Nobody Knows – The Lumineers (2016)

Nobody Knows is the credits song for Pete’s Dragon (2016) - one of Disney’s better live-action remakes.

I play it often. Not sure why.

It’s the kind of song that would depress some people, but it gives me profound hope:

Nobody knows how the story ends Live the day, do what you can This is only where it begins Nobody knows how the story ends

Three years ago this month, myself and the trustees of the charity I was leading took the difficult decision to shut down.

We had been struggling to stay afloat for years, but at that point we actually had a bit of money in the bank. Enough to struggle on a bit longer until the next acute cashflow crisis…or enough to pay proper redundancies and draw our projects with vulnerable young people to a proper end.

I won’t say I was jumping for joy at the decision. I worked really hard to find a different path: a remodelling of the way we delivered, conversations with a few of our wealthier supporters about radically increasing their giving.

But none of it would have been enough to change the things we couldn’t: the incredibly difficult fundraising landscape, the cuts to school budgets (they used to pay part of the cost of our projects) and the rising costs of EVERYTHING.

At the time I couldn’t picture what life would look like for me. But once I had stayed on a few months longer to wrap up the affairs of the charity, make myself redundant (I don’t recommend this to anyone), I was forced to think about what I was going to do next.

And TL;DR that journey of the past 3 years = Raiser.

Nobody knows how the story ends.

I don’t know how this story ends.

But as long as you’re alive and kicking, there’s always hope. A plot twist could be just round the corner.