With all the talk of bankers (or as I prefer, banksters) bonus' and whether they could, should, might give them to charity it is worth reminding ourselves of why people give. After all, as some of you know, I'm doing a bloody PhD on the "Nature of Philanthropy" and some of the bankers I've talked to in the past have actually been really quite nice people with a social conscience!
Equally, as the Guardian put it, most people don't want charity, they want fairness. Equality of opportunity whether it's in jobs and homes or clean water and food. Giving philanthropically does little to address those concerns but may still help make the world a slightly better place. It doesn't matter whether it's Bill Gates trying to abolish polio (winning) or malaria (way to go) or a mere mortal making a more modest £10 per month to help bring books to kids trying to get educated. The charitable intention is, I believe, a healthy one and capable of making the world a nice place both in the givers' own community or country as well as where the funds are used.
However, just as inducing a guilt trip for a quick one-off donation is, usually, counter productive for developing good relations with a giver; so, blackmailing a bonus receiver into forgoing it or giving it to "charidy" will probably provoke a backlash in the individual's own charitable motivations and also in his or her working community. Maybe, just maybe, we've got to use intellectual persuasion to change beliefs in order to change attitude and behaviour as those of you who've read the "Spectrum of Philanthropy" might twig.
It's a harder, longer, slower path but I think it could pay dividends.
Showing posts with label banksters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label banksters. Show all posts
Monday, 30 January 2012
Friday, 16 September 2011
The Banksters could learn something from charities
Well well, another $2bn popped it, this time from UBS, and they said it couldn't happen again.
In my experience, if the banks put in something akin to the cost controls that the average charity has (actually Parliament could learn something here) then it really couldn't happen again. The number of signatures, checks, balances and justifications one usually has to make to get repaid for a trip to, say Leeds, would make all but the sturdiest stalwarts tremble in their boots. But it works.
The same applies for sales control as I've just found out. I've spent the last two months chasing around the university to get an invoice raised for a tiny piece of research. Eight weeks, six signatories about about four separate forms all so that the university can be paid by an organisation gagging to pay us! You might say that this is over controlled. I couldn't possibly comment. It does however throw into stark relief the fact that with a few more people looking over the shoulders of the traders and asking the obvious questions, this stuff just could not happen.
In my experience, if the banks put in something akin to the cost controls that the average charity has (actually Parliament could learn something here) then it really couldn't happen again. The number of signatures, checks, balances and justifications one usually has to make to get repaid for a trip to, say Leeds, would make all but the sturdiest stalwarts tremble in their boots. But it works.
The same applies for sales control as I've just found out. I've spent the last two months chasing around the university to get an invoice raised for a tiny piece of research. Eight weeks, six signatories about about four separate forms all so that the university can be paid by an organisation gagging to pay us! You might say that this is over controlled. I couldn't possibly comment. It does however throw into stark relief the fact that with a few more people looking over the shoulders of the traders and asking the obvious questions, this stuff just could not happen.
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Incentives and the rediscovery of Herzberg
Well I've been saying it for long enough. Monetary Incentives simply don't work!
Now Nottingham University ( see http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2011/february/thetruthaboutbonuses.aspx ) reckon that a mixture of punitive fines plus incentives works better than incentives alone. Well maybe in the laboratory but in the real world comparisons are made and, most important of all, actual job content counts for far much than what Fredrick Herzberg (see http://www.trainanddevelop.co.uk/view_article.php?ArticleID=78) dubbed Hygene factors. That is the things that will demotivate us if they're not OK. That is in turn vastly different to the Motivators - relationships, job content, control and flexibility that really turn us on and get us firing on all cylinders. That's what we have to hold in mind when shaping jobs, organisations and pay/incentive packages. Pity the bangsters never understood.
Meanwhile we've a government obsessed with controlling the uncontrollable and offering incentives to companies to come and run services that, without the spurious controls and measures, could be run so much more cost effectively than they are now or will be under a for profit regime. Today we learned that 14% of the NHS budget is spent simply on the disaggregation of purchaser and provider. Put out the £80bn to GPs and this figure will rise dramatically leaving even less to spend on patients.
What's that to do with fundraising you ask? Not a lot save it will put even more pressure on charities to pick up the non standard pieces and fund them from voluntary income. Time to start taking responsibility for the whole funding mix not just fundraising. That's pure Herzberg!
Now Nottingham University ( see http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2011/february/thetruthaboutbonuses.aspx ) reckon that a mixture of punitive fines plus incentives works better than incentives alone. Well maybe in the laboratory but in the real world comparisons are made and, most important of all, actual job content counts for far much than what Fredrick Herzberg (see http://www.trainanddevelop.co.uk/view_article.php?ArticleID=78) dubbed Hygene factors. That is the things that will demotivate us if they're not OK. That is in turn vastly different to the Motivators - relationships, job content, control and flexibility that really turn us on and get us firing on all cylinders. That's what we have to hold in mind when shaping jobs, organisations and pay/incentive packages. Pity the bangsters never understood.
Meanwhile we've a government obsessed with controlling the uncontrollable and offering incentives to companies to come and run services that, without the spurious controls and measures, could be run so much more cost effectively than they are now or will be under a for profit regime. Today we learned that 14% of the NHS budget is spent simply on the disaggregation of purchaser and provider. Put out the £80bn to GPs and this figure will rise dramatically leaving even less to spend on patients.
What's that to do with fundraising you ask? Not a lot save it will put even more pressure on charities to pick up the non standard pieces and fund them from voluntary income. Time to start taking responsibility for the whole funding mix not just fundraising. That's pure Herzberg!
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Aging supporters, green papers and the banksters
Very interesting research from Cass and Southampton on the aging profile of charity supporters, which confirms what I've been banging on about. IT'S THE BOOMERS STUPID! We're a large cohort, getting older and whether we start dying in 2012 or 2016 there are much larger numbers of people with both the capacity and propensity to give to our favourite causes if asked appropriately.
The "Giving" Green Paper (get your responses in by 8th March) is very long on rhetoric about giving and very short on facts about asking. To paraphrase Gill Moody (of Craigmyle) at the Institute yesterday - fundraisers are rather like midwifes to donors. We help them achieve a transformation and if we do it right they'll carry on for life (and beyond).
Which brings us on, of course, to the Banksters who just don't get it. So much more could be done by individuals and the corporations (free banking for instance) if they could only be helped to understand the big picture.
The "Giving" Green Paper (get your responses in by 8th March) is very long on rhetoric about giving and very short on facts about asking. To paraphrase Gill Moody (of Craigmyle) at the Institute yesterday - fundraisers are rather like midwifes to donors. We help them achieve a transformation and if we do it right they'll carry on for life (and beyond).
Which brings us on, of course, to the Banksters who just don't get it. So much more could be done by individuals and the corporations (free banking for instance) if they could only be helped to understand the big picture.
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