Nailing my colours to the mast: Civic Empowerment

Like many colleagues in the sector, I fell into recruitment by accident. Lost without direction following an insincere yet stubborn 4 years in university, a career in recruitment at the time felt like a 3-year option: earn lots of money grinding yourself into the ground, ideally enough to afford the burnout-induced therapy sessions, and then move onto something you really like. Agency people know. 6 years later, I find myself at another meaningful juncture - but, this time, I know where I'm going.

I've spent at least the past 4 years working right across the spectrum of civil society, from employee-owned digital mobilisation agencies to trade associations, from campaigning platforms to thinktanks, and a whole lot more. I get to work with activists, politicos, strategists, lobbyists, policy wonks, entrepreneurs on a daily basis. In the morning I might advise a climate justice NGO how to inclusively recruit its Board of Trustees, and in the afternoon pitch to a humanitarian charity delivering aid to those affected by natural disaster. I might even go for a drink with a lobbyist in the evening. I love my job, especially its variety and the opportunity to learn from the best, but to date it's lacked a singular common thread tying it all together, linking skills with purpose with impact.

Working in consultancy to any sector affords unique freedom - to criticise, to advise, to jump from one thing to another - but a traditional drawback is the often correct perception of commercial reward at the expense of purpose. I don't see commerciality as a bad thing, either; it is (if played right) a key enabler of independence and allows positive growth and continuation of mission.

But is the current prioritisation of profit and the symbiotic lack of devoting proper resources really what we want - what we need - for progress in civil society? Over the course of my career, I have not only realised the role that good recruitment can play in the impact supply chain, but I have also experienced a growing frustration with the complacency at the heart of so many approaches to hiring. As recruitment consultants to not just charitable organisations or the people that work in them but the causes themselves, as headhunters who are paid with money that has been fundraised, is it not incumbent on us to further the aims and impact of the sector we partner with as much as we can? And is a charity really giving itself the best chance of fulfilling its mission by doing important things on the cheap when it can afford otherwise?

A good example is a mandate of helping a prospective client with their lack of diversity. I've lost count of the number of people I've spoken to who expect a premium service for less than the price of a Meal Deal, verbally recognising the importance of diversity and inclusion (as basic as that sounds) but refusing to put their money where their mouth is. Similarly, there are ostensibly those working in the recruitment industry who wax lyrical about their passion for EDI but whose professional track record leaves much to be desired or whose personal opinions should preclude them from working on the assignments they do. I'm looking at you, Former Colleague. The point is that the resources and appetite for real, tangible progress are out there, but action is better than words, and civil society must think of its ecosystem and supply chain in a more meaningful way.

This leads me to my point, without hopefully having meandered too much. My motivations lie explicitly in the strengthening of civil society and I'm very excited to be able to formally put this into practice in the form of a new specialism: Civic Empowerment. For myself and Green Park, this principally means two things: firstly, working with organisations that mobilise and channel public support into policy and/or legislative influence; and secondly, those that hold institutional power to account. It's also those that are closer to political systems. In short, it's the pointy end of civil society, crucially not exclusively limited to the charity sector, rather looking at the wider spectrum of change.

While I'll retain my functional specialisms of policy, campaigning, mobilisation, advocacy, and comms, I'll be casting the net wider to help organisations within the CE space find their Board Members and other Executives. Key focuses will naturally be democracy and civic participation, unions and workers' rights, transparency and accountability, civil and human rights, and justice, but CE naturally lends itself to other thematic areas too like climate and conservation. Concurrently, it is my belief that what Sue Tibballs would call 'activist leadership' is lacking in public discourse, that creeping managerialism and governance grounded in risk management rather than cause enablement are structural threats to the influence of civil society, and I'll be paying particular attention to supporting such activist leaders and organisations in their efforts.

Fundamentally, my role centres around pushing the dial on leadership, equity, and generally strengthening the role of civil society, supporting it and countering threats where possible, so we collectively stand the best possible chance of solving the issues we face. So, if you're looking to hire, you fancy a chat about a career move, or you simply believe in a civil society ecosystem like I do, I'd love to talk.