Highlighting impact in charity presentations
How to tailor your presentation for a specific audience
In the world of charity fundraising, advocacy, and policy change, the art of delivering an impactful presentation can make or break your success. Whether you're pitching to potential donors, speaking at a conference, or engaging stakeholders with your latest campaign results, the goal is always the same: to connect, engage, and inspire action. But how do you ensure that each presentation you give is more effective than the last? For the organisation, a great way to improve your team’s presentation effectiveness is with one of my presentation training courses.
For the individual, the answer lies in the simple but powerful practice of reflection. This is the focus of this short article.
By taking the time to reflect on your performance after each presentation, you can identify areas of strength and areas for improvement. As charity professionals, it's important to continually enhance our presentation skills to build stronger connections with our audience, raise more funds, and, ultimately, make a bigger impact. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how you can integrate reflection into your routine to help you grow and refine your presentation skills.
Download the Charity Presentation Skills Guide here
Why should we reflect on our presentation performance?
Why is this important? Because perfection doesn't happen overnight. Each presentation you deliver is a chance to fine-tune your message, your delivery, and your connection with your audience. By reflecting, you’ll:
- Enhance your strengths: You’ll recognise the techniques or aspects of your presentation that worked well and can replicate them in the future.
- Identify areas for growth: Reflection helps you pinpoint areas that need more attention, whether that’s pacing, audience engagement, or your use of visual aids.
- Build confidence: When you actively work on improving, you build your confidence, knowing that each presentation will be better than the last.
Ultimately, reflection allows you to sharpen your skills, stay connected with your audience, and improve the overall impact of your presentations, all of which are crucial in the world of charitable work.
How do the best speakers develop their presentation skills?
Step 1: Solicit Feedback
The first step in the reflection process is gathering feedback. While it may be tempting to judge your own performance based on how you felt during the presentation, hearing from others provides valuable insight. Colleagues, mentors, or even attendees can offer perspectives that you may not have considered, helping you to gain a clearer picture of your presentation's effectiveness.
Here’s how to approach feedback:
- Ask the right questions: Don’t just ask, “How did I do?” Be specific. For example, ask: “What part of the presentation resonated most with you?” or “Was there a moment when the message wasn’t clear?” These specific questions will yield actionable insights that you can implement in future presentations.
- Encourage honesty: Ensure that those providing feedback feel comfortable offering constructive criticism. This can sometimes be a delicate task, but honesty is key to improving.
- Use feedback constructively: Avoid taking it personally. Instead, view feedback as an opportunity for growth. Focus on specific areas for improvement and use those insights to make positive changes.
Feedback isn’t just about finding weaknesses—it’s about recognising what worked and how you can amplify it in future presentations. By regularly seeking feedback, you create a culture of improvement and open the door to ongoing growth.
Step 2: Record and Review
One of the most powerful tools for self-improvement is to record your presentations and review them. It’s easy to forget details or miss certain cues in the heat of the moment, so watching a recording allows you to step back and assess your performance objectively.
What to look for when reviewing your presentation:
- Body language: Were you engaging? Did you use appropriate gestures to emphasise points, or were you static? Your body language plays a significant role in how your message is received.
- Pacing and tone: Did you speak too quickly or too slowly? Was your tone varied, or did you sound monotonous? Pacing and tone are essential for keeping your audience engaged.
- Clarity of message: Were your key points clear? Did you repeat or over-complicate certain aspects? A good presentation should be clear and to the point, with an easy-to-follow structure.
- Audience reaction: Watch how your audience responds. Are they engaged? Are they nodding along, or is there visible disengagement? This can provide key clues on what worked and what didn’t.
When you review your presentation, it’s important to be self-critical but also to acknowledge your successes. Reflecting on the positives helps you reinforce your strengths and boosts your confidence.
Step 3: Set Specific Goals
After gathering feedback and reviewing your performance, the next step is to set clear, actionable goals for your next presentation. The key is to make these goals specific and measurable, so you can track your progress and ensure improvement.
Here are a few examples of goals you might set:
- Storytelling: If you received feedback that your presentation lacked emotional depth, you could set a goal to incorporate more personal stories or case studies that highlight the impact of your charity’s work.
- Audience engagement: If you noticed that your audience seemed disengaged, you could work on asking more questions, including interactive elements (like polls or discussions), or changing your delivery style to create a more engaging experience.
- Pacing and timing: If you rushed through your presentation or found yourself running out of time, you might set a goal to refine your timing and pacing, ensuring that you cover your points effectively without rushing.
- Visual aids: If your slides were overly cluttered or hard to read, you could focus on creating cleaner, more impactful visuals next time.
Setting goals is a fantastic way to channel your reflections into concrete actions. These goals will guide your practice and help you focus on improving specific aspects of your presentation for future events.
Step 4: Practice and Implement Changes
Once you’ve reflected, received feedback, and set goals, the next step is to put your plans into action. Reflection and feedback are powerful tools, but they’re only valuable if you follow through with changes.
- Practice, practice, practice: Incorporate your feedback and goals into your next presentation practice. If storytelling was an area for improvement, rehearse telling compelling, emotionally-driven stories that highlight your charity’s impact. If audience engagement was lacking, rehearse ways to ask questions or include interactive activities to keep the audience involved.
- Get feedback again: After practising, seek feedback from a colleague or a trusted friend. Ask them if the changes you’ve made have improved your presentation.
- Keep refining: Each time you present, refine your approach. Continue to assess your performance, ask for feedback, and work on the areas you’ve identified for improvement.
Conclusion: The Power of Continuous Improvement
In the world of charity presentations, the ability to reflect and improve is essential for long-term success. By taking the time to evaluate your performance, seek feedback, review recordings, and set specific goals, you can ensure that each presentation is better than the last.
Remember, growth doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of consistent effort, a willingness to learn, and a commitment to continuous improvement. So, after your next presentation, don’t just move on to the next task—take a moment to reflect, ask for feedback, and set goals for how you can improve. Your charity’s impact will grow as you do, and your results will be all the better for it.
Explore more Charity Presentation Skills advice!
This article is a part of our complete guide to Outstanding Presentation Skills for Charities and Purpose-Driven Organisations (it’s a catchy title, isn’t it?!).
The guide shares top tips, tricks and techniques to make all aspects of your charity presentations super effective. It is completely focused on helping you to highlight the impact that you are making and to achieve your charitable goals.
You can view all of the articles within the guide at the links below, or download a quick guide here.
- How do I measure my presentation success?
- How should I start my presentation?
- How do I connect with my presentation audience?
- How do I be concise in a presentation?
- How can I tailor my presentation to the audience?
- How do I highlight impact, within my presentations?
- How can I make my presentation truly compelling?
- How should I use emotion and logic in a presentation?
- How can I add audience participation into my presentation?
- How do I write a clear presentation Call To Action (CTA)?
- How do I successfully use technology in a presentation?
- How can I use a story structure to make my presentation more engaging?
- How do I use visual aids in a presentation?
- How do I use props in a presentation?
- How do I include testimonials in my presentation?
- How should I rehearse my presentation?
- How to prepare for a Question and Answer (Q&A) session?
- How do I improve my presentations?
Meet your charity public speaking expert...
Hi!
I’m Rich Watts and I design and deliver presentation skills training for charities (and a host of other organisations too!) that need their people to inspire, persuade and motivate audiences. I am fortunate enough to have won the UK Business Speaker of the Year competition way back in 2012, and since then I have been using all of my geeky knowledge and Third Sector experience to help charities like yours.
