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Charity begins at work as business gets on board

Mike Dickson

Wednesday, 2nd July 2008

Charities have always been wary of getting involved with the corporate world, but the Pilotlight initiative, which brings the two together, is positive, inspiring and brings many benefits to both parties, says Mike Dickson

The idea of involving business in charity has never been more popular, whether it takes the form of running charities to be more like businesses, or asking business people to manage charities. The unchallenged implication is that this is a ‘good thing’ that helps charities to be ‘managed properly’.

But charity employees sigh and regard this with a cynical eye, especially in the current economic climate. Leave aside for the moment that running a highly profitable private-equity firm is a million miles away from nursing a dying patient in a hospice, and that some of these ‘management gurus’ have trashed the net worth of their own banks, experienced a ‘little local difficulty’ with their hedge fund, or reduced the rest of us to penury by lending money to people clearly unable to pay it back.

The more serious charge is that this new phenomenon has made raising money for charities much harder, and adversely affected every charity’s ability to help their clients.

So why on earth would you let these business people near your charity? Well, the short answer is, that, sensibly and carefully engaged, these same people can rise to the occasion and really help young charities to grow.

One of my brighter initiatives at Whizz-Kidz was the creation of a business development board. Chaired by Bill Dalton, an extremely charming Canadian who was then UK chief executive of HSBC, the board included some of the brightest names in the City – Sir Crispin Davis, Bob Wigley, Sir Stuart Rose, Julian Richer, Charles Gurassa and others. Uniquely at the time, we didn’t ask these people for money. We asked them to employ the same skills and talents that they had used to build a successful career to help a young charity grow.

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