The resource library
The tools behind the nine principles, in one place — free to use and adapt. Filter by pillar or by what you need right now.
Theory of Change
Demystifying Theory of Change with three plain-language metaphors — the Journey, the Ripple and the Seed — and four simple questions. The backbone of your Purpose pillar.
Strategy
Honest choices, clear positions, room to move. Four metaphors — Map, Boat, Garden, Workshop — and four questions to say your strategy out loud, write it down small, and publish it in the open.
The Collaboration Spectrum
Working together isn't on or off — it runs along a spectrum from co-existing to fully collaborating. Locate where a relationship honestly sits, tell cooperation from collaboration, decide what to do differently at each stage, and judge how deep to go before more togetherness starts to cost you resilience.
Setting the mindset
Five small facilitation tools for the start of a session — Weather Check, group agreements, a Permission Slip, the Mini Manual of Me, and 'one thing that's kept us going' — to check in, agree how you'll work, and help people bring their whole selves.
Garden of Ideas
A facilitation tool for workshops and residentials: capture ideas as seeds, keep the ones you can't act on yet in a seed bank, and at the end decide together what to plant now, save for later, or compost.
Reflective Handout
A People-pillar reflective worksheet: capture takeaways from each session, name your resilience assets and development priorities, plan with Three Horizons, rate your pillar maturity, and set out the knowledge, skills and behaviours to grow.
Money / Mission Matrix
Plot every activity and income stream by mission impact and financial contribution. The 2×2 makes the trade-offs visible, so the choice to sustain, grow, fix or let go is a deliberate one taken together.
Charity Budgeting
A budget isn't just a plan that breaks even — a sustainable one covers the full cost of everything you do and leaves an unrestricted surplus to build your reserves. Full cost recovery, the full cost of salaries, worst-case-then-best-case income, and keeping the budget live. A concise distillation of the Embrace Finance Money Skills deck.
Cashflow Forecasting
You can have a budget that predicts a surplus and still run out of cash. A cashflow forecast shows your most likely bank balance month by month, so you can act before the trough arrives. How to build and maintain a rolling forecast, the prudence rules, and what 'going concern' really means. A concise distillation of the Embrace Finance Money Skills deck.
Charity Reserves
Reserves are the part of your unrestricted funds that's freely available to spend on any of your purposes — your rainy-day fund. There's no single right level: work out how much you have, decide how much you need from your own risks, set a range, and write a policy you can explain. A concise distillation of the Embrace Finance Money Skills deck.
Pre-mortem
Before you commit to a plan, picture it a year on and failed — then work backwards to surface the risks optimism hides, prioritise them by likelihood × impact, and mitigate the serious ones while there's still time.
Backcasting
Picture the resilient organisation you want to be in two years, then work backwards — 18–24 months, 6–12 months, 3–6 months — to find the three to five things to start now.
Decision Modes Map
Sort a decision by its nature before you dive in — predictable, expert, complex or chaotic — and match the way you work to the type of issue. A lightweight take on Cynefin.
Three Horizons
Look at the world as it is now (H1), the resilient future you want (H3) and the messy transition between them (H2) — all at once. The backbone of the prioritise-and-plan step that turns an assessment into a path.
Triple Loop Learning
Three questions, three depths of learning: Are we doing things right? Are we doing the right things? And how do we decide what the right things are? Most teams ask only the first — resilient ones keep asking all three.
Bridgespan Scenario Planning Toolkit
Free step-by-step toolkit for nonprofits with examples. Helps organisations plan for multiple futures and make robust decisions.
DESC Technique for Difficult Conversations
Tool to decrease defensiveness during difficult conversations. Uses Describe, Express, Specify, Consequences framework.
15% Solutions (Liberating Structure)
Reveal actions everyone can do immediately. Shows there is no reason to wait around or feel powerless. Focus on what is within discretion.
Circle Meetings
Meeting structure encouraging conversational turn-taking and psychological safety. A simple way to grow listening skills, trust and safety.
Things to Try Tomorrow
List of small experiments teams can try immediately. Quick wins for changing ways of working.
Community Action Network Scenario Planning Toolkit
Recent (2025) toolkit covering trigger points and communication, designed for community organisations.
Eisenhower Matrix Template (Miro)
Interactive template for urgent/important prioritisation. Classic four-quadrant tool: Do, Schedule, Delegate, Don't Do.
Bridgespan Theory of Change Toolkit
Free downloadable toolkit with pressure-testing questions and a worked case study. Helps articulate intended impact and how you expect to achieve it.
Psychological Safety Survey
Survey tool to identify your team's level of psychological safety. A quick assessment with actionable insights.
Enspiral Conflict Resolution Process
Steps to safely and appropriately resolve conflict with support mechanisms. From Enspiral's handbook.
Team Stand-up Template
Google Sheet template for team stand-ups. A snappy source of team building and clarity on workloads and roles.
Loomio Conflict Resolution Process
Step-by-step process for resolving tensions between team members. Aims for generative, healthy, productive conflict.
Random Retros
Grab instant retrospective formats, all planned out for you. A quick way to run varied retrospectives.
Impact/Effort Matrix (EasyRetro)
Free online interactive tool — no registration required, works in browser, exports to JPEG. Draggable post-its for prioritisation workshops.
Parabol Icebreakers
Check-in question generator for team meetings. Helps build psychological safety and connection.
Hyper Island Roles & Responsibilities Workshop
Workshop to move a team from 'storming' to 'norming'. Helps understand each other's roles and who is responsible for what.
Tamarack Collective Impact Toolkit
Comprehensive toolkit for collective impact initiatives. Covers backbone organisations, shared measurement and mutually reinforcing activities.
GROW Coaching Model
Simple coaching structure: Goal, Reality, Options, Will. Helps a coachee identify what they want, their current state, options and commitment.
NFF Scenario Planning Tool
Excel-based financial scenario planning tool from the Nonprofit Finance Fund. Helps model different financial futures.
Feedback Profiles for Teams
Team workshop template to share and understand each colleague's preferences when receiving feedback. Creates a helpful team resource in 30 minutes.
RAPID Decision-Making Tool (Bridgespan)
Framework for clarifying decision roles: Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide. Includes nonprofit-specific guidance.
Scrum Alliance Working Agreements Guide
How to facilitate powerful working agreements. Makes social standards explicit for teams.
Non-Violent Communication (NVC) Process
One-pager on communication based on the principles of nonviolence. A method to increase empathy and improve quality of life.
WWF Partnership Toolbox
Comprehensive partnership toolkit including baseline assessment, monitoring tools and exit planning.
2x2 Scenario Matrix Guide
Practical guide with charity examples and common pitfalls. Explains how to identify key uncertainties and build scenarios.
NPC Theory of Change in Ten Steps
The most widely-read UK guidance on Theory of Change. A practical 10-step handbook for services, campaigns and organisations.
Media Trust Theory of Change Guide
Beginner-friendly guide to building your charity's theory of change. A good starting point for smaller organisations.
NCVO Strategy & Impact Resources
Collection of strategy and impact guidance from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, including the 'Tools for Tomorrow' guide.
Mission-Money Matrix
A portfolio matrix adapted for nonprofits. Evaluates programmes by mission alignment and financial sustainability.
The Team Canvas (Miro)
Workshop template to get clear on the purpose, roles, goals, values, needs, rules and expectations of a team.
Charity Excellence Strategy Questionnaire
Free 30-minute online self-assessment with STEEPLE/PESTLE templates. Generates a strategy template based on your answers.
Experiment/Decision Design Template
Template to write clear proposals with opportunity/problem, context, plan, who is affected, and how and when decisions will be made.
SBI Feedback Model (Situation, Behaviour, Impact)
A simple and effective model to guide feedback conversations. Focuses on specific situations, observable behaviours and their impact.
Assumption Grid Template (Miro)
Tool plotting assumptions by impact and certainty. Helps decide which assumptions to test first. Good for strategic planning under uncertainty.
Charity Excellence PESTLE/STEEPLE Tool
Free UK-focused templates and worked examples for environmental scanning. Part of a broader strategy toolkit.
Collective Impact Forum — Turf, Trust and Collaboration
Practical article on navigating turf issues and building trust in collaborations. Addresses common dynamics that derail partnerships.
Decision Proposal Template
Template for clear proposals covering opportunity/problem, context, plan, who is affected, and how and when decisions will be made.
Bridgespan Decision Criteria Toolkit
Guide to developing strategic decision criteria for nonprofits. Helps break ties when competing priorities exceed resources.
The Partnering Initiative Stakeholder Mapping
Tool for the early scoping phase of partnerships. Helps map potential partners and understand the partnership landscape.
Impact/Effort Matrix Guide (Facilitator School)
Step-by-step facilitation guide with a downloadable PDF template. Includes detailed instructions for running the exercise with groups.
IRM Stakeholder Mapping for Charities
Charity-specific guidance on stakeholder mapping from the Institute of Risk Management. Helps identify and prioritise key relationships.
Untools — Decision Making Collection
Curated collection of practical thinking tools with step-by-step guides and examples — Decision Matrix, Second-Order Thinking, Cynefin and more.
Social Ventures Prioritisation Matrix Guide
Guide to using prioritisation matrices in the social sector. Covers how to handle limited data and multiple stakeholder perspectives.
IRM Horizon Scanning Practitioner's Guide
Step-by-step process from the Institute of Risk Management with the Three Horizons model. Professional-level guidance for risk practitioners.
Meeting Cost Calculator
Put a cost against your operating rhythm. With this you may choose to make meetings shorter, smaller, less regular or async.
Assumption Map Guide (WRKSHP.tools)
Detailed step-by-step guide with evidence levels. Explains how to prioritise assumptions by desirability, viability and feasibility.
FD Works Handbook Template
Example team handbook/agreement outlining 'how we do things around here'. Built collaboratively; a Notion template to duplicate.
NCVO Collaboration Spectrum
Framework showing the range from loose networks to full mergers. Helps organisations choose the right level of collaboration.
Lean Coffee
Simple meeting format for coherent and productive discussions. The least structure necessary — no more, no less.
Open Org Employee Handbook Template
Template filled with useful subject and business areas for team agreements, with real-life examples for inspiration.
Stop Start Continue Template
Free collaborative template for retrospective reviews. Helps teams identify what to stop, start and continue doing.
Better Teams Roles Exercise
Team exercise to shine a light on who is doing what and how roles intersect. Addresses confusion, inefficiencies and conflict.
Holacracy Tactical Meetings
Structured meeting format to triage issues and remove obstacles, at a regular rhythm with a facilitated process.
How Do We Want to Be Together (The Hum)
Step-by-step guide to gather team input, unpack values into actions, negotiate boundaries and iterate. Creates living team agreements.
Meeting Run Sheet Template
Template to design participatory meetings and workshops, with a blank template, structure options and worked examples.
Atlassian Working Agreements Play
Workshop to create a list of team expectations to work together successfully and avoid misunderstandings.
Hybrid Team Agreements (Miro)
Clarify who works where, real-time vs async work, collaboration preferences, recurring meetings and accountability.
Meeting Course-Correction Guide
Favourite fixes to get any meeting back on track, based on studying hundreds of meeting hours.
Troika Consulting
Liberating Structure for peer coaching: individuals ask for help and get advice from two others in rapid rounds.
User Manuals for Teams
Template for teams to share how each person works best, making life easier when colleagues understand each other's preferences.
Intersector Collaboration Assessment Tool
Online tool to assess collaboration health. Identifies strengths and growth areas in cross-sector partnerships.
NCVO Partnerships Guidance
UK-specific guidance on partnerships including joint working agreements, covering legal and practical considerations.
URBACT Stakeholder Ecosystem Map
Visual tool designed for online whiteboards. Maps stakeholders by influence and interest.
Consent decision-making
Instead of 'does everyone agree?', ask 'can you live with this? Any objections?' — the core tool for bold, inclusive decisions.
The Advice Process
Decision-making process: anyone can make any decision if they take responsibility and listen to those affected or with expertise.
Lightning Decision Jam
A fast, structured process for groups to make decisions, solve problems or discuss challenges.
Visible Network Labs Ecosystem Mapping Guide
Beginner's guide to ecosystem mapping, including free templates and a step-by-step process for mapping your network.
Trajectory Guide to Horizon Scanning
Comprehensive guide with PEST/PESTLE frameworks and practical steps for environmental scanning and identifying emerging trends.
SOON Coaching Questions
A bank of coaching questions using the SOON model to help others develop their own insights and solutions.
Lessons Learned Meetings Guide
An easy 6-step process for facilitators to run lessons-learned sessions.
Bridgespan Measurement & Evaluation Guide
Practical guide to nonprofit measurement, evaluation and learning. Covers defining outcomes, measuring metrics and building dashboards.
Here for the Long Term: why investing in organisational resilience helps charities navigate today's pressures
Why investing in organisational resilience helps charities navigate today's pressures and still be around for tomorrow's beneficiaries.
Resilience assets and deficits: what start-ups and scale-ups can learn from each other
What start-ups and scale-ups can learn from each other, from their younger selves and from visioning their future selves.
Resilience indicators
One simple measure per pillar, charted together, so you can see at a glance when one area is slipping and putting pressure on the others.
Support Structure Pre-Mortem
Imagine your ways of working have quietly started to creak 18 months from now — then work back to the small step you'd take today.