Consultant says Infrastructure Organisations 'fail to meet needs of small organisations' - Third Sector.
There's a surprise. This one goes next to the headline "Bears shit in woods", and "Pope is a catholic". It is so easy to insult infrastructure organisations as not meeting the needs of small organisations - as freelance consultant Kim Donahue has discovered, since they aren't in any position to fight back. Especially easy when you read she was referring to "National, Regional and sub-regional" organisations - which shows she hasn't got a clue - since the 'micro organisations' she refers to 99% of the time get what support they can from a local organisation. And since all these support organisations have had the shit kicked out of them by central and local government, the comments are really like- not just kicking a dog when it is down, but after someone has broken all its legs, poked its eyes out and shoved a sock down its throat. And from what position do these comments come from? From a freelance consultant with experience of working with "over 200 small organisations". Over 200 - really? If you're going to play the numbers game you are going to have to do better than that. The average borough in the UK has over 500 organisations that meet the criteria she uses to describe "micro-organisations" and I really can't be arsed to do the full count, but I know that there are more than 50,000 in London alone. So 200? Really? Wow. We're real impressed. And what experience does this consultant have exactly? Well her online CV says she's got a lot of experience in the US, and mentions very little about working with small organisations - and NOTHING AT ALL about infrastructure organisations - that's right, she appears to have never worked for a CVS, or for any other local, region, sub-regional or national infrastructure organisation AT ALL, and it appears that ALL her work in the UK has been as a freelance consultant. All this appears to be is a cry :"EMPLOY ME!!!" I'm a freelancer who can't get any work!!! Give me money to write a report!!"
This reminds me of someone I knew years ago who qualified as a social worker and then went and wrote a book about social work - without ever having been a social worker.
For the record, I work some of the time as a freelance consultant. I've even written reports about infrastructure support. But you know what? That was after 25 years of working in the voluntary sector, with 15 years of that working in the part offering infrastructure support. Do you want to know how many small groups I have worked with? Do you know, I don't think I can tell you. I know that as a capacity building worker in voluntary organisations I worked with several hundred a year, I know that as a consultant I have worked with "over 200" ...
All this makes me very angry (as you can tell). This sort of guff is based on virtually no research at all and very little experience. And it does two very bad things: In the wide-world it tells people that "infrastructure organisations are crap" - which gives every council in the UK to cut more to them. In the voluntary sector it has a secondary effect - it makes everyone think all consultants are is parasitic leeches sucking the life from the sector, or in this case, vultures picking at their bones..
Anyway, if anyone wants to give me some money to research how consultants fail to meet the need of the voluntary sector, you know where I am.
