It was 10pm on a Monday and the Ninjas had just struck again.

​Silently, stealthily, and armed only with their credit cards, this faceless army emerged out of the shadows, as if summoned by some mystical being (or a well-known Northern comedian with a large social media following).

​In their thousands they came, all united by a singular mission – to help a stranger in need to hit their JustGiving crowdfunding target. And then, with their mission complete, they disappeared back in to the night – an overflowing funding pot and a stream of ninja emojis the only signs that they’d ever been there.

​No, this is not some weird fever dream brought on by eating too much leftover Christmas cheese. This is Charity Ninjas – an online community spearheaded by comedian and presenter Jason Manford.

​And it’s bloomin’ brilliant.

​The premise is simple. At 10pm every Monday and Friday, “Sensei Manford” shares a link to a JustGiving page on the Charity Ninjas Facebook page and asks his followers to donate.

​And donate they do. In their thousands:

Of course, celebrities leveraging their fan base to raise money is nothing new. We all know that getting the right person or media channel to champion a campaign can have a massive impact. But what makes this noteworthy, in my opinion, is the way Charity Ninjas has quickly made donating addictive.

​These aren’t people humouring or tolerating a one-off ask for support from someone they admire. These are people actively signing up to receive two fundraising asks a week, to causes they have no connection to – and even complaining when those asks don’t materialise!

​Think I’m joking? Look at the comments under any post on the Charity Ninjas Facebook page and you’ll find people setting alarms for 9.55pm on the two days to ensure they don’t miss out on taking part.

​And, on the few occasions where it’s got to 10:01pm without the link being posted, a tidal wave of anxious comments appears from people desperate for their philanthropy fix.

Be honest – when have you ever seen that level of excitement and anticipation for a fundraising campaign? For all the year-end “Last Chance to Give” emails charities send, when was the last time you saw potential donor’s actually panicking that they might have missed the opportunity to support?

​This is the fundraising equivalent of the Boxing Day sales. Except rather than queuing up at 6am to get a half price jumper and some cheap socks, these are people falling over themselves to support an unknown person or cause.

​So, why has this become addictive?

​There are, of course a number of reasons. For example, I could talk about Variable Rewards and Scarcity Bias. The cause is different every time, with no way of knowing who or what you’re going to be supporting until 10pm. Then, once the campaign has hit its target the link and all reference to the campaign disappears without a trace. Both of these can be powerful motivators, and leave a strong sense of FOMO for any aspiring Ninjas who missed the call.*

​Or I could talk about the aspirational element of people wanting to feel some sense of connection to someone with celebrity status.

​But I think the biggest reason is far simpler than that.

​Community.

​In a world that feels divided and full of hate, Charity Ninjas gives people the chance to be part of a community united by love and hope. As one Ninja noted, as an antidote to hate, the movement encapsulates “the epitome of human kindness”.

​Creating a genuine sense of community can be easier said than done, but when we look closely at the Charity Ninjas model we can see there are a number of ways that sense of community is being strengthened and solidified:

1. A clear identity that resonates with the members – it might seem like a small thing, but the simple act of giving members a clear identity they aspire to hold (in this case, Charity Ninja) helps to strengthen the connection to the group. And, let’s face it – when it comes to identity, Charity Ninja sounds a hell of a lot more appealing than “Bronze Member”, right?
2. Some Fight Club-esque rules and rituals – each donation ask comes with a set of rules – “No Names, No Noise, No Spotlight”. It’s expected that Ninjas will give anonymously, or simply leave the Ninja emoji as a comment. This leads to a lot of in-jokes in the comments of people pretending nothing has happened. These rituals and shared behaviours help strengthen a sense of belonging, while also separating members from non-members.
3. A community of equals – the “No Names, No Noise, No Spotlight” motto also ensures that this remains a community of equals. Nobody gets special praise for donating more. In fact, a lot is made of the fact people are being asked to do “a small thing”, with average donations around the £3-£4 mark. And, when the community succeeds, everybody is entitled to feel good about their role in that success. (Compare that to those charities that still question whether donors giving £3 are worthy of a thank you.)
4. Success begets success – people want to be part of success stories. Had the early “missions” not hit their target it would have been easy for momentum to drop. However, the group started by focusing on campaigns with more modest targets. Members could see targets being smashed in short time, helping to recruit new members and building confidence to chase down more ambitious targets.

In fundraising we often talk about the importance of “you” (singular).

​But, with people everywhere craving greater unity and togetherness, perhaps 2026 is the year we need to harness the collective ninja power of communities.

If you’d like more ideas, inspiration and insight like this delivered straight to your inbox, why not subscribe to our (semi) regular email, Apollo’s Muse? Simply pop your details in the form below.

Since the start of the year I’ve spent over 100 hours catching fish, collecting shells and trading turnips.

As a result I’ve become the richest person in my village, paid off my house in full and set aside more money than I’ll ever be able to spend.

Yet every day I head back out with my net and fishing rod – catching, collecting, trading.

It’s time to admit I’ve got a problem.

This unlikely rags to riches story started when my daughter got ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ for Christmas. If you’re not familiar with the Animal Crossing series of computer games, they’re sort of a cross between The Sims, Pokemon and RollerCoaster Tycoon. Players design a character and head off to start a new life on a desert island. While there they have to catch fish, sea creatures and bugs, collect art and fossils for the local museum (long story…), interact with other villagers and trade turnips on the island’s Stork Market – all the while earning Bells (the island’s currency) to build, furnish and expand their home.

It’s simple. It’s laid back.

And it’s addictive as hell.

I soon realised I’d developed a strong compulsion to play every day, and that each session lasted a lot longer than I’d intended as I was seemingly incapable of turning the game off.

So what was it that made this supposedly sensible adult, with a real-world ‘to do’ list longer than his arm, log so many hours on a frankly pointless endeavour?

What techniques had the game’s designers used to get me to return day after day?

And, if they could get me to invest so much time and effort in something I didn’t really care about, could those same techniques theoretically make the infinitely more meaningful act of donating similarly “addictive”?

Here are four of the ingredients Animal Crossing uses to keep players motivated and coming back, and some thoughts on what they might look like in a fundraising context:

A lot of the game play in Animal Crossing revolves around catching bugs, fish and sea creatures. Players are tasked with collecting all 200 species of animal, which can then be sold to earn Bells.

However, unlike other hunter-gatherer games, you can’t just go and look for specific animals. Fish and sea creatures only appear as shadows in the water, meaning you have no idea what creature is in front of you until you’ve reeled it in. So, as you stroll along the beach, that small fish-shaped shadow could be a common Horse Mackerel worth 150 Bells, or a rare Barreleye worth 15,000 Bells. The only way to know is to catch it.

Is that shadowy fish common plaice or a bank-bulging Blue Marlin? There’s only one way to find out!

The game serves up a steady stream of mysterious shadows meaning every 10-15 seconds players face a dilemma – do I walk away and risk missing out on a rare fish, or do I spend a few extra seconds catching “just one more” in the hope of a big pay day?

Why does this keep players hooked?

​This is an example of “Variable Reward”, a concept first described by psychologist BF Skinner in the 1950s. Skinner’s experiment involved putting rats in a box with a lever that would dispense food. For some of the rats, pressing the lever would provide a regular and predictable supply of food. For the others, the outcome of pressing the level was unpredictable – sometimes they’d get a small piece of food, other times a large piece of food and sometimes nothing at all. For those rats receiving a variable reward, the act of pressing the lever became compulsive. They would press the lever more frequently than the rats receiving a predictable reward, often continuing after they were full.

Research shows that the desire for, and anticipation of, a reward can be far more powerful a motivator than the reward itself. The anticipation and unpredictability of when we’ll get the reward we’re seeking leads to spikes in our levels of dopamine, making us far more likely to keep playing. (This same principle is what makes slot machines so addictive).

So, could Variable Rewards motivate people to give more frequently?

For a Variable Reward system to be effective, three things must be in place:

• there must be the promise of a reward that your target audience finds desirable. These rewards don’t need to be tangible. In his book “Hooked”, Nir Eyal shows that social rewards (where your target audience is made to feel valued and respected by their peers) and internal rewards (self gratification or self-improvement) can be just as powerful as tangible rewards.
• the “pay out rate” must be unpredictable.
• The target audience must believe that the reward is within their reach

One possible implementation for donors who like learning about your work would be if random donations made via your website unlocked bonus content, behind-the-scenes insights, or an exclusive message from someone your target audience admires.

The National Museum of Scotland used a variation of this as part of their contactless donation journey back in 2016 – visitors making a donation were rewarded with one of sixshort videos featuring members of the curatorial team talking about their favourite objects in the collection – https://blog.nms.ac.uk/2017/07/27/making-contact-digital-experiments-with-visitor-donations/

One of the ways Animal Crossing encourages players to log on every day is through FOMO – or, more accurately, through scarcity:

• The range of items on sale in the island’s shop changes on a daily basis.

• Each day a rotating cast of guests make fleeting visits to the island, bringing time-limited challenges and exclusive rewards with them.

• Many of the island’s resources have a daily allowance that will be lost if not claimed.

Continuing the theme of Variable Reward from above, the order in which shop items and guest visitors appear is completely random, meaning that if you miss their appearance there’s no knowing when they’ll next return.

Why does this keep players hooked?

These artificial time limits reflect two powerful motivating factors:

Scarcity Bias – we perceive things to be more valuable when they are in limited supply (either through the quantity available or the time during which they’re available)

Loss Aversion – we feel the negative emotional impact of losing something more strongly than the positive emotional impact of finding something of the same value. As a result, we are more likely to take action to prevent loss than we are to achieve positive gains.

If I don’t buy that astronaut’s helmet today there’s no knowing when it will next be available!

What might scarcity bias and loss aversion look like in fundraising?

One of the most common uses of scarcity bias in fundraising is in match-giving campaigns. Here, scarcity is created by either having a limited pot of match-funding that multiple organisations are competing for, or a limited amount of time in which gifts can be matched. The risk that the opportunity to have their gift matched might be lost can be a powerful motivating factor.

But that’s not the only way scarcity could be used.

Perhaps you can have a limit to the number of people who can claim a specific reward as part of a crowd-funding campaign?

Or, if you are incentivising people to give, the nature of the reward could change on a daily basis?

Or, if you are running a Giving Circle, Syndicate or membership scheme, perhaps there could be a limit to the number of people who can join to harness the power of scarcity?

Whenever you log on to Animal Crossing you are given five mini tasks to complete. These are simple activities that can be completed quickly, such as “catch five fish”, “speak to three villagers” and “water the flowers”. Once completed, you are rewarded with Miles (another form of in-game currency).

However, your ‘to do’ list doesn’t stop there. As soon as you complete one task and claim your reward it is immediately replaced with a new task. This means that you always have five incomplete tasks on the go.

I would have cleaned the bathroom but a raccoon told me to chop wood

Why does this keep players hooked?

Most people aren’t short of things on their real-world ‘to do’ list, so a virtual raccoon popping up with a never-ending list of chores should be the last thing we want. Yet these mini-tasks are one of the ways the game keeps you playing after you’ve logged in.

There are two reasons this is an effective way of extending our playing time:

The Zeigarnik Effect – our brains don’t like unfinished tasks. We recall unfinished tasks more easily than finished ones, creating a sense of tension and discomfort.

Completion Bias – by contrast, completing tasks is believed to release dopamine – a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure.

It is no accident that these tasks in Animal Crossing are quick and easy to complete. This never-ending ‘to do’ list presents players with a perpetual cycle of “task tension” and easily accessible dopamine fixes to keep them playing.

So, how might completion bias be used in fundraising?

One way is to ensure your online donation page includes a clear indicator of how much of the process you have completed. This is increasingly common for online checkout pages. (And, as we’ll see below, this should make it clear that you’ve already completed the first stage).

Similarly, showing people what percentage of their CRM profile has been completed could motivate them to fill in the gaps, helping you to capture missing information.

Or perhaps your confirmation page could include a number of small follow-on actions for donors to take, such as sharing the campaign with a friend, completing a short survey about why they chose to donate today, and subscribing to your mailing list. Ensure that the design makes it clear that the donation has been completed but the other tasks remain “to do”. (This is common on most online petition platforms, where supporters are asked to share the petition with their network and make a small donation).

While the inclusion of short, simple tasks extends the amount of time people spend playing on any given occasion, Animal Crossing also uses bigger challenges to ensure people keep coming back days, weeks and even months later.

It does this using a staple of gamification – the use of badges and stamps to mark the completion of challenges and milestones.

In total, there are 96 challenges to complete, each represented with a virtual loyalty card. As players complete certain activities and reach different milestones a stamp is added to the relevant card. While the first stamps are relatively easy to acquire, they get exponentially harder. (For example, on a stamp card relating to fishing the player receives the first stamp after catching 10 fish, the second after 100, then 500, then 2,000, then 5,000.)

Just another 1,834 fish to catch before that precious final stamp is mine!

Why does this keep players hooked?

In a game with no end point – or where the end point is a long way in the future – achievement milestones help to keep players motivated. This is another use of the completion bias discussed above, but there are also two other factors at play:

​Sunk cost fallacy – this is the psychological principle that we are more likely to continue an activity or behaviour if we’ve already invested time, effort or money, even if that behaviour or activity is no longer enjoyable or beneficial. Having already spent time collecting early stamps we are more likely to continue in order to complete the card, so as not to waste that previous effort.

Endowed progress effect – In most cases, players aren’t told what the challenges are until they receive the first stamp. As a result, the first stamp feels like a gift. In psychology, the endowed progress effect means we are more likely to complete a task if we believe we’ve made progress towards that goal, even if that progress comes as the result of a headstart or artificial boost. This was identified by Joseph Nunes and Xavier Dreze, who experimented with two versions of a car wash loyalty card – one that required 8 stamps to unlock a free car wash where none of the stamps were filled in, and one that required 10 stamps but where two has been pre-stamped. Despite both cards representing the same real-term offer (collect 8 stamps and get a free car wash), those receiving the pre-stamped card were more likely to complete their card.

So, what might endowed progress and the sunk cost fallacy look like in fundraising?

You might want to remind people of the impact their previous gifts have had, positioning future gifts as protecting the progress they have made to date. (This is a core component of a lot of legacy fundraising messaging, such as this campaign from Greenpeace)

Perhaps you could recognise people for achieving certain milestones relating to the number and cumulative total of gifts?

Or perhaps you could offer challenges, such as donating to support different aspects of your organisation’s work, or for updating their contact details?

I’d love to hear any suggestions you’ve got, or any examples of ways you are already using some of these approaches in your fundraising.

Marina Jones, Deputy Development Director at English National Opera has just returned from a supporter trip, taking donors to the opera in San Francisco. On a night off during the trip she went to a drag show. In this guest blog she shares some reflections on what a drag show can teach fundraisers.

When the show starts the first thing the hosts of the show ask is ‘What’s the first rule of drag?’

The answer – “Tip your artists, dancers, servers and hosts”.

This ‘pre’-suasion or priming is setting the scene right from the start, and for the rest of the night – you will be asked to contribute.

Giving is expected, normal, encouraged and celebrated. The message is, if you care about the art form and want to enjoy it you need to be part of funding it and making it happen. Your support has a direct impact on the work you see on stage. Donors want to see the impact of their gift – seeing the impact live on stage makes it immediate.

Often in the arts we can shy away from articulating the ‘art for arts sake’ or for the pure enjoyment but a drag show connects immediately and says to you ‘if you want this it costs money and you need to give to make it happen’. Sometimes fundraisers also delay asking, missing out on the opportunity when people are feeling and experiencing all the emotions of connecting with our art forms.

At a drag show, there is no fear of asking and making it clear that funds are needed.

Now, a bit of background if it’s a while since you went to drag show or have yet to go … Tipping your artists involves putting dollar bills into whatever their fabulous outfits they are wearing.

If there are barriers to giving people won’t do it – it needs to be easy and friction free. If there are obstacles to making the gift it creates friction. Overcoming this friction uses too much brain power so we don’t do it. Your brain moves from the intuitive and automatic system one to system two and your rational brain kicks in and stops you completing the action.

So make it easy to give – anticipate the friction points and barriers that your donors have in that giving journey. Have they got what they need to donate?  For example, at the drag show you need a dollar bill to tip but you only have a $20. No problem – they have thought of that! The hosts come out and offer change – so you can change that $20 for twenty $1 dollar bills so you can easily make your contributions directly to the artists.

By thinking about what your donors need you are helping them give by making it easy for them.

An additional bonus of having lots of dollar bills is that it makes it easy to make repeat gifts to a preferred artist or many artists.

Each time you give a gift your brain gets a hit of the happy chemicals (dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins). By making it easy and encouraging more gifts you are making people happier.

We are motivated to do what others are doing. Repeatedly seeing people make donations establishes giving as socially normal and encourages others to participate.

Every time a note is given the crowd cheers and celebrates the donation. Each contribution is celebrated. Celebrate that your donors are choosing to voluntarily give you to you to make the world better.

In an increasingly cashless society the lack of cash should not be a barrier to being able to contribute. So adapt – even drag queens use QR codes!

As well as giving directly to the artist or by QR code there is also a collection bucket. This means you can give whatever way makes you feel comfortable. Whether you choose to give publicly or more privately, all gifts are cheered!

Don’t shy away from asking again and again and reiterating your need for support. There are repeated asks throughout the show. The audience have been primed with the need for support and that they will be asked from the first moment the hosts walked out onto stage. Keep asking – you need the money.

You have an audience who care about your art form and what you are doing. It is part of their identity. Celebrate it, celebrate them and give them the opportunity to celebrate their identity.

Remember – people want to give!

Thanks to Marina for sharing these tips with us!

If you’ve got a blog, tips or suggestions you want to share with arts and culture fundraisers please get in touch with David by emailing David.Burgess@ApolloFundraising.com

First published on UK Fundraising on 10th January 2019. Updated 24th February 2026

How has your week been?

No, seriously. How would you answer that question?

And, more importantly, how quickly did it take you to come up with an answer?

30 minutes? An hour? I mean, going back over the last 7 days/168 hours/10,080 minutes of your life, analysing the good bits and bad bits and then weighing them up to come to a balanced conclusion must have taken you some time?

But, of course, you didn’t do that, did you? You came to an answer nearly immediately.

So, what has this unremarkable observation got to do with fundraising? And, in particular, how could it help us increase the impact of our Thank Yous?

When it comes to remembering and assessing our experiences it’s safe to say humans aren’t particularly rigorous in their evaluation methodology. Take this example, shared by Daniel Kahneman in “The Riddle of Experience versus Memory”:

In the podcast, Kahneman recalls a conversation with one of his students who had been listening to a recording of a piece of classical music. At the end of the recording there was “a dreadful screeching noise”. The student wasn’t happy, passionately telling Kahneman “it ruined the whole experience”.

Kahneman points out that this statement can’t be accurate. The screech wasn’t until the end of the recording. By the time the unpleasant noise occurred the student had already enjoyed an incredible performance. However, when it came to recalling his experience the quality of the performance counted for nothing. The student’s perception of the whole experience was solely defined by one negative moment.

While this might seem irrational, Kahneman attributes this to the fact that, when it comes to remembering and evaluating experiences, we have “Two Selves”.

The first is the Experiencing Self. This is the self that lives in the present. It perceives each of the detailed individual moments that make up the whole experience. The student’s Experiencing Self listened to every note of the recording and could, if encouraged, recall that detail.

The second is the Remembering Self. This is the self we use to summarise all of those individual moments, converting our detailed experience into a simple story. This enables us to make an immediate judgement when we are asked to reflect on past events (such as when someone pops up in our inbox asking how our week has been).

Entrusting this task to your Remembering Self is a lot quicker and easier for your brain than relying on your Experiencing Self to go back and assess every single moment before you can reach an answer. In Kahneman’s story it is the student’s Remembering Self that has created the damning review of the recording.

The Two Selves are not equal partners. As Kahneman says, when it comes to evaluating past experiences, the Remembering Self is the one that makes decisions.

And, thanks to a number of mental shortcuts, it does so at great speed.

One of the shortcuts our Remembering Self relies on is considering how we felt at two key points:

• The point in the experience when we had the strongest feeling (the peak). (This could be a positive, pleasurable feeling, or a negative, painful one.)
• The end of the experience

The Remembering Self considers the average of our feelings at these two moments. In the case of the student, the screech was both the end point and the peak – the student experienced a strong feeling of anger and disgust that outweighed any delight he had felt during the performance. This explains why this one negative moment was so instrumental in defining his memory of the experience.

I’m glad you asked. You see, I think this phenomenon helps to explain one of fundraising’s great mysteries – why so many donors complain about not being thanked when the vast majority of fundraisers say they religiously thank every donor for every gift.

When fundraisers create thanking processes and supporter/donor journeys they do so with the Experiencing Self in mind. So, they might come up with a process that includes:

• Sending an automated receipt following the donation
• Sending a follow-up letter, thanking the supporter for the donation
• Subscribing the supporter to a regular newsletter
• Segregating future mailings so they include a line acknowledging their previous support
• Sending a physical or digital copy of the annual report at the end of the year

There is nothing wrong with any of these approaches – they all have a role to play. However, this entire approach is based on the idea that each interaction has a cumulative effect and that the donor’s experience and satisfaction will increase with each new touchpoint. As we’ve seen, that would be true if the Experiencing Self was in charge.

But it’s not.

And, with no pleasure-boosting peak or end to engage the more influential Remembering Self, the experience becomes forgettable (or, worse, defined by some other pain point within the donation journey).

As we’ve seen above, if we want the Remembering Self to take note, we need to plan for the supporter’s experience to have a positive peak and an excellent end. The good news is that your Thank You has the potential to fulfil both of these roles.

As fundraisers, we don’t tend to think of donations as having endings. We talk about our relationships with supporters as being ongoing and long-term. However, the reality is that many supporters (especially first-time donors and impulse givers) will view the experience of making a donation as being a self-contained action. For your supporter’s Remembering Self at least, the Thank You marks the end point. So, if we can provide the supporter with a positive peak at this point it will have a disproportionate impact on how they remember their experience of making a gift.

So, what makes a positive peak?

When it comes to peaks we can think of the Remembering Self as being a bit like a car dashboard camera. When things are going normally, or as expected, the Remembering Self sits inactive in the background. It only starts to record when something significant or unexpected happens.

All of the touchpoints in the example above can be described as normal – they follow the script for what someone might expect when they make a donation. They probably expect to receive confirmation their donation has been completed. They probably expect to receive a basic thank you. They probably expect to receive further marketing from the charity. On the face of it there is nothing unexpected there for the supporter. So there is no need for the Remembering Self to get involved.

If we want our Thank Yous to be remembered we need to add something unexpected to the mix.

Something out of the ordinary.

Something worth remembering.

In their book The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath give some great tips for creating memorable moments, including these suggestions for creating positive peaks:

• Boost sensory appeal – create an element of theatre that maximises the impact on the senses and emotions.
• Raise the stakes – “up the ante” for supporters. For example, create a sense of pressure through competitions, games or public commitment
• Break the script – “defy [your supporter’s] expectation of how an experience will unfold”

When it comes to fundraising, peaks that strengthen the connection between the supporter and the beneficiaries, charity and/or fundraiser can be particularly effective. For example, the actors in a theatre company I worked with years ago had a tradition of wearing stripy socks during performances. They realised that sending stripy socks to donors was a powerful way of signalling that those supporters were part of the family. This simple act of initiation breaks the script and boosts the sensory appeal in a way that is relevant for that organisation.

One particularly memorable Thank You email from MAG (Mines Advisory Group) included three recipes that had been shared from MAG team members working around the world. As well as breaking the script, this simple act helped to create a bond between the supporter, the MAG team and the beneficiaries. It humanised people on each side of the relationship and gave an insight to their life. It also tapped into that powerful ritual that occurs when we share a meal together.

​Importantly, creating a positive peak doesn’t have to mean spending a lot of money. The simplest of touches can elevate a moment to become a memorable peak. More important than having a huge budget is having a fundraiser with the imagination and the drive to break the mould. Someone prepared to look beyond the status quo, to take responsibility for creating peaks for their supporters and to fight internally for the importance of defying supporters’ expectations.

So, what unforgettable peaks will you conjure up to elevate your donors’ experiences?

Seen some great experiences of unforgettable peaks? I’d love to hear about them! Get in touch to share some of your most memorable examples.

However, in a world of decreasing stability and certainty, setting long-term plans can be daunting. If you are struggling with a similar problem – perhaps you are planning a project or developing a business plan – an approach I have found useful is to use “prospective hindsight”. This means taking a trip to the future to view the project from there.

Don’t worry if your budget doesn’t stretch to a DeLorean with fully-functioning flux capacitor. You just need a room big enough to get the project team together in the same space, and dedicated time to focus on this. Ensure all of the key project stakeholders are represented. It can also be useful to have someone from outside the project to input from an external perspective.

Prospective Hindsight works by visualising yourself at the end of the project. Ask the group to imagine they have all come together to write the final review or evaluation report. For the first exercise, you should imagine that the project has been a success and everybody is delighted. Take a moment to congratulate yourself on the success (we had glasses of sparkling Elderflower when I did this with colleagues at the Royal Pavilion & Museums).

Ask the team to individually reflect on this success. Start by asking what outcomes have been achieved that mean the project can be classed a success. (This is particularly helpful for large projects with multiple aims and outputs). Get people to write down the three key criteria for success for them. Understanding what success looks like (i.e. the destination you are aiming for) makes it easier to plan the steps you need to take to get there.

While still viewing the project from a successful completion, visualise and record the steps you took to get there. Some questions that can help include:

What actions were vital in getting us to this position of success?

• Which staff/stakeholders/partners were vital to the success? What did they contribute?
• What skills, behaviours or processes did you need to learn or incorporate?
• What actions, behaviours or processes did you need to stop doing?
• What resources did you need? (An alternative is to visualise the steps with different levels of resource. How would this change your steps? What resource had to be there? What did having additional resource help you achieve?)

A similar visualisation technique can also work for testing your plans for potential risks. Originally developed by experimental psychologist Gary Klein, this is called the ‘pre-mortem’ technique. As with the exercise above, knowing what the final destination is (in this case, catastrophic failure) makes it easier to see the routes that lead there. However, it also has another benefit – by framing your project as if a crisis has already happened you give your team freedom and confidence to voice concerns or possible challenges that they might otherwise feel uncomfortable sharing.

The process for running a ‘pre-mortem’ is similar to the first exercise. Visualise yourself at the end of the project. However, this time things have gone spectacularly wrong. Firstly, get your team to define what “spectacularly wrong” would look like for your project. Now, get the team to individually brainstorm all of the things that could happen that would lead to these outcomes. Give yourself a good amount of time to come up with as many possible routes to failure as you can. Leave no stone unturned. Again, having insight from as many people involved with the project as possible helps to ensure you have thought of everything.

Once you have a list of potential problems, identify the most pressingones. These are the ones that will have the biggest negative impact if they happen, or have the most likelihood of happening. Importantly, they should also be the ones you can do something about. These are the ones you can do most to prevent. Having identified the routes to failure, you can now make plans to prevent them.

If you use prospective hindsight techniques it would be great to hear about your experiences. Please share your thoughts and any tips you’ve got for getting the most out of these exercises.

First published on Charity Connect – 3 January 2017

First published on UK Fundraising – 15 April 2016