Why do I like working with charities and the non profit sector?

When I first started Jackdaw Web Design back in 2016 I was happy to work with anyone – non-profit, commercial, small business, corporate. I think this is common amongst start ups as not only can they not afford to turn work down, but they are also learning about who their ideal customers are. And getting to know your ideal customer is key to having a successful service/creative business, because if you don’t gel with your customer then 99% of the time it impacts on the quality of work you do for them, no matter how ‘professional’ you are.

Why is this? Because when you run a creative business, if you don’t understand and empathise with your customer then it’s very difficult to translate their goals into reality because your own opinions of how things should be done will inevitably clash with theirs. This almost always ends up with a customer who doesn’t like the product, and you not enjoying your work.

I very quickly decided that I didn’t want to work with medium or large businesses. I spent most of my life working with global corporations and was completely burned out from that style of working, so I decided that the way forward was to concentrate on small and micro businesses.

And then I was introduced to North Tyneside VODA, who provide support for developing and growing charities in North East England, and I started to learn about the voluntary and not for profit sector.

The voluntary sector often has a bad press with stories of staff lining their own pockets, CEOs being paid salaries that the charity can’t support and so on. But in my experience these are very much the exception. Every single charity I’ve worked with to date has blown my mind with the commitment the staff and volunteers show to their service users.

And that behaviour 100% matches my own ethos. I simply cannot and will not ever compromise the standard of work I do for anyone, whoever they are, and I cannot work with anyone who doesn’t do the same for their customers or clients.

Having this attitude myself and working with people who share that attitude are what make me happy and let me sleep at night – which is something that I really struggled to do when I was embroiled in the corporate world.

But there’s just one more reason why I like working with charities. The people who work in charities, whether staff, trustees or volunteers, are usually there because they want to do the work that the charity does, not spend their precious time getting to grips with a website. And that is the way that it should be – they do what they are good at and I do what I’m good at. Then I’m happy because I’m left to get on with it, they get a website that they like, and it gets done in a couple of weeks rather than the months or years it can take if you’re relying on a volunteer’s good will.