Trust is the most important way for NFPs to create sustained and enduring impact

Trust between a not for profit and the community in which it operates must be at the heart of any strategy, writes Doug Taylor, but how do you achieve it? 

Trust is not a particularly edgy, flashy or innovative word. In fact, it feels a little quaint and old fashioned. But I’m convinced it’s what’s necessary for an organisation to create lasting impact over generations.

At The Smith Family, where we’re currently marking 100 years of service to the Australian community, it is clear that trust is the unbroken thread running through the course of our history. Trust is what has held together our community, team and supporters over many decades – trust that we’ll make the best possible decisions, trust that we’ll use the resources generously provided by supporters wisely and trust that that we’ll always endeavour to do right by people.

We are by no means perfect and like every organisation are a work in progress, and I’m conscious that trust is hard won and easily lost. Which is why I read with interest an article in a recent Community Council for Australia newsletter, charting the declining trust that the community has in not for profit (NFP) organisations. Whilst it’s written in a United States context, it can so easily apply to Australia as the Edelman Trust Barometer highlights (the 2022 research shows that the Australian community has the same levels of trust with businesses and NFPs, and this has dropped over the past year).

The author of the article suggests three pathways to strengthening NFP trust with the community:

• conduct robust self-reflection on your progress in fulfilling your purpose;
• ensure you have ideological diversity in your organisation;
• and finally, there’s a challenge for larger NFPs to partner with and support smaller grassroots organisations.

These are excellent strategies to improve NFPs’ relationship with the community and I suspect it will help arrest declining rates of giving and volunteering with our organisations.

The strong levels of trust NFPs have with their community are like deep roots and they sustain an organisation over time like a big old gum tree. This analogy became apparent to me recently when a big gum tree came down where I live – and it wasn’t because of the recent winds and sodden soil but instead because its roots had been damaged by a broken drain.

As I move into my second year at The Smith Family, keeping and building trust is the thing I’ll be trying to keep focused on. I’ll do this because, in all the busyness of my day-to-day responsibilities, it’s the single most important way by which we build organisations to create sustained and enduring impact. And by the looks of the data in these reports, we’ve all got some important work to do.