The Inside Out Awards have always encouraged and attracted a high number of entries from Charities. In today’s challenging fundraising landscape, we wanted to understand how these organisations are harnessing the power of their creative teams to have impact.

To dig a little deeper, we invited three in-house creative leaders from prominent UK Charities to share their work, experiences and useful insights to managing and leading their exceptional in-house creative teams. 

Our experts from Anthony Nolan, British Red Cross and Shelter offered up so many useful insights, we have collated their top 10 learnings that we hope will benefit others working within charity based creative teams. 

In summary and in no particular order, this is what our experts had to share….

• Think like a corporate brand whilst maintaining authenticity and a real voice. 
• Build connections between the in-house creative team and the work that the charity is doing. Ensure the whole team sees the work and gains insight into all the stories. This will help your team feel connected and will expand their knowledge.
• Create a team feeling on every campaign or project. Collaborate across the business and work together. Utilise your whole team. Make the best use of their skills and insights they have with the wider organisation. 
• Process is vital to ensure a successful output. Prioritise, size projects and understand capacity within the team. 
• Test and learn. Iterate your processes, it will never be complete. Make small changes and keep agile in how you do things. 
• Help your team stay close to the cause. Let people know what impact they are having. 
• Empower and listen to your story tellers. Pull out their stories and do it authentically and ethically. Stay true and avoid moulding it to suit your agenda. 
• Create a movement. Get people to join you and have them feel involved in a bigger picture. 
• Embrace user generated imagery and content. Allow the voice of the donor, patient, supporter and cause to be seen and shared. 
• Acknowledge good work and reward good behaviour. Give effective feedback, recognise effort and reward when you can. 

Watch the event recording for more insights.

About our expert panel 

Horacio Herrera-Richmond Senior Creative Manager, Anthony Nolan                       Horacio Herrera-Richmond is the Senior Creative Manager at blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan, leading the Creative Studio team of eight Copywriters and Designers on a wide range of print and digital campaigns.

He has over 20 years’ experience designing for charities like the Refugee Council, UNICEF, Mencap, Shelter, Barnardo’s as well as in other sectors such as wayfinding, architecture , music, arts and culture.

Sarah Chew, Creative Lead, British Red Cross                                                                     Sara Chew is the Creative Design Lead at the British Red Cross, directing a busy in-house team to deliver impactful and creative content across both digital and offline channels. With over 15 years of experience under her belt, working with a range of cross-sector clients including the NHS, the Science Museum and the Royal National Institute of the Blind, Sara's team received the Judges Award at the Inside Out Awards in 2020 for their skills in creativity and collaboration. As an accomplished multidisciplinary designer, Sara is the guardian of the British Red Cross brand and a passionate humanitarian.

Helen Jones, Creative Director, Shelter                                                                             Helen has over 20 years' experience in the creative industry. From starting up ad agencies to working at the big hitters, her career has covered all areas of advertising, experiential, film and social content. More recently she has gone in-house to set up a creative agency for Shelter, where she leads a team of talented creatives, producing work that rivals the very best out-of-house agencies.