I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how charities justify themselves. Not in a theoretical way, you understand, but in terms of how they demonstrate their impact.

Most charities, it seems to me, aren’t very good at this. They waffle on about how they want to make the world a better place, but don't explain how they plan to do it.

Sure, they explain their short-term goals and performance indicators. But they don't give much indication of why those goals are important, or how they contribute to the charity’s mission.

The result is a discrepancy between what a charity hopes to achieve, and what it actually does.

So it came as an enormous pleasure for me to read Cancer Research UK’s annual report. Though the following doubtless marks me out as an enormous nerd, it made me genuinely excited to read CR-UK’s fantastic vision statement, explanation of its purpose, and objectives.

This is why. CR-UK’s vision is ‘Together we will beat cancer.’ That’s pretty standard stuff, so far as inspiring slogans go. But CR-UK also has a strategy to make sure that it does beat cancer – in the end. Its purpose-statement explains how: it reveals how CR-UK will fund research to diagnose and treat cancer, how it will use the research findings to improve all cancer-patients’ lives, how it will help cancer patients cope with the disease, and how it will work in partnership with other organizations to bring all this about.

If all this sounds snooze-worthy, please think again. CR-UK has done something very few charities ever do: explain how its vision might actually be achieved. Drilling down a little deeper – into CR-UK’s objectives – it becomes even clearer that the charity has a detailed plan to ensure that the charity’s work is directed to achieving the vision.

This – together with its fantastic Quality of Reporting score – gives me enormous confidence in CR-UK’s work. Of course, CR-UK might have problems achieving its ambitious targets. But the fact it has the right targets in place is surely an excellent start.
 

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