Given the problems Third Sector organisations have making decisions, you might think appointing staff to do the work would make things easier. Perhaps the more successful voluntary sector organisations have worked out how to do it. Small community and voluntary groups can find staff a liability.
Apart from the legal responsibilities, there are two major reasons why staff do not always help the organisation develop.
Whose Vision is it?
First, people with a vision set up the organisation. They employ someone they didn’t know before (or maybe someone they think they know) and give them responsibility for running the organisation. The Trustees with the vision meet occasionally whilst one or more paid people are active every day.
For organisations providing a well-defined service to a definite client group, this may not be too much of a problem. However, in a developmental role there is significant danger of mission creep.
Staff can become adept at manipulation. They tell the Trustees what the clients want and the clients what the (unaccountable) Trustees insist upon. Accountability to the Trustees becomes a fiction it’s in everyone’s interests to maintain.
Usually the upshot is stagnation because it is in the interests of the staff to continue with their established routines. The ring leader is not necessarily the manager; administrators are often able to control the organisation. Trustees become bogged down in endless reviews whilst staff ring-fence established practices. If the manager is highly skilled in a specialist area, they can be very happy to leave the running of the organisation to their administrator.
Trustees who are very part-time cannot look in-depth and are fearful of causing trouble by insisting upon change.
Third Sector Funding
The second reason is in the nature of third sector funding. Much of it is grant aided and so it is often scarce. This means the staff know their days are numbered.
Staff know they can’t raise the funds needed to keep going and so they give in. What’s the point in planning a future for an organisation that will soon run out of money?
Without a business mindset, they resist the changes which might bring in income because they involve risk. The problem though is not so much the risk as a perception that they are not in business. “I am here to use my specialist skills and not to run a business” is the underlying argument in many organisations.
Many good ideas fail because no-one is able to make the decisions needed for the organisation to thrive. I’m not saying it is always impossible. I know of several organisations that could have survived but they were unable to make the decisions they needed to make to survive.
Internet marketing may be a real possibility for some organisations. They have something many would value but don’t know how to sell it and they are unwilling to make the changes they need to sell it. It seems hard to see how by focusing on something lower on the list of priorities, you can generate the income you need to fund the higher, less profitable, priorities.
Whilst businesses can make similar mistakes, they are clearer about the need to generate income and usually have a simpler decision-making structure. But third sector organisations are not businesses and this is another way in which they struggle in the marketplace. I’ll go into this next Wednesday.