I was always proud of my high-vis jacket, safety helmet and steel capped boots. I felt like I was on a mission, part of something important and dangerous.

That morning, it was 6:30am and pitch black as I got off my countryside train. I let the freezing misty air slap me in the face and proceeded to sign into my construction site.

“Oh no, I thought. Something is up.” I could see the site crew fidgeting and uneasy.

A sheet had been exposed as they excavated for a flood wall and it looked like it was Asbestos: A super hazardous and even deadly substance if not managed properly.

“Have you guys notified the legal body and what have you done about it?” I scolded.

“Oh it's gone”, they replied.

I panicked.

I was the Supervising Civil Engineer, solely there to make sure the site could be one my client could be proud of and there I was almost loosing track of a hazardous substance ?!?!?!? Not cool !

To cut a long story short: the sheet was eventually found, isolated and safely managed, the reporting body came, but as you might imagine it threw our programme off and caused delays.

We had to change our work plan.

The site team was under tight timelines to finish a piece of the flood wall before a boat needed access to the bank so this was not good news.

Now, anywhere else I can think of, people might end up literally fighting, cursing, blaming each other and trying to make sure they didn't get stuck covering extra costs or doing more work.

But not here. The civil engineering sector tended to be adversarial -- historically everyone trying to deceive everyone else -- so, a few years back the sector launched a new way of doing things and a new suite of contracts to go with that: Originally called “ New Engineering Contract”.

Goodbye complicated legal speak and terms of agreement where one side carries all the risk and gets stuffed.

Hello simple to understand plain English project management tool.

In three key steps we’d reached an agreement.

Identify there has been an unexpected change affecting work and notify project manager.

Project manager asks each party involved to submit a Notification Of Compensation Event quote outlining how the event affects their ability to do the work, staff resourcing, costs /fees, timelines.

The project manager reviews the quotes and accepts or rejects them. If they are accepted the affected party’s budget is automatically updated on a super cool online contract management tool to show the increase.

Simple. Civilised. Fast.

If anything else happened (and it did!!!) — changes of staff, redesign, new brief — the same process would take place again.

I negotiated at least £70,000 in additional fees over a few months to cover changes to my own work.

The innovation here is that it puts the focus on dealing with the change instead of finding someone to blame.
It separates the assessment of change from the evaluation of how it impacts everyone and this ensures a fair process.

This is really just one of many clever relationship management tools I brought with me from the engineering sector.

So when it came to figuring out how to apply relevant tools to getting non-profits' work funded and staffed in a supportive working environment, my past experience came in handy.

I started off by working 1-1 with a few non-profit leaders, testing things out.

Every time we’d hit a roadblock I’d dig up my old resources and processes and adapt them to their needs.

One organization was struggling to connect with funders, so we built a process and very soon we were chatting to 30 prospective funders a month.

Another organisation was struggling to explain their full impact so I created a process to “mine hidden impact” showing a deeper impact than even the founders had realised existed.

And when I didn’t have the answer I’d go all in proudly investing £1,000s in the best behavioural change, marketing, communication, public speaking, sales and web automation coaches I could find.

And my am I grateful to each and every one of them.
Together we created a solution that unlocks funding, and with it more fulfilling funding relationships.

At the simplest level, it’s a framework for managing the risk of non-profits being undervalued:

1) Eliminate the risk with compelling impact communication.

2) Reduce residual risk by getting non-profits in continuous honest conversation with funders.

3) Accept some funders will still misunderstand and plan to steer clear of them.

4) Communicate not only the money that’s needed but also the terms needed to succeed.

So that's how I do it, but does that make sense to you? Is it similar to what you are doing at all? Or maybe you found another way?

Reach out and let me know! Or if you'd rather chat through your specific scenario you can find me here .

Either way, I hope you found this useful and keep finding ways to increase the perceived value of your work, so that it matches the impact you actually create for the world (and not ounce less)!
Anna Bruni Sabhaney

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