Fighting a mission impossible

By JULIE MIDDLETON

They've got similar skills to every other executive director or chief executive. Except they're paid less, have less money to work with, often deal with far more complicated problems - the sort that aren't solved by pulling rank - and the corporate world, unfairly, often views their skills as non-transferable.

So what drives the men and women who run New Zealand's not-for-profit sector?

Diane Robertson, 50, is the Auckland City Mission's head - her title is Auckland City Missioner. Trained as a primary school teacher and a family counsellor, she is the first non-cleric and the first woman to hold the post.

And there's no chance of misconstruing what she does. Arriving at ACM's office on unlovely Hobson St in central Auckland, you have to pass through a drop-in centre for the homeless and aimless.

Chairs and tables are crammed into a small space; several men in various states of disrepair sit and gaze. The air smells stale.

Taped on the wall inside the reception area, various pieces of paper identify which clients have had trespass orders served against them; others instruct on what to do if a visitor becomes aggressive.

It is not a comfortable environment. Why is it, then, that people working in social services are seen as ineffectual softies?

"I'm seen as a "nice" woman," says the good-natured but evidently no-nonsense Robertson, breaking into hearty laughter in her plain office right above the drop-in centre.

"People tell me it's the "good woman syndrome". I'm nice and caring - the implication is that I don't have commercial acumen and business skills."

Of course she disagrees. Robertson says that an Auckland University-awarded scholarship last year to a management course offered reassurance "that I do have the same level of skill and ability [as corporate CEO's], and that through working in a non-for-profit I have an incredibly broad base of skills".

And something else: "I really do have a passion for making a difference," says Robertson, who is married to Wilf Holt with whom she has sons aged 24, 22 and 20.

It's a sense of vocation, she says, that gets her through the tough times.

The ACM, set up by the Anglican church in the 1920s, has a range of "business units", she says, ranging from a drug and alcohol detox centre to a night shelter, Herne Bay house for those living with HIV and AIDS, and a children's trauma programme.

The 50 fulltime staff equivalents across Auckland range from nurses to counsellors, psychologists and drivers.

On top of that, the mission has to market itself and raise its funds too - just 12 per cent of its annual funding comes from the government. In the year to last June it gathered $4,256,000.

But charities must create independence, not dependence. The latter "in itself can be abusive," says Robertson, "so you have to start thinking about why is it you do it - what is the purpose?"

An example: when she arrived at the mission as director of social services in 1994, there were no rules for determining who got food parcels. "If you came you got a food parcel, so we became part of people's budget, and we became part of the problem.

"It was the same with our drug and alcohol services. People could just turn up night after night and stay the night, rather than go through rehabilitation.

"I believe that sort of behaviour really causes people's problems. So I've been focused on structural systems and outcomes."



Charities, says Robertson, have to be more grown-up; become more businesslike.

And nowhere was ACM's maturity more clear than the decision by its eight-member board, of which Robertson is a member, to go to court to protect its right to two-thirds of a $4.6m bequest by self-made millionaire Eric Miller.

The will stipulated that another third of the money go to the Salvation Army and $500,000 to the Cancer Society, but Miller's daughter Inge Brown contested the division.

To protect what had been promised, ACM and the Salvation Army went to court last year. The issue is now with New Zealand's court of last resort, the Privy Council in England.

"I guess [the decision to fight] comes with the change of where we see ourselves," says Robertson. "Do we just sit there and say: we will accept what's offered to us, or do we have a legal obligation to our clients to follow through with this issue?"

Psychologist Grant Taylor has seen it often enough: clients sitting on the couch in front of him - 30-somethings, tertiary-qualified - slowly cracking up under the pressure to perform in a job they haven't yet realised they dislike. They can't work out why they're stressed and depressed.

No way was Aucklander Grant Henry Taylor, Msc (Hons), DipClinPsych, 47, going to do the same. He was finding privatepractice draining and wanted to exit while he was still on top.

So after years as a top psychologist in the health sector and in private practice, he chucked it all in for the role of executive director of the Auckland-based Kids Help Foundation Trust.

Set up in September 2001 by big-business donors, it runs a popular telephone counselling service for children aged 5 to 18 - the number is (0800) 942-8787. It aims to assist them to develop problem-solving skills.

"What makes it really worthwhile is that I believe in what I'm doing," says Taylor, married to doctor Julie Taylor with whom he has two sons aged 23 and 20.

"That's one of my basic principles: if at all possible, you need to believe in what you're doing, then you'll do a much better job and it will enhance your life, rather than being a sacrifice in your life."

Let's return, briefly, to the stress bunnies on the couch: "When you start to look at why [clients] are feeling stressed, it becomes pretty clear that they're swimming against the current of their own feelings and passions and what's important to them.

"They've made too many compromises, and their lifestyle is becoming extremely hard work."

So what's the feelings and passion that led him to Kids Help? The desire to lead, to share knowledge, to learn.

"That was an energy within myself I was trying to listen to and go with," he says. He also felt that services for Kiwi kids were "grossly inadequate" and that the service could help redress that.



Taylor is "no financially worse off than in private practice", and he doesn't regard the post as a step down in status. In fact, he says, psychologists tend to get stuck in their specialisms - "you're very highly trained to do very little, or it can seem that way" - and several colleagues are watching him with interest.



The top job at Kids Help is "full of daily challenges which satisfy me to meet, and I'm learning a lot - how to run an organisation, management, and all the things that go with that: marketing, communications, financial management.

"I'm a fairly fully-fledged CEO here with many strings to my bow. It's great fun and I really enjoy it."

Taylor views the necessary management skills in commercial entities and not-for-profits as "much the same. But the philosophy is different and the motivators are often different".

Motivators? "You derive your energy for doing things from deep motivations, not from intellectual ideas, and there's a dialogue between the intellect and the emotion.

"I've never been driven by status. The pursuit of money for its own sake has never appealed to me, though I like having money. It's the value of what you're doing that makes the difference."

The charity has five fulltime staff, and its paid and trained part-time counsellors offer between them 265 hours a week. The statistics are impressive: 3,300 calls coming in a week, with only non-identifying details recorded.

The hot topics differ depending on the age group but overall, the top five are relationships with peers, bullying, family relationships, boyfriends/girlfriends, and pregnancy.

Quite a few, says Taylor, are about life skills: they might ask how to cook, or how the washing machine works. The average age of callers is 12. There's a lot of repeat business - 60 to 65 per cent of callers have rung before.

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