The struggle for engagement

I thought I’d let you in on one of the struggles that we face as a small charity, and that’s the constant challenge to get people to engage with us. Of course, we’re not alone in this - charity engagement has dropped massively over the last decade, with the UK charity sector said by some to be facing a critical supporter engagement crisis.

And there’s probably no single reason for this, but instead a complex mix of shifts in public behaviour and consumer trends. These include things like communication fatigue, financial pressures, volunteer decline, a move towards private and closed group messaging, algorithmic preferences, charities constantly asking for money, and a lack of transparency from charities as to where funds actually go. 

At Boxes of Sunshine we do our best to combat some of these by not using email marketing, not asking for money all the time, letting you know where your donations go, and by trying to provide fun, healthy, creative and inclusive ways to engage with us. 

But our small size actually goes against us too, as we don’t have the funds, resources or the manpower to work more events or to do more paid promotions across a never ending plethora of platforms. Instead, we rely on organic posts on Instagram and Facebook, stalls at appropriate local events, as well as individuals spreading the word about us, letting us know about opportunities, giving out our postcards, putting up posters and sharing our social media content. In this way, we have grown the number of nominations we receive for boxes to around 230 a year, and our social media following is up to 454 on Facebook and 658 on Instagram. (We’d really love to hit 1000 Instagram followers over the next 12 months or so.)

Anyway, back to those fun, healthy, creative and inclusive ways we provide for you to  engage with us. This year our two primary activities have been our annual Sunflower Club, and our new for 2026, Sunflower Creations competition. 

In a nutshell, our Sunflower Club gives you the opportunity to grow sunflowers and, if you want to, enter our growing competition, where you can win some great prizes across three categories. These three categories - including 2 new categories this year - combine to give everyone the opportunity to enter to win, regardless of your age, or even how well your sunflowers did! They are: our Family category (with 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes for the tallest sunflowers grown), the Adult category (which is new, and offers our grown up growers a tallest sunflower prize), and our “Oh well, we tried” category - meaning that even if your sunflowers were a flop, all is not lost, and you can still be in with the chance of winning something (one winner will be chosen at random). The closing date for entries is 15th September, so get measuring, take a couple of photos and enter in the next few weeks (see our social posts for details). So far, we’ve only had a few entries, so you really could end up winning something if you enter.

I wrote about our Sunflower Creations competition in the last blog post, so I won’t go over it all again, but what I will say is that with under a week left to enter, we’ve had a really disappointing number of entries so far. We thought people would jump at the chance to get involved because a. it’s giving people an opportunity to be creative, b. there’s prizes on offer, c. it’s open to all ages, d. there’s a huge range of things you can create, e. it gives parents something to do with their children during the summer holidays, f. it’s being judged by a professional artist, g. it’s easy to enter (you just photograph your piece), and h. it’s completely free!

If any of that strikes a chord with you, then please have a go! You’ve got until the end of the day on Sunday 16th August to enter. Check out our social media for more info.