When charity begins at the office

Richard Aston, Big Buddy chief executive Photo / Natalie Slade

Some have had enough of climbing the greasy pole and want a less stressful work environment, although they don't always find that.

For some not-for-profit organisations, corporate types can have a beneficial impact. Business-minded converts to charity are often results-driven and have energy and passion.

One such corporate refugee was Richard Aston, now chief executive of Big Buddy, an organisation that teams fatherless boys with mentors. He swapped his American corporate life for small-time charity in 2002.

"I had a gnawing sensation that I wanted to do something worthwhile in the world," says Aston. "Believe me, I tried to ignore it, I argued with the voice, but it was persistent."

Serendipity was at play and a friend encouraged Aston to take a role as mentoring manager for Man Alive. The money was about a third of what IBM was paying him - although not all corporate refugees take such huge pay cuts.

Aston brought many corporate skills with him and says he "hybridises" the two worlds. He often uses techniques learned in the sales world and is a great fan of techniques used by telesales staff. At Big Buddy, for example, staff use classic techniques such as trial closes to determine if a mentor will sign up, or to match a boy and a potential mentor.

Former NZ First Government minister Deborah Morris-Travers is a great believer in the intermingling of skills from the government, corporate and not-for-profit sectors. "It is hugely valuable personally and for the people and for the organisations," she says. "They can add a completely different perspective. It can be quite a pragmatic step to take."

After leaving Parliament, Morris-Travers worked as a government relations manager for a PR company, but found her values clashed with some of the work. A stint in Southeast Asia in a number of roles including working in disarmament and with mine survivors got her reflecting on her own life and she decided she wanted to work for children's charities, taking a role at Plunket on her return home.

After winning a Vodafone Foundation World of Difference Grant in 2007, Morris-Travers went to Barnardo's, where she worked 25 hours a week as an advocacy manager - splitting her work between the parent organisation and the Every Child Counts organisation.

The skills honed in Parliament as a researcher and MP and then in the private sector that have helped Morris-Travers with her not-for-profit work include:

* An appreciation of the political environment.
* The ability to strategise.
* Research skills from her time as a parliamentary researcher. Working with a large range of different people and relating to them.
* An ability to work with news media.

Corporate refugees have their detractors in the not-for-profit sector. Sometimes they find the switch difficult or just don't get their new environment. They may think: "I was successful in business and this will be really easy." Yet moving requires an attitude change.

There is a philosophical difference between the way the bottom line is viewed. In the corporate world it's straightforward. But in charity there is no need to keep shareholders happy with profit and the bottom line is no longer viewed in black and white.

It can be tempting for someone with a profit and loss mentality to look at the cost per client. "But how do you value the cost of an individual coming off drugs or alcohol?" one executive said. The efficacy of the programme is what matters.

In fact, an end-of-year surplus at a charity may be bad for future income. If the charity has a surplus, then why would those donors give more? The charity may even make a loss in dollar terms while offering a programme that is hugely successful.

What's more, says Aston, former corporate high-flyers can be driven to despair sitting through not-for-profit meetings where there is lots of emotional intelligence but nothing ever happens.

Another area where the newcomers sometimes have problems is in the management of volunteers, which is quite different from managing paid staff. You can tell paid staff what to do, but have to ask volunteers.

One person who has experienced the difficulty of transition is Kate Frykberg, executive director of the Todd Foundation.

"It was a huge, huge learning curve," she says. "You are there to try to make Aotearoa a better place and that is also harder than making money. It is harder to measure how well you have done it."

Frykberg and her husband built a hugely successful internet company, The Web Limited, in the 1990s and she became New Zealand Business Woman of the Year in 2000.

"In the business world you have a fairly unambiguous measure in terms of what your finances are doing. If you are changing lives it is much harder to measure and to know what the best approach is."

On the other hand, she found that she had many transferable skills that are highly useful in her new role. They included:

* Being able to view the big picture and make things happen.
* Good people skills from running a company that employed 40 staff.
* Good financial management experience.
* Strategic planning skills.

Corporate refugees often find themselves in charge of huge budgets. World Vision New Zealand spends $60 million a year.

One executive who handles a much larger budget than he did in business is Tear Fund chief executive Stephen Tollestrup, whose last position in private enterprise was as marketing manager for Comvita.

He left Comvita to study theology and then straddled the boundary between corporates and not-for-profits at the Inter Church Trade and Industry Mission. The organisation worked as a consultancy, charging its 600 clients such as Air New Zealand, Telecom, National Bank and Lion Breweries for services, which included conflict resolution and organisational change management.

In the end Tollestrup decided he needed to find a role serving the wider community.

"My background in industrial relations and theology really got me thinking about the whole issue of labour and work outside the protective norms of New Zealand legislation. I asked myself: 'What was going on for working people in unregulated environments such as Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Central Africa?"'

When he saw the Tear Fund position advertised, Tollestrup applied.

After working on both sides of the fence, he believes it's a bit of a one-way trade between industry and the not-for-profit world, whereas there could be much learned in reverse. In the not-for-profit world, he says, sector managers have to be very agile and have to manage multiple relationships, be creative with solutions, and recognise donors as partners, not as customers.