The headline caught my eye ‘Greenpeace loses £3m of public donations after currency gaffes‘. ‘Crikey!’, I thought, ‘How awful!’.
Then I read the piece, and the similar piece in the Guardian, and relaxed. Greenpeace International (not Greenpeace UK) has cocked up on some currency deals and sacked the person responsible. OK – not clever, but not a disaster. I’d better increase my monthly donation to help them out a bit, I thought (and having written that down for you to read I will almost certainly do it too).
I’d like my NGOs to be good at everything, and part of the progress over the last two or three decades is that they are increasingly professional at a range of activities. When I joined the RSPB in the mid 1980s it was a little bit like a bunch of birders turning their hands to all jobs. I guess my arrival at the RSPB Research Department (from Oxford University) was a tiny bit of the increasing professionalisation (horrid word – but it does a job) of the RSPB. At the same time there were professional marketing folk and communications folk and finance folk entering the organisation too.
I guess the danger is that any charity loses its passion and drive as it gets bigger and more ‘professional’.
That hasn’t happened with Greenpeace – they seem to me to be as feisty and edgy as ever. And I like that.
I was delighted to see that my former colleague at the RSPB, now at Greenpeace, Ruth Davis got an MBE in the Birthday Honours.
This looks like a win for Greenpeace – thanks to lots of support from people like you and me too.
I’d like my NGOs to be good at everything, but if they get the money a bit wrong at times but win for the environment then they get my backing. I’d rather it were that way around than the other way around.
[registration_form]