There has been a lot written in recent weeks about charity infrastructure and the importance of funding this vital work.

The announcement that Reach Volunteering was facing closure brought many of those conversations to the fore. It is fantastic that funders and donors mobilised and that Reach will now continue its important work.

But Reach was not the first infrastructure organisation to find itself in this position, and it is unlikely to be the last.

Over a number of years, the patchwork of support available to charities has been contracting. That has happened at every level. Organisations have closed, services have disappeared and others have had to narrow their offer. At exactly the point when running a charity has arguably become harder, the infrastructure around charities has become less certain and less available.

There is a compelling case for funders to invest in that infrastructure. It multiplies impact and helps protect the value of wider investment in charities. Others, including leading funders, have made that case clearly in recent weeks, and we are enormously grateful to the partners who recognise the value of investing in our work.

But I also think those of us who provide and use charity infrastructure have a responsibility to look at ourselves.

We should be confident and unashamed about what infrastructure is for

Infrastructure is not always an easy sell. I’ve spent my career in this part of our sector and sometimes even getting the elevator pitch right is a challenge. In my late twenties, I remember telling someone at a house party that I was a charity governance consultant and watching their face fall!

Our impact can be one or several steps removed. That can make it harder to tell a compelling story about helping an organisation improve its governance, understand its finances or develop a better strategy.

But those fundamentals of organisational management matter enormously to impact.

That is why, as part of our new strategy, we have spent so much time developing our Theory of Change: really understanding which forms of support make the biggest contribution and drawing a clearer line of sight between our work and improvements in people’s lives and communities.

A charity with good governance makes better decisions. An organisation that understands its finances has more options when circumstances change. A leader with the right support is better equipped to lead their organisation and their people. A charity with a clear strategy is more likely to focus its resources where they can make the greatest difference.

In turn, leaders can become more confident, organisations more resilient and services more ambitious and effective. This support however practical is a crucial multiplier of impact.

That is why I think infrastructure organisations, and those who support us, should resist the temptation to overcomplicate the case for what we do. There can be pressure to reinvent the language, create a new model or make something fundamental sound more innovative than it needs to be.

But there is sometimes beauty in simplicity. Perhaps infrastructure could occasionally benefit from the Ronseal approach.

Part of that simplicity is recognising infrastructure for what it is: essential, fundamental and perpetual. It is not a onetime intervention or something the sector occasionally needs. It is part of what enables charities to function well over time.

Good governance matters. Good leadership matters. Understanding your finances matters. Having somebody experienced to call when you are wrestling with a difficult decision matters.

And increasingly, the value lies not just in access to information, but in having another person alongside you to make sense of it.

The context in which charities operate is changing, and the support around them has to change with it. Technology and AI will create opportunities to make expertise available differently and at much greater scale. But information is not the same as judgement. Access to more answers does not necessarily make difficult decisions any easier.

Our own research this year reinforced that for us. It is why our new strategy, Right Support, Right Time, places so much emphasis on practical expertise, trusted relationships and human judgement, available when organisations need them.

Not support for support’s sake, but support that helps organisations make better decisions and ultimately achieve more for the people and communities they exist to serve.

We must recognise the strength in different offers

The second challenge is for infrastructure organisations themselves.

There are hundreds of thousands of charities and community organisations across the UK. Their needs are extraordinarily varied. No single infrastructure organisation can, or should, try to meet all of them.

A healthy sector needs different providers, different specialisms and different routes into support. It needs national organisations, local organisations, specialist bodies, membership organisations, volunteer-led support, and commercial providers too.

There is also value in these institutions themselves: over time they accumulate knowledge, relationships, approaches, and a practical understanding of what works that cannot simply be recreated overnight.

When funding is stretched, it can also become very easy for organisations with broadly similar ambitions to start seeing each other primarily as competitors. We may sometimes compete for funding. We should be honest about that. But we are not competing for outcomes.

There are already excellent examples of funders coming together around a shared agenda, but there is scope for much more especially in respect of infrastructure. Alongside collaboration between providers, aligning funding priorities and pooling resources could help charities access more joined-up support and achieve more than any of us could enable alone.

We have had very honest discussions at Cranfield Trust about where our particular value sits. Or as it’s been described our “special sauce”!

If another organisation is better placed to help a charity than we are, the best outcome is that the charity reaches them. If two organisations can achieve more by combining expertise, we should find ways to do it. And if our strengths overlap considerably, we should be prepared to have honest conversations about that too. That thinking runs through our new strategy and, I hope will shape how we work.

We want to strengthen charity leaders. We want to create better pathways so that organisations reach the right support at the right time. We want to unlock more skilled volunteering and use what we learn through our work to contribute to a better understanding of what helps small charities become stronger.

None of those ambitions belong uniquely to us at Cranfield Trust. Our work with the UK Pro Bono Association has shown us the strength of bringing complementary offers together, making it easier for charities to access the range of support they need.

One commitment for us over the next few years is to be generous in how we work with organisations trying to achieve the same things at meet this moment. We will share insight, work in partnership and be honest about where others may be better placed.

Infrastructure belongs to all of us

There is one final part of this equation. The responsibility for a healthy infrastructure cannot sit solely with funders or with infrastructure organisations. Charities are part of this ecosystem too.

That does not simply mean paying for services. For many small organisations, the whole point of charitable infrastructure is that expertise which would otherwise be unaffordable is made accessible to them.

But there are many other ways to contribute.

Use infrastructure. Tell people when it works. Share what you have learnt. Contribute your experience. Help us understand what is changing. Larger charities can and should encourage their people to volunteer their skills and knowledge. Leaders who have benefited from support can help those coming behind them.

Those stories are not always easy to tell. A better governance structure, a stronger business plan or a successful merger may not always provide the most obvious headline. But difficulty telling the story does not make the impact any less important (Check out our recent video on charity merger – I promise it will inspire you!).

Behind stronger services are stronger organisations. Behind stronger organisations are people making good decisions. And around those people, at its best, is an ecosystem of support, expertise, relationships, and knowledge that helps them do it.

That is infrastructure. It is about people helping people help people. That’s not too complex a story? Right?!

Funders absolutely have a role in sustaining it. But so do we all. If the events of the last month prompt anything beyond a very welcome sigh of relief, I hope it is a broader conversation about how all of us build, use and value the infrastructure our sector needs.