Opinion

High Risk or Low Risk - you choose

Fundraising | Adrian Beney | 30 Sep 2009

This morning I needed to drop off an application to the UK Identity and Passport Service. However I had the temerity to arrive at the bewildering set of doors (customer exit, customer entrance and "staff only") holding not just a completed passport application in the correct envelope, but also my dog.

I should explain that Ben is not a Rottweiler nor an Alsatian, or any other form of "attack dog". Ben is in fact a rather daft, presently rather woolly, Cocker Spaniel. In fact he resembles a black and grey teddy bear with ridiculous long ears and, happily, a full and woolly tail. I had hoped I might walk through the correct door, step three feet up to the reception desk, hand an envelope to the reception staff and leave. Would that life was so simple!

Reception staff are not permitted to receive incoming passport applications. Instead there is a transparent letterbox into which such applications can be placed. This letterbox is almost within reach of the reception desk, but separated from it by a metal detecting archway and a narrow corridor, just a little wider than my arms could stretch.

But remember while my left hand was holding a passport application, my right hand was holding a lead at the other end of which was my dog. And of course, dogs are not permitted to enter the building. So the nice lady behind reception explained that I would need to tie up my dog outside (no convenient hooks provided) and only then could I re-enter the building, step through the arch, place my completed application in the transparent letterbox and then retrace my steps, liberate the dog and leave. This I did, leaving the dog tied up for what cannot have been more than 10 seconds.

Of course the nice lady on reception could not possibly let me perform this act while holding my dog because in doing so she would have broken the rules and probably have lost her job had she been caught. And so she kept the rules and so did I.

All of this made me think about RISK. All these rules, all these apparently insane practices, are motivated by a desire to reduce risk and/or liability, and to remove responsibility from one person or group and place it instead upon another.  Recently you may have seen the case of the dinner lady who, without revealing the identity of the perpetrator, told a parent that their seven-year-old had been tied to the school fence and whipped by her classmates. She has been sacked for a breach of confidentiality.

What has this to do with fundraising? Well, while the two cases above refer to the public sector, increasingly charities are providing public sector services, and attitudes and methods to move from both the private and public sectors into our, third sector.

Recently I re-read an article written by the entrepreneur Luke Johnson in which he discussed the different appetite for risk displayed by the public and private sectors. He argued that the private sector has a high appetite for risk on the grounds that the business which accepts and manages higher risks than its competitors is likely to win. On the other hand the public sector, which has no real competitors, is very risk averse since the reward for success is usually less than the penalty for failure. The school or NHS trust which achieves the top performance rating in the league table may well feel pleased with itself, but the one which whose pupils to fail their GCSEs or which leaves patients on beds in corridors is vigorously pilloried along with its leaders.

Where does the third sector fit in? I suspect it's a real mixture with some not-for-profit organisations doing high risk groundbreaking work, and others (perhaps some less effective "Friends of ..." organisations) largely dedicated to keeping things how they have always been and where their risk profile would make the average NHS trust look gung-ho!

Bringing this firmly back to fundraising, I think we should remember that most major donors to charities are people who have made their money by taking risks, by being different, by treading the difficult path, by trying new ideas. Not only have they succeeded, but in doing so they have accepted the risk that they might fail. It seems to me that people like this are much more interested in giving to innovative, risk-taking, groundbreaking, world changing outcomes than in a risk-averse status quo.

Of course governors and managers in our sector need to manage risk, but let us not give in and lose the willingness to embrace it.

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Who's Who: Adrian Beney