Imagine a fictional charity,
Spontaneous Combustion Support (SCS). This charity, as the name implies,
provides advice, preventative care services, and post combustion family
counselling, for sufferers of the grave affliction. The most visible work it
does is sending volunteers and medical professionals to identify suspected
sufferers displaying early symptoms (wisps of smoke escaping from the nostrils,
high fever, insatiable desire for curry) and chill their cores, then monitor
their ongoing progress.
SCS operates along typical charity
lines. Its workforce and volunteer pool are highly motivated, well intentioned,
and generally good at what they do. The charity is always struggling for funds
and often has to dip into reserves to keep delivering its vital services. Its
IT systems are nearly a decade old and often freeze, while the scanners that
their volunteers used to identify especially hot individuals in public places
tend to break down or identify those puffing tobacco.
The charity has a couple of good researchers
but their efforts to develop better cures and diagnosis tools are limited by
the need for them to also act as coordinators for SCS personnel on the ground.
The company’s logistics a poor: emergency teams often scramble to rescue those
who are either already piles of ash, or perfectly healthy but standing near
radiators. Staff salaries are below those of the public sector and completely
out of sight of comparable private sector positions.
The charity has no budget to train
its senior leaders, to help its board bond and learn to support and challenge
the executives appropriately, nor does it have nonrestricted money for raising funds.
Its efforts to alert people to the dangers and early warning signs of
spontaneous combustion are limited to free social media platforms and simple
infographics on its website. In some areas the NHS welcomes its help, in others
the reception is frosty.
In short it is a worthy charity
providing an important service, surviving but not thriving.
One day tragedy strikes. The
daughter of a prominent businessman taking a refreshing walk along the Thames
is healthy one moment then seen with smoke billowing from her ears the next.
When the affliction hits she is a mere 20 minutes from a trained SCS volunteer
who could help. However, the public is not aware either of the disease or of
the charity’s ability to cure it. She is first ignored, assumed to be a poor
example of performance art, then finally an ambulance is called, but it takes
her to a general hospital without dampening and chilling facilities. By the
time a staff nurse alerts SCS, Alicia Postlethwaite is alight. A charity
volunteer team exerts themselves to put out the blaze but is too late.
Alicia’s father, once recovered
from his grief, decides to hold a fundraiser for SCS with the vow that nobody
else should perish from such a preventable disease. Mr Postlethwaite
consequently holds The Businesspeople’s Big Bucks for Back Office Bash,
inviting all of his besuited friends for a glitzy four course meal and auction
of pledges. His associates and colleagues are well aware of the importance of
supply chain, upstream facilitation, quality logistics and coordination, and
proactive governance. They see an opportunity not only to help SCS and make
something good of Mr Postlethwaite’s grief, but to provide a new model for the
charity sector. This fundraiser is unique: not a penny raised is ringfenced for
the front line. The businesspeople compete in largesse to support all aspects
of the SCS engine room.
The charity is turned around in a
matter of months. It becomes the Google/Twitter/John Lewis of the charity
world, with fantastic facilities, state of the art technology, trendsetting
best practice project management. A chief executive is brought in from a FTSE
100 outsourcing conglomerate. SCS offers fun diversions for staff, great pay
and CV potential, training and development budgets. The best of the best
compete to work there - even if not all are strictly motivated by altruism or
charitable feeling. Its comms are efficient, frontline staff are sent where
they need to go when they need to be there, research is joined up and
coordinates with other charities and the private sector & universities.
Writers from the FT and Economist
run articles on SCS’ innovative restructuring. Management finds it can collaborate
with local spontaneous combustion charities such as Cornwall Against Combustion
and Burnley Burn-Not, combining its medical expertise with their greater
knowledge and links with chronic sufferers. The public learn how to spot the
first signs of the disease and know who to call. Soon spontaneous combustion is
little more than a myth used to scare naughty children.
In summary, far more SC sufferers
are treated and saved than would have been if Mr Postlethwaite had demanded that
all the money he raised be spent on paramedics and body-fridges.
The question is: would this be bad?
From the description above Spontaneous Combustion Support no longer sounds much
like a charity – it sounds like a typical private sector company that happens
to run on donations.
Is that a problem? It is very much meeting its charitable
purposes after all.
More to the point, why is the story
above so unbelievable? Fictional disease aside, it does not seem unrealistic
that those many in society who understand the importance of back-office and
business process should be motivated to donate to charities in a sophisticated
manner.
They should frankly be annoyed by
calls for every penny to go on the front line, for overheads to be minimised,
for accounting acrobatics or actual austerity to create misleading ratios
between giving and direct charitable effect spending. It is understandable that
many in the public view charities with suspicion, but given the sector’s
progress in transparency and accounting openness, why is there no support among
those whose own businesses are run with proper infrastructure, for the
voluntary sector to have the same bedrock?
JL
