Measuring results

If you go out to dinner - how do you assess how good your experience is? The quality of the food, the service, the comfort of the surroundings, the noise level ... do you ask how many hours the cook has spent cooking?  How much the basic ingredients cost?  How long they take to do their VAT return? How long people have trained for their jobs? You might ask out of interest but the answers probably wouldn't affect your rating of your dining experience.


Within the charity world we have come a long way in measuring outcomes - in non-jargon - we measure what has changed.  We used to measure outputs - that is what was produced - in the dining analogy this would be the food, the length of time to order, the cost, the space between tables .... anything about the experience that could be measured in terms of the end result but not the impact on the diner.


In Unitarian circles we struggle with any kind of measurement, we are a bit unsure how this fits with our ethos.  However what we often get told is the inputs.  It cost this much, these many people were involved, they gave up this much time and they travelled these many miles. I am not sure what we are meant to make of this. At best people tell us that they are committed to the task but in some instances one is left wondering, 'How did it take so long?' At best it is open governance and at worst it is raising the flag of the martyr - look at what I have sacrificed for you.


Another response that I have heard a couple of times is, 'We're doing our best'. This is the most scary because if people are doing their best there is only one way to go and that's down.  I would much rather people spent less time being more efficient.  I would also much rather hear what has changed.


In psychological terms we need to move our discussion of achievements into the adult sphere, leave the emotional baggage behind and deal with the business. This is what has changed because of what we have done.  Hurrah! we would all say.

Membership Charities

The General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches is a membership charity - as I wrote in my previous post this is much like a commercial company which has directors (trustees) and shareholders (members). We are not alone in being a membership charity which does not detail the rights and responsibilities of its members. It is unfortunate that a group reporting to the Executive Committee late last year recommended that the GA's governing document (constitution) did not need amending. Not only is the object confusing but also, whilst it says how members come into being, it does not say what they can and cannot do. 


The Charity Commission wrote about Membership Charities back in 2004 and a summary of the report can be found here.  The recommendations for trustees of charities and for members are below

Recommendations for charity trustees

Trustees should:

• Pay careful attention to the governance arrangements that relate to the charity’s members, in particular:
• That the rights of each different type of member and their role within the charity are clearly set out;
• That the role of corporate members is fully understood;
• That effective means of communication with all members are in place;
• That the membership list is kept up-to-date;
• That the governance arrangements are regularly reviewed, including the number of members they have and the level at which a quorum is set;
• Consider whether it is appropriate to include a clause in their governing document setting out the respective roles and responsibilities of members and consider whether any additional procedural documents would be beneficial;
• Consider whether their membership is truly representative of the group it is designed to serve and, if not, consider ways of reaching those that are excluded;
• Be aware of the potential benefits of mediation and, where appropriate, consider whether it might be a useful tool for resolving a disagreement within the charity.

Recommendations for charity members

Charity members should: 

• Ensure that the charity clearly explains what the membership role entails, including the rights and responsibilities which accompany the role;
• Exercise their right to vote in the interests of the charity for which they are a member;
• Abide by decisions that are taken fairly and within the rules of the charity.

At the current moment we seem to have a mismatch of expectations about the roles and responsibilities of members and trustees alike: this needs sorting out .

Money and members

The proposed 2020 Programme raises a number of issues about governance, perhaps one of the most important is about who has control over the General Assembly (GA)'s money.


Trustees of a charity have a duty to apply the charity's income to the achievement of its objects unless it has a specific policy with regard to (a) its reserves; (b) a large project which it is saving money for; or (c) there is planned expenditure in the following financial year. If these do not exist the Charity Commission expects a charity to spend all its unrestricted funding every year. 


It is for a charity to determine how it plans to spend its income and how it intends to raise income and/or reduce expenditure. So what do we mean by 'a charity'?  In terms of who is entitled to make decisions without these being delegated then we have the board of trustees and the charity's members. This model of governance is similar to commercial companies where there are directors (trustees) and share-holders (members). The governing document should clearly describe the rights and responsibilities of each group. The GA constitution does not ... more for a later post.


It is for trustees and members to determine what the decision making process for spending money is.  If this does not exist then the trustees need to produce a decision-making policy and procedure. Trustees cannot complain that this does not exist - it's their job to produce it and then to adhere to it.  Without such policies it has to be a matter of custom and practice. How in the past have we as a body decided on our budgeting? In the past this has been done through a series of processes including the following people/groups - the Executive Committee, Commissions and Panels, the Chief Officer and staff, and ultimately the membership usually via the Annual Meetings.


So what spending should members of a membership charity have influence over? All of it! As an analogy, any member of the British public can express concern about what the Government is spending - it would be a little odd if someone in the government then said but you only have say over what you paid in taxes. Similarly with charities, trustees are working for all their members and it is usual for all members to be able to vote on the future budget and spend of that charity not just on the money that they helped to raise.


So what guides a charity on how to spend its money? Essentially three things

1. Their object; combined with either
2. Their business plan; and/or
3. Emergencies.

If new money is raised then it should be spent on these three items above.  

We cannot have a board of trustees working outside of their own framework of governance and raising money which they say the membership has no influence in spending. If the trustees think that they can do this, and then do do this, then they should not be surprised or upset if the GA's membership is less than grateful.

What to put in an action plan

I am helping a local organisation with their business planning and we got onto what should go into the action plan. I know this organisation reasonably well and know that they are continually developing new initiatives - they are fairly new and there's quite a bit of energy around both from staff and from volunteers. So my advice was to see what they have been doing in the past six months. The manager produces a weekly report so I suggested that she should cut from all her reports the details of the new activities e.g. meetings with potential new customers or partners, and paste them into another document. Then print out this document and then cut it up so that each activity is on a separate small piece of paper.  Then sit on the floor or in front of a large table and group activities together so that you have categories. She should then have the beginnings of her action plan - she would have the categories and know what she's already done - the actions are then how to develop that work.


The problem with many action plans is that people think it's about doing lots of new stuff.  But whether we are paid staff or volunteers most of our time is spent doing what needs to be done to keep our organisations running smoothly. There is usually a bit of development and this needs to recognised as such. Sometimes a development can be to do the same things but to do them differently. If we are doing nothing new then perhaps its time to sit down with our fellow trustees/committee members and ask ourselves 'What is stopping us for doing new things?'


The business plan (before the action plan) should provide the history and the background and the reasons why we are doing whatever it is we are doing.  If there is not a consistent narrative say from our values and the outcomes that we want to achieve to our actions then that's when we need to change something.  We may have to change our values - but that should be a last resort.  We may have to change our desired outcomes - that would be a shame but may reflect lessons learnt in the real world. We may need to change what we do or how we do it - which is often easier to say than to do.  However we do need to ensure that what we are trying to achieve (our outcomes) and how we achieve these (our values) should logically lead us to what we are actually doing.


The are some (many?) people who hate the idea of doing this sort of thing.  My experience is that it can be very illuminating both in telling us will the good work that we do and also what work we think we are doing but aren't.

Business planning

Some people automatically twitch when they see the term business planning for charities.  I have blogged on this in the past. And yet at the moment I am reminded of how important it is - in some cases it is vital. I am currently helping two organisations with their business plans, have recently commented on another and have had email correspondence with someone who has been made redundant because there was sufficient timely planning by their employer. 


Whilst most of us plan for our own futures we do this more in an unconscious manner than by writing a personal plan. Although I do know at least one person who does write down a personal plan. So how do we go about writing a business plan for a Unitarian congregation/local community?


Here is one suggested contents list for a business plan 

1. Executive Summary  
2. Introduction
3. Background
4. Vision, mission, aims and values
5. Organisational description
6. The building(s) and any land
7. Risk assessment
8. Strategic challenges    
9. Outcomes for the next three to five years with targets and milestones
10. Action plan
11. Three year financial projections
12. Monitoring

This seems like a lot but it is worth considering all sections. Sections 3,4 and 5 will probably change little between business plans so it's worth working on this over time to give a context to your plans. Section 6 may also be unchanging unless the next few years will see major refurbishment and renovation. However you can write some historic stuff.  You don't have to write reams and if you think that reams might be useful put the majority of this in appendices.


Having a risk assessment (Section 7) is a good discipline to get into. Here are two blog posts on risk management - one & two. Risks can be about anything - the building, about our finances or even about our spiritual lives. It's just thinking what could go wrong, how much impact that would have on the community, how likely is that risk going to occur (earthquakes in the UK low, raining off the summer fundraiser probably fairly high!) and thinking of how you might reduce the (a) likelihood of the risk actually occurring and (b) reducing the impact if the risk does occur. These contingency plans must go into Section 10 which is your action plan.


Strategic challenges (Section 8) are about the big issues facing the community. These will emerge through discussion and perhaps a more formal assessment of the organisation.  The challenges may include

• How to find finance;
• How to make people more aware of the local Unitarian community;
• How to develop new approaches to worship or provide spirituality workshops;
• How to move from one stage of development to the next.

You may wish to think of them under a set of headings for example

• People: Governance; Ministry; Volunteers; Community Members; Youth; Visitors
• Other Resources: Finance; the Building; Skills and Expertise of Community Members
• Developments: Worship; Quality Standards; Knowledge and Skills; Community’s Profile; Communication; and Partnerships.

You will need to discuss how to prioritise these challenges.  It is often fairly obvious but not always. Some people may be more interested in one area of work rather than another. The reasons why the priorities have been chosen need to be clearly described.

Taking all the foregoing into consideration you then need to decide what changes the community wants to see - these are the Outcomes (Section 9). There is a fine balance between being realistic in what can be achieved and not stretching ourselves to achieve more. It will be a learning exercise - monitoring the plan will enable outcomes to be tweaked and reset. The blog post gives more information on how to measure change.

Then you get to do the good part - the Action Planning (Section 10). I have a previous blog post on this. I think that what you have to do with action planning is be realistic about timescales. If the committee only meets quarterly and there are some big decisions to be made, then either you are going to have to have more meetings or recognise that the decision making process will take much longer than if you were meeting every week.

You always have to match you action plan with an income and expenditure profile Section 11) and then you have to build in some monitoring (Section 12) to ensure that you are on track or so that you can change your targets so that you actually achieve what you say you are going to.

Business planning is not difficult but it does require commitment - the first time is always the worst!

                                                                                

Useful websites

A couple of useful resources 


A property helpline for charities plus resources about property issues 


A guide about sustainable funding

That's all folks!

Consistent priorities

I have been waiting for inspiration - sometimes it's a long wait.


Having been at a Unitarian district meeting on Wednesday and heard people expressing dismay at the significant focus and financial investment that the Executive Committee is giving to establishing new Unitarian congregations I was nudged into looking again at the strategic priorities presentation given at last year's (2011) annual meetings.  Nowhere in this document, which was the sum total of the General Assembly's strategic priorities, was there any mention of starting new congregations.


Let's look first at this presentation - it starts with


Economics and Ideals

• The Annual Meetings in 2009 proposed developments which proved unaffordable

• The EC referred the difficulty back to the Annual Meetings in 2010 through the

‘Difficult Choices’ presentation

• UK Unitarians and Free Christians were able to prioritise our needs for the future

These proposed developments in 2009 were (from two separate motions) to have two workers focusing on information and social justice. Certainly if they were part-time workers it would have cost about £50,000 or perhaps a little less.

We were also told in the 2011 presentation that the General Assembly would 

... ensure that all Unitarian congregations can have access to professional Ministerial or recognised lay leadership and support.

Now we are being told that we will be having a 2020 Congregational DevelopmentProgramme.  This has come out of the blue and has no business plan to support its prioritisation. This is what this programme will do.

The 2020 Congregational Development Programme was given the go-ahead along with the establishment of a 2020 Board. It includes a range of possible models with lots of room for creativity locally; new planting, restart, side-by-side (parallel congregation in the same location to existing one), satellites and spin-offs and social responsibility starts. 

The report on finances was considered which looked at the likely costs and possible funding opportunities to start and grow the programme. The financial modelling indicated that to establish a total of seventeen new congregations the net cost would be approximately £1.3million. There were several options outlined for raising this considerable sum. The programme would work alongside current initiatives such as the Future Ministry pilot in Scotland. 

It was also recognised that in the eleven year time period it is likely that some current congregations may close and that the support to the General Assembly from the Bowland Trust will then be at an end. This was therefore a "window of opportunity" to promote growth to arrest the serious numerical decline of the Unitarian Movement.

We are also told that from a £45,000 legacy, matched with Bowland Trust monies bringing the amount to £90,000, the Executive Committee agreed to allocate  £50,000 to the Congregational Development Programme (as start-up grant).  It just so happens that this amount matches what it would have cost to implement the motion that was passed in 2009. This latter was actually agreed by us, the former has not been.


What are we to make of this?  First we are told there is no money to support the implementation of motions which were adopted democratically; we are then told that following consultation these are the GA's priorities; we are told that existing congregations will be prioritised so that they will have access to professional Ministerial or recognised lay leadership and support; and then not twelve month's later we have something not identified in the priorities being allocated significant amounts of money - seemingly given much more significance over those priorities which were presented to us in April 2011.


I am not sure what to think but fundamentally this feels all wrong.