From chair to chair
Jamie Dundas and Julia Palca share their views on what makes an effective governing board
KEY POINTS
- A board needs the right skill-sets to make good decisions
- Trustees conduct effectiveness reviews
- The rebrand took a lot of doing but has been very successful
- The charity needs to grow further to meet rapidly increasing needs
Jamie Dundas, chair, Macmillan Cancer support, 2001 to 2010
Father to son
One hundred years ago, a horsehair weaver called William Macmillan was dying of cancer. Knowing he would not see his son’s birthday, William gave the young man an early present – £10. Douglas Macmillan used the money to found a charity to fight the illness that killed his father and The National Society for the Prevention and Relief of Cancer, now known as Macmillan Cancer Support, was born.
Like Douglas who was inspired by his father, I joined Macmillan to carry on the work undertaken by my own father. He encouraged me to join the charity as a trustee – a role I fulfilled on and off for over 20 years including chairing the charity between 2001 and 2010.
The board
Macmillan Cancer Support’s success starts and ends with the board. This is responsible for the good governance of the charity and for ensuring that resources are used in the most effective way to help the people and causes it was set up to benefit. Our trustees understand that they have ultimate liability, and that it is a serious role. Our optimum number of trustees is around 12 to 15 – any more is too many for effective debate, and decision-making. For new trustees, Macmillan has a wide-ranging induction programme, which existing trustees must attend. The programme includes visits to Macmillan services, coverage of the charity’s aims and how they are being fulfilled, and the role of the trustees.1
We have a finance and legal committee, a remuneration committee, an audit committee and a nominations committee. The board’s nominations committee meets regularly to review the structure, size and composition of the board and makes recommendations to the board with regard to any adjustments that are felt necessary. It is important to keep an eye on this, as any board is more likely to make good decisions if the right skill-sets are present in the boardroom, including the appropriate range and balance of skills, experience, independence and knowledge.
Behavioural factors are important. The board acts as one unit and assumes collective responsibility. When recruiting, we do look for special competencies and skills as well as representation from doctors and cancer patients. But we work together and do not have trustees who are only interested in contributing on their own special subject.
The best charities are where the best people want to be. By aiming high, we have been able to attract some quite outstanding people at all levels. We also rely on a wonderful army of volunteers and nurture them with respect and support.
Funding
There are many different charity funding models, but Macmillan’s policy is to rely solely on voluntary funding, and we are not funded by the government at all. We are happy to partner with the government but we also need the independence to tell them what needs to change.
To raise money, you have to be prepared to invest in fundraising. The charity has a fundraising cost/income ratio of about 29 per cent – being entirely dependent on the public comes at a cost. We raised £130m in 2010 and spent almost all of it. But we have big plans and need to raise more.
We have taken time to build a strong fundraising capacity. Around 30 to 40 per cent of our funding comes from legacies. We have to have tight financial disciplines and we make our expenditure broadly in the same year we raise the funds. Our target level of reserves represents around four or five months of normal expenditure.
The charity also benefits from corporate partnerships such as our longstanding relationship with the National Gardens Scheme, which has generously donated over £13m to us over 26 years, and our corporate partnerships such as one with the Royal Bank of Scotland Group. Between 2008 and 2010, the group donated £500,000 per year and this has funded 22 new professionals in Macmillan welfare rights teams. The welfare rights team has helped over 18,500 people affected by cancer and unlocked in excess of £45m of funds to help them cope with the financial impact of cancer. In addition, employees have given up their time to fundraise and volunteer and raised over £1.2m for people affected by cancer since January 2008.
Impact
Measuring how well a charity is doing can be difficult. There is no share price or any of the conventional measures for success and predictors of future success. In fact, the sector as a whole has done a poor job communicating success and for too long tended to measure it by how much money they had raised. It has since moved on from that. For us, the most important factor is how much we can help and improve the lives of people affected by cancer. This may be hard to measure but we go to great lengths to ensure our work has the greatest possible impact.
The trustees undertake regular effectiveness reviews to evaluate how the board is working, both as a team and also in terms of their working relationship with the executive management team. These reviews consider issues such as board size and composition, effectiveness of meetings, leadership, whether trustees feel they are receiving the right level of information and whether they are spending sufficient time on the most important issues.
While I was at the helm of Macmillan Cancer Support, the charity raised and spent more money on people affected by cancer – income grew in this period by 76 per cent and charitable expenditure by 87 per cent. The number of Macmillan professionals nearly doubled from 2,505 in 2001 to 5,013 by the end of 2009. We also delivered patient information to more people in more ways than ever before. Following our merger with Cancerbackup, we multiplied our distribution of high-quality cancer information, which is now available free to patients, carers and medical professionals. Our new website has become a vital source of support in its own right – our consolidated and expanded telephone service was used by over 25,000 people in its first three months.
We engaged with many more people too. For example, we now have thousands of ‘cancer voices’ and e-campaigners championing our work and campaigning on issues affecting people living with cancer. We now have more than 40,000 active members on Macmillan’s on-line community sharing their experiences and helping others living with cancer.
We have successfully campaigned on issues that really matter to people affected by cancer. Thanks to our tireless campaigning, people living with cancer no longer have to pay the congestion charge when visiting hospital in central London, they are exempt from paying for prescriptions and cancer patients living in the devolved nations no longer have to pay to park at hospital.
Branding
We also took Macmillan’s brand to new highs. Although Macmillan was a top-ten fundraising charity, it had ranked only twenty-eighth in terms of awareness in 2004 on the Charity Awareness Monitor.2 Misperceptions about the charity’s work and the association of Macmillan with 'angels of death' dealing with people only at the end of their lives was putting people off. With two million people living with cancer in the UK, Macmillan felt it could do more. In 2006, the board took the decision to invest in changing the charity’s name from Macmillan Cancer Relief to Macmillan Cancer Support and creating a bold, clear identity. The rebrand was not without challenges but the benefits have been enormous. Public awareness doubled, we have attracted more corporate partners and most importantly, many more people living with cancer are benefiting from the range of services we provide. In 2009, we were voted the best UK charity brand by the Charity Brand Index3 and are now widely used as a case study for how to successfully rebrand.
Julia Palca, the chair
I was appointed chair of the charity in July 2010 following Jamie’s decision to retire from that role. He is a tough act to follow, but I had been a trustee of the charity for nine years, and therefore understood the organisation, and what it stood for.
Rising levels of need
At Macmillan Cancer Support, our ambition is to improve the lives of everyone living with cancer, irrespective of who you are, where you live or which cancer you have. But we know that the needs of the two million people living with cancer today are not being fully met. This number will rise to four million by 2030 and cancer services won’t be able to cope if we continue to work as we do.
The challenge for Macmillan going forward is how to develop high-quality, patient-centred cost effective cancer treatment, care and support in the face of such an increase in prevalence. In part, we will do this by doing more of what we already do. For example we need to support more palliative care and clinical nurse specialists, to provide more and better information in more ways, to continue to lobby for changes in health policy which benefit cancer patients.
Macmillan is also scoping out the new services we believe we will need to provide. One example is the practical support provided by trained and supported volunteers in the community. Another example is our groundbreaking partnership with Boots to get cancer information onto the high street.
Recruitment
To achieve the degree of change we want, and to do it in a sustainable, cost-effective way we need to work with partners to redesign the cancer system to ensure all cancer services are joined up and designed around individual needs, to develop the skills of its 5,000 professionals and to look at new types of roles and ways of funding.
Needless to say, we as Macmillan cannot do this alone. Not as the 1000 staff, not as the 5000 Macmillan professionals, not as the 200,000 volunteers. We will need to have more supporters, more volunteers, more partners. A huge number of people are already involved with Macmillan’s work. This could involve anything from volunteering at one of our projects or services, helping us raise funds or simply talking about Macmillan’s work. The challenge for Macmillan going forward is to increase the number of people who get involved so that our reach, particularly into the community, is as wide as it needs to be.
Public support
Fortunately, in our centenary year we are in a great place. The impact we are having and the support we are giving every day has never been greater. Consequently, the support from the public is strong. There are challenges, not least the state of the economy and of public finances, but there is no doubt that we will succeed in achieving our ambition of not only reaching and improving the lives of everyone living with cancer, but of inspiring millions of others to do the same.
Note: This article is based on a talk ‘A Behind the Scenes Tour of Macmillan Cancer Support’ given by Jamie Dundas and Julia Palca to clients of Jupiter’s private client and charity team on 29 March 2011.
1. See also Diana Garnham’s article on this: www.charitiesdirect.com/caritas-magazine/welcome-aboard-505.html
2. www.nfpsynergy.net/tracking_research/charity_awareness_monitor/default.aspx
Author: Julia Palca
Julia Palca joined Macmillan Cancer Supports’ governing board in October 2001 and was elected chair in July 2010.
Until 2009, she was a partner with law firm Olswang LLP, to whom she now acts as a consultant.
She is chairman of the Royal Free Charity, special adviser to the Prison Reform Trust and has been a member of the board of the Institute of Employment Studies and of several other charities, including Cancerlink which merged with Macmillan in 2001.
Julia has herself had cancer.
She is also a part time employment judge.
Author: Jamie Dundas
Jamie Dundas is deputy president of Macmillan Cancer Support, having served as chairman of the charity from 2001 to 2010.
He is non-executive chairman of Jupiter Fund Management plc having held various finance roles until his appointment as chief executive of MEPC in 1999 – a position he held until 2003.
Jamie has been a non-executive director of Standard Chartered PLC since 2004 and is chairman of its board risk committee.
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