Trustee Exchange 2012
22 Feb 2012
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Out with the old...
This time last year the idea of reaching the end of 2009 in more or less one piece seemed far-fetched. The world’s financial infrastructure was collapsing around us, previously inconceivably large shocks became commonplace, even daily, experiences and a vortex of debt threatened spiralling doom to our entire system.
And yet here we are, a year later, battered and bruised admittedly, but so far – not to underestimate the damage that has been done to some individuals – mostly still standing.
So what of the future? Our annual audit fee survey published this month talks much of charities preparing for difficult times ahead, challenging every assumption, running endless scenarios, focusing closely on what exposures can be controlled and what risks can be mitigated.
This will certainly be a tense and nervous experience, but hopefully it will also ultimately be empowering and lead to better focus on core objectives and more efficient delivery of services and, through those, increased public benefit.
With a lot less government funding around, there will be a lot less cause for mission drift. With high competition for the remaining available resources, charities will absolutely have to concentrate on proving their worth, so impact reporting will get a big boost. With less turf, there needs to be less turf wars and more collaboration, less beggar-thy-neighbour style competition and more joint ventures and mergers. Service delivery organisations need to be larger, more stable, more broadly based and more efficient.
With every cloud, they say, comes a silver lining. If the pain behind us and the struggles in front of us serve to raise the level of debate and put more people in the frame of mind to work together rather than squabble and fight over scraps, they will not have been wasted.
… and in with the new
You may have noticed that we have a new corporate identity based around the term Civil Society. We have now formally adopted this term which describes the broad area of organisational activity sitting between the state and the market.
The company which publishes Charity Finance has become Civil Society Media and the content of this magazine along with that of our sister titles – governance, Professional Fundraising and Civil Society IT – is now all gathered under the web skirts of www.civilsociety.co.uk.
It may be a new identity but our values here have long been established. This change simply reflects our total commitment to the civil society sector and brings together in one dynamic and attractive website everything we produce.
As it contains the combined output of a number of long-established magazines, this new website is already a substantial resource. Over time it will become even more so as we add databases of information and intelligence tools to manipulate that data. It’s a wonderful ever-developing resource, please use it.
