Dave Does Charities - Alan Pavey

Dave thought charities were the nice, simple bit of organisational life. No shareholders, no profit obsession, everybody pulling together for a good cause. It took him about ten days to discover that this was complete bollocks.

Dave Does Charities is a funny, practical and occasionally sweary guide to the strange world where charitable purpose collides with trustees, CEOs, volunteers, safeguarding, employment law, fundraising, finance, governance, conflicts, regulators and the inconvenient reality that good intentions do not automatically produce a well-run organisation.

Following Dave through the fictional charity Helping Hands Together, the book explores the problems that real charities encounter every day: trustees who drift into management, executives who gradually take control of everything, founders who struggle to let go, volunteers who have apparently acquired constitutional powers through long service, policies nobody reads, complaints that explode, investigations that go wrong, safeguarding concerns, whistleblowing, restricted funds, difficult boardroom relationships, cyber incidents, financial pressure and the occasional governance disaster that begins with somebody saying, "We’ve always done it this way."

Along the way Dave develops a simple way of cutting through the noise: Don’t assume. Ask better questions. Verify the facts. Explain expectations. The DAVE principle becomes his practical test for working out what is really happening before somebody creates an expensive, embarrassing or completely avoidable mess.

Based on real organisational situations, investigations and experiences, the charity names, characters and identifying details have been changed or combined. The lessons are very real. Some of the language is pretty realistic too.

This is not a dry charity-governance textbook. It is for trustees, Chairs, CEOs, senior managers, HR professionals, volunteers and anyone who has ever sat in a charity meeting wondering who actually has the authority to make the decision, why nobody noticed the problem earlier, or who the fuck authorised it in the first place.