Tom Madders

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I spent yesterday afternoon talking to a group of charity communications leads about the 'invisible' side of their jobs.

We talked about the hours spent on the phone to journalists trying to kill a story that would hurt their beneficiaries. We talked about the internal battles to stop a CEO from using a word that sounds great in a boardroom but feels like a slap in the face to a service user. We talked about the emotional weight of holding a survivor's story in your hands and trying to figure out how to tell it without breaking it.

It is the kind of work that never makes it into a 'Year in Review' report. It doesn't have a metric. You can't put 'prevented 400 people from feeling alienated' on a spreadsheet.

But that's the work. That is the actual, beating heart of what it means to do comms in this sector. It's not about the 'reach' or the 'engagement'—it's about the stewardship of human experience.

It takes a specific kind of grit to keep doing that day after day, especially when the world feels particularly heavy.

No big takeaway today. Just a bit of a nod to the people doing the quiet, difficult, invisible work that keeps the wheels turning. I see you.

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