On Monday the 26th of July, I began my six-week Leadership in Action Project with the Charity Retail Association and St. Elizabeth’s Centre. Covid, naturally, had proved disastrous for many industries, and the Charity Sector, with its reliance on brick-and-mortar stores and unpaid volunteers, was hit harder than most. My project aimed to help charity shops across the country in adapting to the challenge by promoting new options for online charity shopping. This included building relationships with media outlets and helping to develop and promote the Charity Retail Associations ‘Find a Charity e-Shop’ page, which acts as an aggregate for dozens of online charity shops across the country (available to view here https://www.charityretail.org.uk/find-an-e-shop/). I also worked closely with a local charity in my area, the St. Elizabeth’s Centre, aiming to expand their online presence and help them more directly with adjusting to Covid.

            One of the first things I was told at the start of this project was that the charity sector was almost entirely unlike the other economic sectors one could work in. At the time, such a claim largely went over my head but reflecting on the claim, and my experience as a whole, at the end of my six weeks helped me understand just what was meant. My time in the sector, as admittedly brief as it was, has definitely given me an invaluable insight into just how difficult and demanding it can be to work in charity. Aside from obvious, and unfortunate, causes of challenge in charity work, such as a lack of staff or funding, one of the biggest challenges I had to deal with during my project is the fact that, in many ways, charity is a fundamentally reactive industry. It was difficult for me to create long-term plans regarding which items could be sold online whereas charity shops have no real control over their inventory. Nor do they always have regular staff who could be trained on how to best use specific, varied online selling platforms. These were all problems I had to carefully consider during my project.

            Despite these concerns, in many ways, my project was a resounding success. Through conversations with my team and broader staff in the charity shops, as well as a significant amount of independent research, I was able to construct an e-commerce approach that addressed many of the charity’s concerns and helped them to start building a professional presence on many new online selling platforms that will hopefully continue to bring in money for the charity into the future.

            My time with the CRA was similarly successful, and included a press release roll-out that culminated in not a number of articles in trade papers, but also an article in the Guardian (available to read here https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/12/charity-shops-online-covid-spending-gap-internet-uk). I also managed to get an article published myself, written by me, for the lifestyle media outlet Anything Goes (available to read here https://anythinggoeslifestyle.co.uk/uk-charities-look-towards-online-shopping/). With this successful media outreach and a successful social media campaign, my project saw the CRA’s ‘Find a Charity e-Shop’ page go from their 11^th most viewed site page, all the way to number 1 (!!!), guiding much-needed traffic to dozens of online charity shops.

This experience, entirely new to me, taught me a lot about effective leadership. Despite leading this project, many of the people I was working with within the CRA were naturally more experienced and knowledgeable in regards to both the Charity sector and pr in general. With this in mind, I was careful to delegate tasks as efficiently as possible, and also draw upon my knowledge in my own tasks when useful. It was important, not only for me to understand my own knowledge and capabilities, but also those of the people I was working with. This was even more important for my work with the St. Elizabeth Centre as I had to tailor an online selling approach for the charity that would continue to be viable, long after my time with them had finished. My research experience from the first year also came in handy as I polished the press release with stats and figures, and spent time researching countless different online selling platforms and best e-commerce practices.

                        Fundamentally, however, my Leadership in Action experience has not only been valuable, but enjoyable. My time with the CRA and St. Elizabeth’s has given me invaluable insight and experience into many different areas such as PR, social media managing, shop managing, online selling, journalism, and much much more, and has certainly helped me to develop many skills from effective leadership and teamworking, to critical thinking and research capability. Beyond all that, however, this experience has ultimately been fun. Through it all, I’ve had a thoroughly exciting, engaging, and enjoyable experience and I would just like to thank not only the CRA and St. Elizabeth’s Centre, but also the Laidlaw Foundation for giving me this unparalleled opportunity.