Driven by Managers

Conservation

Customer Driven: Manager Driven

An alternative to the Customer Driven business model, referred to in the previous post,  is the one favoured by the conservation industry. There's no doubting that the conservation NGOs are businesses and run as such. You simply have to look at their career structure and their approach to growth. There are strong similarities with commercial outfits. But there are significant differences, something the free marketeers are keen to point to when they snipe at the public sector. But the conservation industry is not exactly the public sector, it is third sector or charity, not there to make a profit; nevertheless it is there to promote the interests of its employees and many of its operations serve private interests pretty well. In a broad sense someone is profiting from what happens.

So what about the customers? We who walk on Blacka are as close as anything to being customers. What the management decides to do affects us more than anyone.  But we don't pay so we can be ignored. Because SWT can get its income from elsewhere it doesn't need to take any notice of us and what we think. So they don't need to worry about providing us with 'an awesome customer experience'. It doesn't even need to ask us what we think. It can ignore petitions, consultations and complaints. Hence the 2005 petition came and went, the 2006 Icarus consultation was ignored, the pledge to revisit plans and consult on HLS were similarly cast aside.

They get their money through the impenetrable system of grants and subsidies. And they send their work experience youngsters and volunteers out to doorstep householders and collect subscriptions from kind well-meaning people; they approve of charities but the vast majority of them know nothing about Blacka and probably wouldn't know where to find it. One feels obliged to ask: is this desirable? It's hard to see how it's locally accountable.

Payments made to Sheffield Wildlife Trust in 2012 through Common Agricultural Policy farm grants amounted to £111,872.66

In 2013 the payments amounted to £96,191.86