Bouncing back after a Charity Commission inquiry
Human Appeal is a fully independent British development and relief charity based in Manchester, UK. It was established in 1991, and runs targeted poverty relief programmes in collaboration with global organisations like the United Nations. Our purpose is to save lives through emergency response and sustainable development programmes, across over 25 countries worldwide.
The Charity Commission is seeing a lot more media interest at the moment, having announced its investigation into the financial dealings of the Captain Tom Moore charity, among others. Indeed, in 2021, the body investigated well over 2,000 charities for their compliance, a number which is on the rise. We should know – we were one of them.
Being investigated by the Charity Commission is not something you would think that any charity would seek out. Except we did, self-reporting that a hijacking incident had occurred beyond our control while operating in a war zone, and a separate incident where a warehouse in Syria was raided by a proscribed group.
The work the Commission undertakes is vital for the wider charity sector to be able to operate effectively and continue to help as many people as possible, both domestically and overseas. Obviously, news of a compliance audit of this type may not be on many charities’ wish list. And yet, as one of the UK’s fastest growing charities, and with a new leadership team in place, we recognised that swift growth may have left certain operational areas in need of some review.
Maintaining stakeholder trust
Aside from the potential damage to the solid reputation of a respected 30 year old UK organisation which Charity Commission scrutiny brought, the other key challenge for us during this process was maintaining the trust of our stakeholders, some of whom were understandably surprised by the inquiry.
This was a primary focus for us during the three years of the review, and led to an ongoing campaign of transparency, intensively spotlighting the impact our humanitarian work was having on the lives of our beneficiaries as well as breakdowns of areas like how both our fundraising and admin fees work. We knew we had nothing to hide, but it needed repeating.
When people hear about any review or investigation, most will simply assume the worst without bothering to read the findings or wait for the final report. It is indeed rare to find individuals with the ability to refrain from judging until all the facts are ascertained. The fact the review took several years to conclude made it more challenging, as it gave space for rumours to spread, and misguided opinions both intentional and unintentional.
Naturally, we fully cooperated with the investigation, a fact that was recognised in the final announcement from the Charity Commission. We increased our reporting to donors and stakeholders, fostered a culture of zero tolerance for breaches of our policies and strive for continuous improvement in all areas of our work.
Focusing on the whole facts and nothing but the facts, we dug in as a Human Appeal family and worked harder to save more lives and reach more vulnerable people. Actions speak louder than words, and throughout the process we worked accordingly, continuing to be here for every human being without discrimination.
Investigation outcome
The positive results of this clarity became apparent by 2020, when our income reached £29 million. The previous year, our income had declined by 17.8%, due to the negative publicity. However, with the support of our campaign efforts, this decline was not only halted but actively reversed. This is all thanks to our dedicated supporters and stakeholders who ignored the rumours and speculation.
We continue to strive for year-on-year growth like any charity, and with this new focus we are confident we have the continued trust of our stakeholders to maintain expansion. This energised transparency continues to this day and has become part of the catalyst for the new era within the organisation and as a respected global British charity.
The findings of the report did not seek regulatory action be taken against Human Appeal nor call for any penalties to be imposed. Financially, not a single penny went unaccounted for. On the contrary, the report saluted the enhancements made by Human Appeal to its governance and recognised that the charity today was on a much firmer footing because of those enhancements. The report acknowledged the significant enhancements by our new leadership structure - of course tackling the changes which needed to be addressed required both considerable time and effort.
As a result, both our domestic and international processes and procedures have been strengthened. While chief among the process review was updating procedures around serious incident reporting (SIR), enhancing trustee understanding of the process, it allowed us to review internal structures in other areas too.
We hired permanent critical staff roles to lead changes to the charity’s culture, including finance director, legal counsel, international programmes director, communications director, community fundraising director, head of donor care, head of fund development Middle East, international head of programmes, programmes manager, monitoring and evaluation manager, monitoring and evaluation coordinator, and international financial controller.
We also seized the opportunity to establish a global reporting structure – including a primary reporting line for all country office staff to their country director, coupled with a second reporting line to a global technical lead based on Human Appeal HQ. In addition, all country offices now also report to their HQ counterparts.
Towards further expansion
Undertaking this rigorous process has motivated us to continue to strive for excellence within our organisation. By dint of our focus and mission, we are present in multiple locations worldwide. The charity has many moving parts, often working on numerous domestic and overseas projects and humanitarian crisis inflection points around the globe simultaneously.
This takes a high level of coordination which can embrace rapid response to moments of critical humanitarian need, balanced with maintaining a focus on long terms projects in multiple counties, such as a long-running initiative providing honeybees and livelihoods to people in Pakistan, at the same time as a team on the ground is seeking to desalinate water in the Gaza Strip. Such an intense and important process has helped us to think more critically when it comes to wider organisational impacts when expanding into new territories like the US.
Why approach one of the biggest countries in the world, one with an already thriving and well served charity landscape, during a global pandemic? Human Appeal’s vision and statement of intent are to become the global agent of change for a just, caring, and sustainable world. That means we are here for every human being who is vulnerable no matter where they are. The pandemic has sharpened many humanitarian needs, in developed countries as well as conflict zones.
As an international British charity with this intent, we are obliged to be present in as many markets as possible, especially those that can support our vision and mission. The USA was a natural next step in our plans as one of the largest economies in the world and will join our existing offices in the UK, Ireland, France and Spain.
The US market is large, highly diverse and intensely competitive. As our footprint in the country grows, we are seeking to remain open to collaboration with local partners in line with our compliance requirements. We will have two key yet distinct focus areas. One will be local programmes in the USA and the other will be outreach to international programmes from the USA.
The local humanitarian needs assessments for the USA are expected to be wide ranging, varied and differentiated. As a country, needs and structures can vary greatly from state to state, and even within the social layers of each state. To address these unique challenges, local support will be at the heart of US operations, as will outreach from the USA towards international projects.
Unified leadership base
In a short time we have completed the registration of the US office in California, and established a dedicated contact number and website which will go live shortly. Having one single CEO for both our UK and USA entities from April 2022 onwards maintains our single global vision while also reducing the potential issue of organisational complexity. When you are present in multiple countries simultaneously, transparency and clarity of the organisation as well as having clearly delineated leadership structures are essential.
The ambition and drive for our US expansion is to realise our role more fully as a global humanitarian organisation, developing our international structure with the aim of optimizing the alignment, efficiency and effectiveness of our office infrastructure around the world.
Having an official US presence means many things. It means wider reach, a bigger audience, creation of more opportunities to expand existing projects as well as developing new future projects. It also gives us access to new ideas and innovations relating to our projects covering water, sanitation, hygiene and medicine. I also believe it will open the door for further collaboration and bridge building with like-minded people and entities in the USA, which has always been a major hallmark of how we have operated from inception through to our current activities.
Collaboration with other NGOs and not for profit organisations is intrinsic to how Human Appeal operates. Existing partnerships with local US entities, such as our relationship with Globus Relief, will facilitate greater international reach. For example, provision of health and medical care in Iraq and Syria, where there are dire shortages of medical equipment and resource. The US operation also plans to lead in projects supporting the orphans and street children in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nigeria.
We will also be actively looking into domestic projects to assist vulnerable communities around the United States as well, where it is well documented that over 13.4%[2] of the population live below the poverty threshold, an issue only increased by the Covid pandemic.
New learning curve
This doesn’t mean that we haven’t encountered growing pains. Firstly, there are the usual challenges presented by entering a new territory, the new learning curve and the endeavour to establish the right human resources for the market. Although we will be the youngest NGO to set up in the USA, we certainly aim to be the fastest growing one. Then comes building relations with the community and charity sector as well as institutional and private donors.
We know we have a lot of work to do build our network of partners, but we don’t shy away from this challenge. Saving lives is no easy task and it has taught us to be bold and thoughtful in our approach. When you are in the field of dealing with humanitarian crises daily, it teaches you to be resilient, just like doctors and nurses who deal with human suffering everyday but keep on delivering on their oath. Entry into the US was certainly a planned decision that included much internal debate and study. It is a strategic decision by Human Appeal to increase our future capacity and growth.
Organisational resilience
In a way, the Charity Commission review prepared us to take on the greater challenge of expanding again beyond our existing borders, more effectively. The organisational resilience and clarity of purpose, as well as the fresh review of reporting lines and management structures, have set us up for an expansion into the demanding market of the USA with a clean bill of health. Many similar charities with ambitions to become more global will eventually look to establish a presence within large and unfamiliar markets like the United States.
Taking a detailed look at the charity’s reporting lines, procedures and yes, diving deeply into issues of compliance are all useful projects to undertake in advance – whether externally coordinated or not. The solid foundation we have established through the review has set us up to more capably to take on the fragmented state/country level challenges which the United States offers, and we look forward to the work we can undertake with our partners in that region.
