What if it didn't work?
- Timenot established
- CostFree — a written record.
- Doing itYou can do this yourself
Say so: four of the eight major UK funders read for this guide explicitly ask you to, in their own published words. Nobody has published what happens to a charity afterwards. Reporting failure honestly means writing down what did not work and what you changed, and saying it in the report.
Do this first
England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: the same position — this is funder practice, not law; of the four funders quoted, the National Lottery Community Fund works UK-wide and the others fund mainly in England and Wales. Northern Ireland: the same position, on the same footing as Scotland.
What funders say, in their own words
Many charities believe funders punish honesty, but what funders publish invites reporting failure. This step starts from the summary you wrote when you analysed what you gathered, and from a result that fell short. Here are four funders, word for word.
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation:
“We value open reporting and we don’t just want to hear about your successes. We want to know when things don’t work out; why they don’t go well; and how you learn from it and use that knowledge to move forward.”
The Tudor Trust:
“As well as hearing about key achievements, we also want to know about things that haven’t gone to plan or which worked differently from how you expected.”
Garfield Weston Foundation:
“If you didn’t achieve what you had hoped to, what contributed to this? We want to learn from your grant as much as you do!”
The National Lottery Community Fund:
“We don’t expect things to always go exactly to plan, that would be pretty unrealistic. And changes can be really good for your project as you might learn new things that mean you have to change the way you work.”
That is four of the eight major funders whose reporting guidance was read for this guide. Half of them ask for this in plain terms.
We have quoted them rather than summarised them for a reason. If you are worried about admitting a shortfall, you will believe the funder’s own words. You have less reason to believe ours.
What nobody has published
No funder publishes what happens next to a grantee who reports a missed target: that is the limit, stated as carefully as the reassurance.
Those quotes show what funders say. They do not show what funders do next. There are no renewal rates, no follow-up study, and no independent research on it.
IVAR has documented funders’ frustration with grantees who are not open. That tells you what funders prefer. It does not tell you about the consequences for charities.
So the honest sentence is this: funders say they want it, in their own words; nobody has published what happens afterwards.
This page is about not overclaiming. Telling you that honesty is always rewarded would be overclaiming too.
What a finding of failure needs behind it
A finding that something did not work needs two things behind it. It needs a starting point to compare with, and a view of what else was going on. That is why this step comes after your analysis and before you work out what you can honestly claim.
The contribution discipline cuts both ways. NPC’s Code of Good Impact Practice puts it in Principle 6. “Be honest when considering the contributions made by others to the actual impact achieved; don’t over- or under-claim.”
When things go well, you should not claim the whole of the credit. When they go badly, you should not take the whole of the blame, or hand it all to someone else. Write down what you think contributed, from every side.
What the failure record covers
The record is short. It covers four things:
- What you planned — the outcome or target, as you described it to the funder.
- What happened — from your data, with its limits stated.
- What you think contributed — inside the project and outside it.
- What you changed as a result — or will change, and when.
The fourth item is the one that makes the record usable. A funder report built from it answers Garfield Weston’s question, what contributed, before it is asked. It also gives you something to say when you report to a funder in their own format, and when you write your impact report. The same record feeds the grant report itself, which deliver against the grant and report on it covers.
Use the funder’s own words back to them where they fit. “You told us you want to know when things don’t go to plan. Here is what didn’t.”
With the record written, the next step is to work out what you can honestly claim from the results that did move.
Common mistake: hiding a missed target because “funders punish honesty”
The belief is widespread, and it is not supported by what funders publish. Four of the eight funders read for this guide invite failure reporting in their own words. Esmée Fairbairn: “we don’t just want to hear about your successes.” That is each funder’s published position, for its own grants.
Common mistake: overstating the reassurance
Four invitations in funders’ own words feel like evidence about consequences. They are not. They establish what funders say. No funder publishes what happens next, and no independent study exists. Telling yourself, or a nervous trustee, that honesty is rewarded goes further than the evidence does.
Common mistake: writing the shortfall as wholly your fault, or wholly someone else’s
A failure invites either self-blame or deflection. NPC’s Code, Principle 6: be honest about the contributions made by others, and “don’t over- or under-claim”. Contribution language should work in both directions. This is good practice, not a legal requirement.
Worked example
Tollgate Youth CIO ran a funded course. Attendance fell away in the second half, and the outcome it promised the funder was not reached.
The worker’s first instinct is to lead the report with the good sessions and say little about the rest. The chair reads the funder’s reporting guidance instead. It asks, in its own words, what contributed when a project did not achieve what it hoped.
Tollgate writes a one-page record:
- What it planned: the outcome from the bid.
- What happened: attendance by session, from the register.
- What it thinks contributed: the course moved to an evening slot that clashed with exams, which was Tollgate’s decision. A bus route was also cut, which was not.
- What it changed: the next course runs in the daytime, on a different site.
The record goes to the trustees and into the grant report. Tollgate does not tell the trustees the funder will certainly renew. Nobody knows that, and the record does not pretend to.
What you should have at the end
A written record of what did not work, and what you changed as a result.
The first half shows the funder you understand your own results. The second half shows you learned from them — which is what each of the four funders quoted says it wants.