Here’s a good way to test what a cancer charity is up to

Ask any single site cancer charity boss how successful their charity is. Egregiously, I bet they mention annual income first, before grasping for a figure on the numbers of people with cancer their charity helped that year, and how many they hope to help next year.

 

[I’m experimenting with Twitter. If you have arrive here through that – welcome to my blog on health. Not much idea about Twitter really but I can learn. The medium drives brevity which has hitherto been beyond me, so I’ll learn that too.]

 

The point I was making about single issue charity Chief Executives? Being focussed on the money is only good as it is an aid to success in meeting 'user' needs. It's a poor proxy.

 

In any health charity there is always tension between the people who deliver services and have direct ’user’ contact and the people  who fundraise. I’m ex- service side in a cancer charity. Not a fundraiser then.

 

Naturally, service side staff would work with fundraisers to explain first hand what the charity does, to bring in more money, to do more work. Fine, normal and appropriate. But it often felt as if the agenda was fundraiser led, service delivery staff being used to help fundraising with their targets, not to help deliver/develop services. Predictable stereotypes were pedalled and donors egos flattered, preconceptions bolstered, never challenged.  What the service side really wanted to do was be objective, research unmet need amongst the hard to reach groups and be a bit radical, which is what you and I may have thought a charity was supposed to be doing.

 

I doubt there is much radicalism or innovation in cancer charities now, especially in breast cancer charities and any that aspire to emulate them as sector leaders. Will there be more or less as we wade through the money mire over the next decade?

 

My scepticism extends to other numbers. Any seared on the soul of a Chief Executive and likely to trip from their tongue are from the balance sheet, especially any evidence that the income has gone up year on year.  They won’t boast about the service users actually helped – and certainly not the proportion of people ‘out there’ who they still need to reach. If they mention awareness raising it won’t be useful health promotion (you try following 79 different symptoms if you want to be aware of the top ten cancers likely to affect you – that’s how unhelpfully competitive the single site cancer charities are with each other - they want you to know about their cancer and won't even mention anyone else's as that's their competition - so no help to anyone who doesn't yet have cancer) it’ll be the brand, logo, market share and column inches they mean. Ignoring the quality of what’s written as it's often partial or plain wrong, the quantity of mentions will be taken as an unqualified success. How’s that work then?   

 

And there will be nothing at all on elderly men and women who most likely to get cancer, least likely to be internetted up and perhaps crucially, of no interest to donors brought up in a youth obsessed society and on a media image of cancer so skewed it won’t ever mention anyone over 60.     

 

Do discuss!