difficult stuff.

But just to take that one step further — principle one in the book is "kindness starts with you." I think we all have this natural tendency, when we think about kindness, to think first about how we pay forward a parking meter, or donate to charity, or help somebody else who needs us — our first thought is never "what do I need, and how do I be kind to me, what does kindness to myself look like." I think this is a really big thing where we're missing a trick, because when we role-model kindness to ourselves, we're doing two really important things. By me turning my emails off at the right time, or making sure I'm taking enough breaks or downtime or leave, by doing those things that are kind to me, I'm showing everybody else in the organisation that they can do that too — I'm role-modelling it in that sense. But I'm also role-modelling, in my own brain, abundance over scarcity. We're taught — and if you come back to everything on Instagram that's an ad, it's basically telling you you're not enough, it's a scarcity mindset. If we can switch that round and start to role-model abundance — "I am enough, I've done my day's work, I know there's a whole load of stuff on the to-do list, but I'm going to leave now, I'm going to go home" — that can be a really difficult thing for lots of people, it's difficult for me. But doing it regularly starts to rewire the brain away from that scarcity mindset. And then, when you're in a situation where you notice someone needs your kindness, you don't have that scarcity mindset — you don't immediately think, "someone needs my help, but I don't have enough time, there isn't enough." You start to think, "well, there is enough, and I'm enough, and there's enough for me to offer this help." So when you start kindness with you, it's ultimately not selfish — in fact it's the opposite. We can think of self-care as selfish, but actually it's the height of generosity, because you're rewiring your own brain to commit to more kindness as a result. The role-modelling that goes on, not only in our own heads but in the people around us — when our first thought about kindness is "who's over there in crisis" — it's the cliché of putting on your own oxygen mask first. It puts you in a much better place to do more, and to be kinder to everybody else around you.

**Tim (58:31)**
It's a perfect way to wrap up — I think starting a culture of kindness starts with being kind to yourself. I think that's a brilliant way to wrap this conversation up. Graham, thank you so much for joining us — it's been such a fascinating conversation, I've really enjoyed what we've chatted through today. Before we go though, tell me — where can people find out more about your book, your work, and about you?

**Graham (58:53)**
Yeah, thank you, Tim, I've really enjoyed this conversation. If you want to find out more, you can just go to GrahamAllcott.com — that's A-L-L-C-O-T-T, GrahamAllcott.com. On the home page — I think it's actually on every page of my website — there's a little form you can fill in with your email address. I do a weekly email on a Sunday called *Rev Up for the Week*. The idea is it's one positive or productive idea for the week ahead, always written by me, not by AI, and always written that week — often reacting to stuff that's in the news, or going on. It goes out every Sunday at 4pm, ready for you arriving back into the office or checking your phone on a Monday morning. So if you want to sign up for that, go there. And yeah, I do a lot of keynotes and workshops around different organisations, and the book is called *Kind: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work*, which I like to say is available from all good bookshops, and the bad ones too.

**Tim (59:50)**
Fantastic, Graham. The book sounds amazing — well, it is amazing, I've had a read through, and it's fantastic. You're also very kindly giving us a signed copy to give away, which is fantastic — so thank you very much for that.

**Graham (1:00:01)**
Yes, I'll put it in the post, Tim, thank you.

**Tim (1:00:04)**
Thanks, Graham.

**Tim (1:00:10)**
This is the part of the show where we take a look at some of the things making headlines in the fundraising world at the moment. To start us off, the Chartered Institute of Fundraising has announced a partnership with Charity Tracker to look at monthly fundraising activity. The long-term study aims to better understand fundraising trends and identify opportunities for charities to grow public support. The Chartered Institute will now have a regular question in Charity Tracker's monthly public survey, asking members of the public if they've been asked to donate to charity in the last four weeks. Participants will be asked to select from a list of fundraising approaches, including a range of fundraising channels, workplace giving, and requests from family and friends. The new partnership revealed that in August, 63% of adults surveyed had been asked to donate to charity. The CIOF will use this data to identify trends in fundraising, and any gaps where changes or improvements could be made, as part of the work they're doing with their Championing Fundraising and Growing Giving panels.

Katie?

**Katie (1:01:17)**
So, two months after a UK government reshuffle, Vicky Foxcroft has been unveiled as the new Charities Minister, taking over the brief from Stephanie Peacock. Foxcroft is the current MP for Lewisham North, and her portfolio will include youth, gambling, loneliness and digital inclusion, alongside civil society. We at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising will be writing to her to welcome her into post, and we hope to meet her as soon as possible, because charities and fundraisers make a huge contribution to communities and the economy across the whole of the UK, and there are really important issues facing the sector that require engagement with government — so we welcome this appointment.

**Tim (1:02:10)**
That's a wrap for episode nine of Let's Talk Fundraising. A huge thank you to Graham Allcott for bringing a little bit of kindness to the show, and thanks as well, of course, to Katie for joining me in the co-host chair. I hope you enjoyed it, Katie — it wasn't too painful, was it?

**Katie (1:02:25)**
No, it was great fun. Thank you so much for having me — I really appreciate the opportunity.

**Tim (1:02:30)**
No problem at all. Now, if this episode has made you think about how you might approach the busy festive period differently this year, you can find all the links in the show notes to Graham's book and other resources that can help you look after yourself and your teams at this time of year. And if anything we've discussed in this episode has struck a chord with you, we'd love to hear from you too. Have you felt pressure in the build-up to Christmas in the past? How are you planning to support your fundraising teams this year? What works for you in terms of self-care at this time of year? You can send us a voice note or drop us an email to tell us all about it — all the details, as ever, are in the show notes. And of course, if you're enjoying Let's Talk Fundraising, please take a moment to give us a follow and a five-star rating on whatever platform you're listening to us on. It really does make a difference and helps other fundraisers find us.

We'll be back in a month's time with the next episode. So until then, be kind to each other, and take care.