Open Alms

The Guardian Newspaper’s Nicola Hill on the voluntary sector’s new relationship with management consultancy

Business plans, risk analyses and strategic reviews are not activities you would associate with charities, yet more and more are calling in management consultants in the drive to become businesslike. Is this a good use of their limited resources?

Simon Braid, head of charities and social housing at consultancy KPMG, admits there are few able to afford his company’s services. As a result, he says, they tend to target the top 100. But Geraldine Peacock, chief executive of the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, thinks you do not need to go to a big player: the key thing is to strike a good match between charity and consultant. “There is too much readiness to buy in big names for their reputation,” she says. “Some of the larger, high-powered consultants who work with corporates have a different mindset.

The Association has just completed a year-long strategic review resulting in a relaunch last month. Ten consultancies were called in to pitch for the job. Peacock says: “There comes a time in the life cycle of all voluntary organisations when they need to look at how they do things and why. Our criterion was an agency to help us to help ourselves, not to do it for us.”

Compass Partnership was chosen because it was “well versed in the voluntary sector and had the right ethos”. The onus is on the client to make things work, argues Peacock. “There is a danger that chief executives are so grateful for an extra pair of hands that they just let the consultant get on with it. It’s important that a consultancy empowers your organisation and doesn’t just leave you with their agenda”

Since the relaunch, Compass has started a planned withdrawal. Its director, Mike Hudson, is acting as mentor to Peacock for the next six months. “They haven’t just helicoptered in and out;’ Peacock says. “As a chief executive it can be very lonely: a mentor is a touchstone while I implement the plans.”

James Rye, assistant director of marketing at disability charity Scope, says consultants are a mixed bag. Charities must check credentials before hiring and make sure the consultancy is well briefed, supported and monitored, though he believes you do not have to pay through the nose for effective service. “It is a perception rather than a reality that consultants equals megabucks: part of the preparation should be to thrash out the costs:’

Nuala Conlon, principal community development officer at Southwark council, south London, agrees. “People spend a fortune on management consultants, but you don’t need to. I spend hundreds, not thousands.” Conlon buys in the services of management consultants for local voluntary groups. “I have to get the right people who speak in the language of community groups — not talk down to them,” she says. “They don’t need guys in fancy suits doing whizzy things with computers.”

No fancy suits — and even no fees — are the deal for some charities. Students at Middlesex University’s business school have just completed strategic reviews of local charities as part of their course. Heather Carri, managing director of the citizens’ advice bureau service in Barnet, north London, says: “It was very refreshing to have an outside view, especially from young people.” Sarah Rogers, acting manager of Barnet carers’ centre, pronounces the students “absolutely superb”. They were asked to look at how the national carers’ strategy could be implemented locally. We were surprised at how innovative they were,” says Rogers.

The use of consultants seems set to continue. They are increasingly called in to advise on fundraising, and there are signs that their use as interim managers, a practice common in the private sector, may spread to voluntary organisations. Bernard Spiegal, principal of consultancy Common Knowledge, reports that an increasing amount of his work is with trustees who are unclear about their roles.

At the relaunched Guide Dogs for the Blind, Peacock is enthusiastic: “The increased use of consultants in the voluntary sector brings in expertise at the right time without the ongoing overheads.”

Reproduced from the Guardian Society 9^th June 1999

Guardian website is at http://guardianunlimited.co.uk

The MDN website is at http://www.mdn.org.uk

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Updated 18^th November 1999