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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
10 October 2017
Updated: 07 December 2020
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Richard Harries’s paper for Clore Social Leadership, Facing the Future, highlights the main challenges for sector leaders over the coming decades. Fiscal constraint, geo-political shocks and technological advances are changing the nature of social need, as communities tackle inequality and people live longer. At the same time state resources continue to shrink and the mantra doing more with less is stretched to breaking point.
When faced with these pressures many charity leaders will naturally ask: how are we going to find someone to pay for what we do in the future? However, to be able to respond effectively our sector needs to think more profoundly about business models, and not simply where replacement funding is coming from.
Many charities have had a hand to mouth existence. The job of raising money has not always been closely connected to the delivery of value. This disconnect between who pays and who benefits matters because when those who have been paying stop doing so, they are not the ones who immediately lose out.
Much has been made of the potential for social investment to help charities adapt to the changing financial reality. However, the hype about social investment has sometimes missed the point and the adaptation required is more fundamental than is often understood. Loans are not a substitutes for income which has been lost. Rather they are a tool that can help some charities earn more revenue in the future. In a model where you are trading, the link between who pays and who benefits is stronger; and this can help build resilience.
Therefore the question for leaders to ask is not ‘where is the money going to come from?’ but more profoundly, ‘what sort of business model is appropriate as we respond to these future challenges?’
One of our roles at Access is to design and fund capacity building programmes which aim to help charities make this sort of transition. We have consulted widely on what support is needed and the clear top two areas are around leadership and governance. (The others are impact management capabilities, finance and business modelling skills, marketing and improving the use of data.)
For executive leaders in the sector the challenge is often one of having the time to step away from the day to day and consider these questions in a supportive and stimulating environment. Similarly having the confidence to try something new, especially in an organisation with a long history of doing things the same way, can be daunting. Peer learning is one way these challenges can be addressed and is a key design principle for our programmes.
Engaging charity trustees in these questions is the next task. As Richard points out, there are nearly a million charity trustees in the UK, with an average age of 57. They come into their roles often passionate about the cause, but not necessarily with the skills and experience to recast the way a complex organisation operates. Furthermore, trustees are increasingly operating in a risk adverse environment. Negative headlines, declining public trust and an increasingly pro-active regulator are all factors which might encourage trustees to batten down the hatches. However in our sector risk works in two ways; and the consequences of inactivity can be just as bad as making mistakes.
Trustees need to be encouraged to embrace and manage risk as they help their executive leaders to look to the future and consider what business model is right for their charity. Once the business model is defined, the job of financing it will be much clearer; and there will be a good starting point to answer the answers which investors and funders will have.
Please share your views and comments below or on Twitter @CloreSocial. You can also follow Seb on @sebelsworth, and Access here @si_access.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
01 August 2016
Updated: 07 December 2020
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John Williams is Vice Chair at the Association of Chairs.
It’s been a tough 12 months for Chairs and trustees. The charity sector has faced unprecedented challenge and criticism, and much of it has focused on apparent failings in governance and leadership. Chairs especially are under pressure to ensure their boards are responsible and effective, while continuing to deliver the maximum impact for their beneficiaries.
The Association of Chairs (AoC) was set up three years ago to support charity and other non-profit Chairs, and to champion good governance and leadership in the sector. Chairs tell us they find their role rewarding, but a surprising number say that they find it more lonely, demanding and complex than they expected. Even those with the most stellar CVs and broad skills and experience can find themselves outside their comfort zone.
Yet it is clear to us that there is neither a consistent nor sufficient level of support offered to Chairs, and this has been starkly confirmed by our recent survey.
Using our substantial database, we researched 360 respondents in a chairing role, including 140 AoC members. We found high levels of commitment to the role - 54% of Chairs spend four days or more per month on their chairing role - but there are significant gaps in support.
Overall 46% of boards have no budget for board development; only 19% had a formal allocated budget, with the remainder addressing development on a case by case basis. Perhaps more surprisingly is that only 34% of Chairs had an induction, arguably the most basic form of support.
The main support Chairs received was access to publications, conferences and events, and administrative support. Apart from publications, fewer than 50% had accessed any kind of development support in the last 12 months, with many restricting themselves to free sources of support.
It’s clear that there is too little financial and practical support given to Chairs for induction, training and personal development. A host of commentators and reports have argued that we need to raise the bar on charity governance. This is not optional - good leadership is critical to ensure charities achieve the social impact they seek. Both our experience and this research suggests that the appetite to learn and develop is there, but we need to find new and imaginative ways to step up that support. We will all benefit from this.
You can download more information regarding the survey results on the Association’s website.
We welcome your comments in response to this article which you can submit beneath this article, or contact John via Twitter.
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