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16 December 2015, 14:59

...And the winner is

CFG were recently accepting nominations for the £5000 Adrian Randall Challenge Prize, calling for entries that exemplified good practice in charity finance. We were delighted to announce the winner at our Annual Fundraising Dinner in mid-November: Nick Dugdale from Compassion in World Farming.

We received some strong nominations this year. Reading through them with my fellow judges was interesting and enlightening of itself - I really enjoyed reading tangible examples of the excellent work going on in charity finance. It was a refreshing reminder of just how many enthusiastic, committed charity finance people there are out there, working hard to get the best results possible for their organisations. At a time when the poor processes of a few have cast many in the charity sector in a less than favourable light, it was great to be able to highlight examples of excellence.

The crux of Nick’s winning idea was to develop a digital application for charity finance, available in different languages, first supporting best practice in all of Compassion in World Farming’s locations across the world and then rolling it out across the sector. The potential for scale was a huge positive, as was its focus on moving beyond compliance and toward being an enabler of good practice.

The genesis of Nick's idea was reflecting on a successful period of strategic planning, during which he and his colleagues at Compassion in World Farming had taken the opportunity to rethink their approach. Ultimately, this shift enabled the organisation’s management to focus on longer term decision making, improve staff morale, incentivise income growth across the charity, and increase adaptability.

The transferable nature of Nick's work, particularly around matters such as tying risk and reserves together, was striking. Sharing the approach developed by Nick and Compassion in World Farming, via a digital application, is an exciting prospect, and one which could be potentially transformational for charities. It was an added bonus that Nick’s project really resonated with CFG’s work, and echoed a lot of the ideas and ambitions that are core to our thinking.

We are planning to collaborate with him in the coming months to develop the idea further and will be posting updates on our website and blog. This Award was set up in memory of Adrian Randall, who was one of CFG’s founding members, and a great financial leader. We wanted to create a lasting legacy that captured Adrian's determination and vision to develop charity finance by inspiring future generations of financial leaders. I really think 2015’s winner fulfils that goal.

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