Glyn Sheldon: Welcome to the CFG podcast. I’m Glyn Sheldon, and today we’re exploring a journey that more and more finance professionals are making — the move from the corporate world into the charity sector.
To explore this, I’m joined today by three fantastic guests who’ve each made that move themselves.
Clive MacTavish from British Red Cross, Andrew Lowe from Leeds Mind, and CFG’s own Sarah Ann Moore.
A very warm welcome to you all.
So firstly, can you tell us a little about your journey into the charity sector — what drew you to make the move, and what were your first impressions when you arrived? Clive, I’ll start with you
Clive MacTavish: Hi Glyn, Thanks so much. So my name is Clive MacTavish and I’m CEO of the British Red Cross, and this is my first full time gig in charity.
I had a career in commercial finance before this for the majority of my career, so I started out as an auditor with PwC and then spent 10 years with peers in the Financial Times and then moving into another media organisation, Dow Jones, and then into e-commerce with Hotels.com, Expedia, which was my first CFO gig there as a divisional CFO there.
And it was after that, you know, I had that kind of, what am I trying to do with my career moment. And I really wanted to prove myself in a sort of senior governance level but as well doing something a bit more meaningful.
And an opportunity came up with an organisation called CDC, which is now British International Investment, which is the UK’s development finance company. And so, very much a hybrid of a sort of development charitable purpose with also an important, you know, financial goals of making a positive financial return as well.
And so that gave me the first step into the world in a kind of hybrid way. And after four years of doing that, it felt to me, well actually going full time charity would be the thing to do.
And so I was looking around and British Red Cross came up as an opportunity. And of course with my background in international development, with CDC, it seemed the natural thing to go for. And I was lucky enough to get it. So that was how I sort of moved through the gears, if you like, to end up here.
Glyn Sheldon: And what about for you Andrew?

Andrew Lowe: Hi Glyn, thank you for the opportunity to be on the podcast so I'm currently Head of Finance and Resources at Leeds mind which is an independent mental health charity in Yorkshire. I've been working here for about 3 years but prior to that I worked at BT in the region of 33 years. And I had careers within careers there because I became a finance controller fairly early on in my career but then was fortunate to be able to move into transformation, business improvement and then latterly sales which was a very strange move finance professional but it really built my skills massively.
I worked at BT for 33 years and then decided I wanted to go back to school so at the age of 50 into university, and I wanted to study something diametrically opposed to the commercial world which was something a bit more ambiguous and ended up studying Philosophy, Ethics and Religion. So it was so different from finance I can’t even begin to tell you but loved it and then I finished full-time education end up three years and then I'm probably gonna be quite different from some of the other guests. Clive mentioned about moving to the charity sector, my motive, I'm just gonna be honest I thought it was easy. I thought I'm going to move from the commercial world into a nice little cushy charity job to be able to put my feet up and just stroll slowly into retirement. And I'm sure it'll come out in some of the further questions but to the experience with being very very different from that but I'm really pleased to be here.
Glyn Sheldon: Thank you very much Andrew. I’m sure we’ll explore more of that later. What about for you Sarah?
Sarah Ann Moore: For me I spent about 19 years in professional services with KPMG, all sorts of finance based advisory work so I started the standard route in external audit, technical accounting, then operational internal audit, due diligence, business casework strategy, finance function review.
And I eventually ended up in the US where I was the US Lead Director for Enterprise Risk Management and board governance advisory services. So I had a really varied career where I worked with clients at all sorts of organisations from big global public companies to some NHS work that I did so really really varied stuff.
But when I came back to the UK it was a case of do I go take another role with the firm that I've been with forever or do I look to do something quite radically different. And at that point I really felt that I developed all these skills doing all of these things and I was a bit of a jack of all trades, which is great, and I wanted to use my skills for sort of maximum good, maximum social impact so that's really what led me to the charity sector.
And this is actually technically my second charity role. I was the CEO of a regional charity and I took on a number of trustee roles as well, which has been which has been great. But yeah it was a really deliberate decision to go full third sector and it's been fantastic!
Glyn Sheldon: Andrew, so you mentioned there about actually thinking it was going to be easier than it was moving to the charity sector, is there one thing you wish you'd known before you made themove?
Andrew Lowe: Indeed yes, SORP 5.17 and SORP 5.28. I was completely naive when it came to charity accounting. I’d obviously worked within BT doing management accounting, finance controller I wasn't really involved in regulatory accounts in any way and that caught me out big time, because I started in March just as we'd gone through year end and we're about to sort of enter audit season and I was just very nice naive about the actual regulatory requirements. SORP caught me out big time and that caused me to go into a little bit of a spiral for about 6 months, along with the CEO and chairman so yeah I wish I had I wish I'd known more about SORP.
Glyn Sheldon: Thanks Andrew, and what about for you Sarah, was there anything specific that you wish you'd known before you made the move?
Sarah Ann Moore: I feel I'm sort of lucky, because I came into it eyes wide open. I'd done some pro bono work auditing charities, I volunteered with charities before so I sort of knew what I was getting myself in for it.
And I really did think the fact that I was a bit of a jack of all trades, and I've got these skills was going to help me because I thought, with charities you have to wear a lot of hats and you're going to have a lot going on, so I was very prepared for that.
I think you know working in the charitable sector you know I love the flexibility, I love the fact that people are super authentic and I think the way we dress is kind of a representation of that that. We dress for purpose, and yes that does mean I wear a bit more colour nowadays.
Glyn Sheldon: That’s great, and what about for you Clive?
Clive MacTavish: So in truth when you say what did I wish I'd known, I think the answer is I'm glad I didn't really know anything because I think I would probably have feared it if I'd have known.
I mean I can certainly identify with what Andrew said earlier about yeah, the sheer volume of stuff and complexity, but I think actually for me, not really having an anticipation of someone saying ‘oh you're gonna need this we're gonna think about this’, probably played to my strengths.
Moving between different sectors has been a challenging thing to pull off. The moving from media into e-commerce, moving from e-commerce into financial services, completely different and then moving from financial services into charity again you know pretty different, so it means that you just actually gain a lot of skills around asking the right questions, often pretty basic questions and then listening hard to what people are saying and I think actually that's what I brought into the equation.
So actually no, I don't know whether if and someone had told me what to expect I would have been better off but probably only been a bit more scared actually.
Glyn Sheldon: Yeah, a bit of an ignorance is bliss kind of situation. A few of you mentioned the idea of value and wanting to do something meaningful. Sarah, would you say that your sense of the value of your work changed since moving into the charity sector.
Sarah Ann Moore: Yeah I think that's probably, probably right. I mean I have been fortunate that having worked with a diverse range of organisations, particularly the work that I did with the NHS years ago I mean, I'm fortunate that I've worked on a lot of project that I remember fondly and I'm proud of outside of the charity sector as well. But definitely working with charities is sort of next level in terms of terms of connection to that social impact and in my first charity role as CEO of MD support centre as well as in my Trustee roles as well, I've always had this really this real and visceral connection to service users on a daily basis in our spaces, and being so close to the output of your work is just absolutely fantastic and it is something really unique I think about being in a charity environment.
What we do here at CFG is probably a little bit further away from that physical connection, but the impact that we can have on our members outcomes is incredibly rewarding, paying it forward and helping other organisations to do the best that they can with the resources that they can is what inspired me to take this particular role and it's what I'm really really excited about.
Glyn Sheldon: And what about you Andrew?
Andrew Lowe: Yeah I mean, as I said earlier, I was a little bit naïve when I joined Leeds Mind in the charity sector, but my overall observation is for most of my career in finance at BT, was about using financial skills and disciplines to deliver efficiency. Now, the benefits always went directly to the shareholder and what I love here is because it's a significantly smaller organisation: if we deliver efficiency here that benefit goes directly to our clients. And that can literally mean, you know, if we can save £50, a small amount of money, but that means we can deliver a counselling session to somebody who's suffering with mental health. We can change that person's life, and we can significantly help them and that sort of impresses on me every day to be honest, and it wasn't something I was expecting before I came in but I love that about working here.

Glyn Sheldon: And when you say it’s similar for you Clive?

Clive MacTavish: Yeah, I mean you definitely get a different sense of what success looks like here then you do in the commercial world.
I mean it's pretty straightforward, in the commercial world you’ve probably got a profit target, you might have a turnover target, you might have a cash target, you know, those things become your mantras, those are your storytelling pieces.
And here in the charity world, I mean it's funny, both the word surplus and deficit I often think have a fairly negative connotation when you think about it actually. You want to be spending as much as you can, but if you spend too much in deficit, you know. So you're trying to land it on sort of tiny landing space each year, but also you've got the wider long term financial stability that is so important.
So, for me, being able to tell those stories in a different way has been a real interest to me. And I think in terms of value, for me coming in, I think what I really noticed was actually how immature the finance conversation was around the organisation as a whole. It just wasn't part of our DNA, the sort of what I had grown up, with this, you know, quarterly forecasting, reporting mantras, you know, presenting to the CEO's and CFO's around the place, just wasn't part of how we managed ourselves, conducted ourselves.
And I think actually installing some of that corporate discipline has been I think important so I've been able to sort of see the value of that in terms of helping us navigate through you know what have been some pretty horrible waters financially over the last you know three years since they joined, following the invasion of Ukraine which of course just, you know, released on us this wave of inflation that still has tremors and impacts today, at a time when of course we've got the Iran crisis which may yet threaten even more of that sort of instability.
So it's really important for me to be able to do that and so I think help make the organisation just feel a little closer to those some of the decisions that you have to make when you're at the top of the organisation, to ensure that stability and the longevity of the organisation is preserved.
Glyn Sheldon: Clive mentioned there about charities potentially needing to be a bit more disciplines, a bit more corporate like in some ways. Does anyone else have any thoughts on what charities and businesses can learn from one another and particularly when it comes to finance, as well as leadership and culture?
Andrew Lowe: One of the things that struck me is, and this is one thing that third sector can learn from corporates, is what I found is our organisation completely underestimates the level of experience and knowledge and expertise that they have within this particular part of the third sector, which is dealing with mental health.
And the opportunity for us to, and this may seem odd, but to commercialise and monetise some of that knowledge and experience and expertise really is quite significant, and to actually train other organisations, and then you know workforce well-being. There’s so many organisations who are crying out for that type of support, to differentiate themselves from other employees in terms of how they look after their workforce, so I think that's a big thing he smelt overall monetisation of things and the corporatisation of things.
And I think another thing we could learn as well is that, inevitably in a charity where resources are scarce, resources get spread so thin and what I mean by that is, as you may have noticed from the title of my job, I’m Head of Finance and Resources, and what that means is I'm head of digital and IT. And I’m genuinely I'm an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to IT and and it's like things get bolted on and it's sometimes, it is worth investing in expertise in certain areas because the savings can be significant. Often when we spend resources too thin, we can suffer the consequences of that.
Glyn Sheldon: Sarah, do you have any thoughts on this, either in terms of what charities can learn from corporate or the other way around?
Sarah Ann Moore: Yeah and there is both right. I think charities for a long time have been leaders in terms of, for example, flexible working practices. Here at CFG we’re remote working first, we offer sector leading benefits family-friendly policies etc, and I think the private sector post-COVID in particular is making some headway with this. But culturally, finding peace with helping people to find more balance in their working lives without impacting productivity I think that's a journey for all, but it's a real cultural issue for some folks in the private sector to get comfortable with this, and if they don't, and you see these back to office mandates etc. If we don't do that then there is potential for loss of talent, albeit perhaps to the charity sectors gain. But I'd echo that the comments of colleagues on the podcast with regard to sort of where charities can learn from the private sector. I think in terms of optimising for monetisation and that corporate discipline, but I'd say generally that the private sector's really good at that market assessment, strategy, networking, benchmarking, just generally being really outward looking and, I mean, that's a huge role that CFG has to play but think from the charity perspective we can learn so much from each other and having that mindset that we're not in competition and we can share and learn from the experiences of others and just have that sort of very outward looking mindset.
Glyn Sheldon: So next one to you Andrew, you came into the charity sector after 33 years at BT, and one of the first things you did was conduct detailed benchmarking exercise across expenditure areas. Can you walk us through what prompted that and what you found?
Andrew Lowe: I mean obviously, I worked at BT for 33 years within the telecoms market so I had a sort of innate understanding of the marketplace. I had no understanding of the third sector market and, in particular, in terms of serving the mental health community.
So it was out of ignorance really, I needed to understand it . I did a deep dive into the PNL, and all the management accounts, understood the expenses and the revenues etc and it really wasn't rocket science and you know I’m not here to suggest anything otherwise, but you know, all I had for context was a) a budget and b) prior year, how much had been spent.
So I had no definition of what was good or what was bad. I was fortunate in a way because Mind is a national organisation, because we’re an independent charity, that's an affiliate of national Mind, and there about 100 local Mind’s all over the country and we do have like an online network.
So I was able to contact reach out to other finance colleagues in other Mind’s who all have very very similar business models, and create some conversations around trying to initiate a working group for benchmarking.
People seemed to have a reluctance to be transparent with the information. I didn't understand why because there's no competition between people. I think it's more of a people seemed reluctant to exchange numbers in case there's were not looked at favourably I think sometimes which I found quite bizarre.
So, basically, I just adopted this sort of ‘I'll show you mine if you show me yours’ type of approach. So completed an analysis that just looked at about 30 different expense types, looked at the proportions of each individual type relative to revenue and organisation size, got some commitment from I think it was about 10 other organisations that were willing to participate, created all the templates online and we shared information and shared files.
And what I found was really critical. I mean, you know, we can all as accountants get bogged down with spreadsheets and numbers and data but this was about attaching the insight to it as well like: ‘why are we spending 5% of all our resource is on, for example, IT and somebody else is only expanding 2’, and understanding the detail but what became evident was across 30 different expense types, 10 different organisations, I then just looked at the outliers – ‘where are we higher, where are we lower’ - identified what I think, what I thought was quick and easy wins and we seem to be spending significantly more money on IT than other organisations. We unpicked it, we tried to understand the reasons why and what that precipitated was a re-tender exercise that we completed fairly quickly - we were fortunate in terms of contract endings - and we got 28% year on year saving using the benchmarking information within the whole tender process as well.
And it became like almost like an activity list of let’s go for telephony, let's go foe facilities management and you can sort of pick things off and the information became really useful to smaller counterparts as well.
Basically the reason for doing it was because I needed to understand, were are numbers good or bad and it just started the conversation and it really isn't a complicated process, you know, it's about doing the simple things well sometimes. So yeah it works quite well and it continues to roll forward as well.
Glyn Sheldon: And you mentioned about charities needing to be open about sharing that data. Do you think that charities could be more transparent about their costs in general?
Andrew Lowe: One hundred percent. Because that was that was the real driver to succeeding on this benchmarking process. It was people being transparent. I mentioned earlier about charities typically spreading their resources too thin, for example, having me as a finance manager and an IT manager as well. I do think suppliers sound take the mick out of charities sometimes. I think they can take advantage, I think they believe we’re not commercially focused and I think they can and I think in the past, we have been mis-sold things out of naivety, and I think we can sort of get a lot sharper at, if I’m honest.
Glyn Sheldon: Yeah that’s a good point. And there is a lot of talk around overhead costs and charities, and funders and donors can be often sceptical about money not going directly to the cause. Could more transparency actually help shift that conversation potentially?
Sarah Ann Moore: I’d say yeah, absolutely. You know, we are not competitors we are collective partners in delivering societal value, but we all have similar challenges and we're all having to report, and that reporting isn't always transparent and you can talk about the SORP in this context, but if you look at the accounts of several similar sized charities you can't necessarily compare directly. It's not always the easiest and I love Andrew’s story because, you know, not everybody is willing to be open and transparent but I think it's really important because funders expect to see things in a certain way and they want to understand what the overhead situation is and we want to understand, as charities, to make sure that we are delivering the very best we can and that we’re effective and efficient in the use of our resources. So it's just this incredibly important virtuous circle I think really to make sure that we are deploying funds in the best way and I can't see anything other than, you know, upside of optimising management of of overheads and working collectively to do the best that we can really.
Glyn Sheldon: Anything to add Clive?
Clive MacTavish: Yeah I think firstly to the point about transparency around overhead so I think it's really important that the charity sector talks about how much it costs to run a charity but also what it costs in terms of those things that people expect us to have.
Now, you know, I work in International Development where, you know, the safeguarding conversation really kicked in post Oxfam’s challenges there and so what we have now, 10 years on from that, is properly vastly incomparable, probably didn't exist in the way that it's now framed before those before those incidents.
If you look at something like health and safety, there is a natural expectation that people will be spending. If you look at cyber security at the moment, the challenges at M&S challenges at the British Library showing that it's not, the charity sector doesn't get a get out of jail card on this sort of stuff so these are real costs and of course it's important that we talk openly and honestly about those pieces because actually those governance costs cost money and yet what do we do, we compete on a metric of how much money goes directly to the frontline which often is a calculation that you can do in many different ways.
We did a survey on this, we found four different ways that charities were using the value of a pound mechanic depending on whether they included their support costs or not, depending how they calculated how their retail operations that we have, others don't, are used and also recognising that some grant giving organisations, because they don't have operational overheads look amazingly efficient but they're just going to be giving money straight through to operational organisations who will then have to have those support costs.
So the whole thing is designed to confuse and obfuscate. And it would be lovely to be comparable, but actually it's really important that we tell our own stories as well as we can and actually really knock back on, sometimes, the comparability that people wish was there.
Now Andrew’s stories are great because they are small scale, low level - he's talking about comparable mind organisations in his area and then things that look similar to that. Now I'm operating a large charity which has has four different social enterprises which all in, which together employ nearly 1200 people. I've got a massive fundraising team that's looking at UK operations and international operations, I've got those operational activities my international activities involve both people on the ground but also grant giving.
To decide that I am comparable to anyone else is just a farce, and actually then how you how are you going to judge whether they've judged correct correctly their health and safety, their safeguarding, their approach to cyber security, that they're going to have the same culture disciplines that you have. So when you get more complicated the idea that you can perfectly compare yourself to someone to me is for the birds, and then do you trust them more than you trust yourself.
And I think actually this is where as organisations we've got to look at ourselves and challenge ourselves because that is where the answer lies within our unique set of circumstances, not a set of circumstances that you can just generically pick up for the world and say ‘well therefore our overhead ratio should be X’.
Sarah Ann Moore: I think that's really true. I think it is about telling your own story isn't it, and being really honest about what it is that you have and what you need and I think salaries is a great example of where there's a disconnect between ‘we have to have the right staff, we have to have the right talent’, but there's still culturally this pushback externally around you really paying people for the job that they're doing in the charity sector.
And it is that hangover, so we do absolutely need to be honest about what it costs to run a charity today.
Glyn Sheldon: That’s brilliant, thank you. Really interesting points. So for you, Clive, you’ve lead wha sounds like a really significant financial transformation, in growing your reserves, launching investment programmes but also managing dependencies and reducing the property portfolio - so how do you hold it all together?
Clive MacTavish: I think this thing when you've gone through the whole period of change, I'm pretty sure anyone who's been involved in the charity over the last five years since Covid, since Ukraine precipitating massive inflation will have seen this wave of things just sweep across the financial landscape, the charities and National Insurance change last year for example, you know.
So there's a huge headwinds that you're facing, so I think the first thing for me on joining was really seeing we didn't have a particularly mature approach to telling the financial story both as a management team, and then like I said, you know, challenging ourselves on it, but also more broadly in the organisation.
So I think the first thing is we enter this challenge, and I wouldn't say it was popular, but it really was to just talk openly to all staff about the financial situation and explain where we were and explain what we do with the answers and how we were going to have to approach things. Now that is unpalatable, and it is difficult because of course people might be no angry, or challenged. You know, the situation we face which, like I said, will be faced by others was just the reality of the times and it's important that you have that transparency around ‘this is the situation’, and I think generally speaking within ourselves that the Red Cross, the more we've talked about it the more people that realise that they can, you know, they can, you know, gnash their teeth but ultimately these are the challenges, there are real challenges.
And of course we have to respond. we have to make decisions to manage through them because if we don't then the organisation is put in peril. So the first thing really was to make sure we were having those transparency calls, the judgments, getting people involved in that, in that conversation.
I think the second thing that we were particularly facing was this big transition in our funding mix for a long time. We had very generous general fund supporters who would give us monthly donations knows you know £20 or so, and you're having thousands of those you build up a great wave of money from that source. You have legacy sources, you have, you know, general funds donations coming in from other gives, you had a lot of money there which allowed us to fund a lot of activities directly through that source before we even got into restricted funding.
Now actually what's happened with the change, you know, the massive high inflation. you know, if you look at something like the real living wage is going up 36% over the last four years. Donations haven't done anything like that, I mean, they’ve broadly been flat. Of course, you've got this changing dynamic and one of the things for us is it meant, okay, well we’ve gotta make that restricted money work harder for us, we’ve really got to talk about things in a different way, we've gotta learn to tell the stories about those activities that we used to fund through general funds, now in a restricted funding landscape and we've gotta tell our staff that the things that used to sort of be able to go and pitch for it's like well you've gotta put those head to head against those core things that we really want to do. And that's been difficult again because people, they were like: ‘I thought I could always just go and raise some money for something else’. It’s like: ‘no, no, that thing that you've always just had funded in this way we've now got to make sure we can fund it through restricted donations, from talking to voters talking, to specifically about those activities’. So that's been a real change for us.
We also had to change narratives that you know things that we never had to previously worry about, Gift Aid following donations, interest on monies, CTC as a conversational topic. All of these things have been things that previously we didn't have to worry about so much and suddenly you've had to put front and centre and go, ‘okay, these are mechanics to try and help recover the costs of the organisation’. And as we talked about earlier, talking openly about what it costs to do safeguarding or cyber security or health and safety have become a really important part of the narrative both to donors but also internally again because people say, ‘well, why did we why should I be asking this donor for 12% CTC’, yeah that's terrible we don't charge as much as XYZ because we gotta learn.
We need to learn how to tell our stories, how to explain to someone what it costs. The investments that we're making in those areas, that if they went wrong people would be horrified that we didn't have the spend, but when everything's fine, oh they expect that spend to go away.
No, we just have to keep reminding and telling people that, this it what it costs to operate in some of the most dangerous and difficult parts of the world, you know. People have to understand that yeah that comes with that necessary part of the cost. So I think we've had that sort of change, and so navigating those pieces being important.
And then, finally, I think for me part of this is about how we talked about changing working patterns and of course, you know, there is CFG working entirely remotely, well of course the BRC has also moved to a very hybrid way of working. We don't use the properties that we have across the country in the same way, and so actually that did afford us the opportunity to then look at those leases, those freeholds and go, right, we just need to be a little more opportunistic and responsive here.
So actually exiting properties for us has created capital income which has been great in two ways. Obviously, it's reduced the operating costs of that estate, but equally it's freed up money for us to invest in technology. And when you look at the technology stack, fundamentally, that's one of the things internally but people most get anxious about, ‘oh we can't do this, we can't do this’. I had someone who joined the fundraising team say: ‘I've never seen that done on excel before’, I had someone in the operations team we talked about still sending letters in for reports into head office and you're like, right, okay, clearly we need to invest here, but how to create their capital. Well, exiting the property which again wasn't popular because some people would use buildings and they sell ‘well that's our local place’, so again being able to make sure people can see those trade-offs and then directly link it through to the two major investment capital programmes we're making at the moment has been an important part again of telling that story so that people could, particularly non financial people, can really understand there is a direct connection between exiting a property and investing in new systems to resolve that problem, that they thought was never going to get resolved.
So again that's the sort of wide sweeping narrative, but yeah those are probably through the core things that we've done to try and make that transformation a success.

Glyn Sheldon: You’ve also spoke about aligning finance with strategy and impact, so that they’re intrinsically linked rather than siloed. What would you say that looks like in practice?
Clive MacTavish: Yeah, thank you. So look I'm now helping look after BRC strategy as well as impact as well as finance. Now it was interesting to me to find that they weren't natural bedfellows when I joined.
And actually, what was really confusing then was that we seemed to have two planning processes. We had a strategic planning process and, separately, we seemed to have the finance planning process as if these things were in some way not connected. And of course everyone knows that those things are intrinsically connected, and then impact on their back end or what are we trying to trying to do, and measure, so these things are all intrinsically linked.
So actually just bringing them together so that the teams can feed off each other and understand those elements, but absolutely getting a firm financial foundation of the start of both the impact conversation and the strategy conversation is really important. And then you go off in your separate ways but actually keeping close around those pieces are so important.
I mean when you look at strategy within the charity sector and Andrew said it's really important for us to understand our position: what are we doing compared to others? Do we really understand whether we are unique, duplicative or whatever? It’s a strength but a weakness, the fact that we don't do mergers and acquisitions very often. It's a very rare beast. In the corporate world takeovers and that sort of activity really dominate and it means that you get this sort of driver of efficiency, and market analysis, market dominance or in competitiveness because you sort of consolidate.
And actually here within the charity we don't do that and thus, it's really important that actually we understand well what is the unique thing that we are trying to do. Because it's a pretty daft world and if we're both going after the same sorts of people trying to offer similar sort of solutions, and then the face really worried why only four people have turned up, and four people have gone to someone else’s thing and you’re like, well we could’ve managed more people. So it's really important that we understand what are we trying to do, how it fits in with others so that we've got that unique, that critical understanding of that activity.
And then that flows into how we tell the story through the impact, the metrics that we're using whether they’re consistent, whether they make sense, whether that story again can resonate with the donors that we have in the sector. So I think it's really important for me that we joined up those elements together, and I'm continuing to push again some of that corporate approach to how you think about strategy, to take it beyond the very high level and ‘we exist because of this purpose’.
You know, what I learnt incoming charges people would call that a strategy and they would spend ages wordsmithing the statement. Well I never spent any time wordsmithing statements when I was running strategy at the FT or hotels.com you're all about operational: ‘what are we doing as the balance of our activities’, you know, marketing competitiveness, what are the key elements, you know, in terms of our product or service etc.
I think charity we've gotta think in the same way, gotta be doing that thought process and that's now we're pushing ahead in the in the Red Cross trying make ourselves smarter in that way.
Glyn Sheldon: Thanks Clive. Andrew do you have any advice for people looking to make the move from the corporate world into the charity sector?
Andrew Lowe: Don't underestimate it. Don't underestimate in terms of the demands of the role, don't underestimate the skills, experience and talent of the people that work within the organisation. The charity sector is not second choice to the corporate sector, it's just different. Don't underestimate the rewards you can feel from investing your time and efforts into something that goes to the benefit of your clients as opposed to shareholders.
So I would encourage people to make the move. I sort of recognised what Clive said about you’re probably better off not knowing. Sometimes it might be easier.

Sarah Ann Moore: I feel like the optimist on this call so I'd say do it, definitely. And that would be my advice. But I very much agree with with Andrew, that it's important not to underestimate what you’re getting yourself into.
And I actually had a friend who asked me this question very recently. And so they were a very senior executive in a Fortune 500 company with really transferable skill set, but quite concerned and nervous about how to move into this completely new sector. So my advice was get to know the sector, get comfortable, ideally by finding a cause that you're passionate about and applying for a trustee role. So my advice was that their skills will be incredibly valuable at that trustee level, and it would give them the opportunity to figure out if the sector was something that they wanted to enter and an absolute win-win in terms of them sort of having that experience, and being able to contribute to an organisation along that sort of training development pathway. And the outset of that is that they are now receive a homelessness charity and enjoying the experience. So I think being a trustee is is a great way to get a sense of the sector before you jump into a professional role.
Clive MacTavish: I think I’m going to go back to something Andrew said right at the beginning which was this sort of strange sense that yeah, he thought it was gonna be easy, and actually it turned out to be really hard. And I think that is an experience that a number of people have repeated to me over the time, and I think did I think the same thing. I wasn't quite sure but, absolutely, I think the thing that struck me has been you know now I'm three nearly three and a half years in, and the complexities still continue sometimes to overwhelm me and you know, do I think I've got a handle on all aspects of the organisation?
I mean here we are talking about, you know, finance and strategy. We haven't even talked about the 10,000 volunteers we have and how to make the most of them, and how they fit into the whole. I mean it’s just so many pieces of the equation as an organisation like the British Red Cross, so it really is challenging and it forces you constantly to think in a different way.
But absolutely I think when it comes down to it, it is that you know you're making a difference. You know it's important, and you know that actually when you sit in a CFO chair you have a really important chance to influence, stabilise, help success. You know, freeing up money and making a saving to make a difference.
Absolutely, these parts feels so much more important than, yeah, just driving shareholder value which might have, you know, made you richer in terms of your own finances but probably didn't make the world a richer place in terms of, sort of, joy for everyone.
So I think really having that as part of your package because, absolutely you are not going to be earning as much as you would have done could have done if you were in the commercial sector. But I think the chance to feel part of something bigger, more important, something that is probably touching the lives of people, either in your local area, or nationally, or internationally, is something that really yeah does, does feel really important and powerful.
And yes you can go and be a trustee but actually, you know, getting in there and recognising that your skills can be super valuable, I think you know, certainly the disciplines that Andrew and I've talked about, about the commercial world are really transferable and important.
But I think also you do learn good listening, good observation, you learn to tackle difficult, different problems, and you find this all the way through the charity world. It is not a straightforward equation of, right let's generate this profit. Now you're trying to generate impact. How are you measuring the impact?
So all of these questions are so difficult to answer, but actually how, we people, when you put finance into the equation and make it part of that stakeholder discussion you get these trade-offs, you help guide people better, you helps push that well how's that value? Is that money better spent over there rather than over there? I mean, that's such an important prompt into those discussions, which when we talked earlier about you know strategy and impact being separate, probably weren’t part of that conversation.
So yeah, there's huge amounts that commercial finance people can bring into the charity world and I'd love to talk to anymore about it, and you can find me on LinkedIn.
Glyn Sheldon: And lastly for you Sarah, as CFG’s Finance and Operations Director, you’re know sitting at the heart of the charity finance community, and what are you most excited about in your new role, and what do you hope to bring to it?
Sarah Ann Moore: Well, I talked already about my motivation was really in terms of helping to grow CFG and and really help charities to deliver the great work that they're doing.
Ultimately, I'm still pretty new, so I probably spent more time so far on our own digital transformation and continuous improvement journey. We're doing a lot operationally and internally at the moment but I think what what's really driving me, what I'm really excited for the, next piece is, to really pick up at finance journey framework which we’re working hard to integrate into all aspects of what we do. And how we articulate the criticality of finance to strategy, and how we can deliver and support the delivery of charity mission.
So in short that's my next area to really dive into and, as I mentioned, I did a lot of finance function review in the past and so I have these sort of skills and this, this real passion and enthusiasm to help others, and really excited to get stuck into that piece, and also, of course, deliver all that we need to run our digital transformation which is ongoing right now.
We’ve covered a huge amount of ground today, and I want to thank Clive, Andrew and Sarah for such a rich and interesting conversation.
The move from corporate to charity finance is rarely straightforward — but what comes through clearly from all three of our guests is that the skills gained in the private sector can be genuinely transformative when applied in a charity context.
So, thank you Andrew
Andrew Lowe: You’re welcome
Glyn Sheldon: Thank you Clive.
Clive MacTavish: Thanks Glyn, great to be here.
Glyn Sheldon: And Thank you to Sarah
Sarah Ann Moore: Thank you.
Glyn Sheldon: You can find more information about CFG membership benefits, professional development opportunities, and upcoming events on the CFG website.
Thanks for listening, and until next time.