The Other Railway Children - Postscript 'Why is the charity successful?'

Looking back over the last fifteen years it is interesting to consider the factors which have contributed to the growth and success of the charity. I have been a trustee of five other voluntary organisations registered as charities - the Consortium for Street Children, Get Connected, the Methodist Relief and Development Fund, my local Methodist Church and the Nantwich Christian Fellowship Trust, the latter a small charity that dispenses a bursary or grant every year to a young person or persons spending time on humanitarian work overseas. All have their strengths, but it is clear to me that the Railway Children has grown fastest in the relatively short period of its existence and from many comments made to me, it would seem that its reputation among its peer organisations is high and trustees and staff of other NGOs are often referred to us for advice. In looking through the chapters of this book and from discussions with staff, trustees and other NGOs, especially members of the CSC engaged in helping a similar group of vulnerable children and young people, the following factors would appear to have played a significant part in our success.

1. Clear Focus & Strategy

Clearly identifying the real need for, and noting the lack of focus from other voluntary organisations on, early intervention for the increasing number of street children in the world was vital. I used business techniques I was familiar with (risk assessment and ‘Total Quality Management’) to identify our role and spent several months researching, testing my idea, and going through a period of contemplation before deciding that the founding of a new charity was justified. During that time I was learning from others in the voluntary sector, making sure that I would not be duplicating the work of another charity and that it would not be better just to become a member and supporter of another NGO.

As the charity grew, the trustees and staff spent time reviewing our purpose and refining it, not just at Board meetings but through ‘Away Days’ where options and strategies could be tested in deeper discussion. Such debates led to decisions that we would be a development organisation and not just a grant-maker, that we would focus on lone children with little or no contact with their families or at risk of becoming detached, realising that trying to work in the railway slum communities as well as on the stations with runaway children was spreading the focus too thinly. We spent hours discussing where we should work and eventually narrowed the spread of our activity from ten countries to three geographical areas which we did only after a thorough evaluation of pilot projects in a number of continents. We spent time clarifying our mission and objectives using the discipline of the ‘Balanced Scorecard’ technique and developed a rolling three year strategic planning process for each of the main strands of our work in India, East Africa and the United Kingdom.

2. High Quality Staff & Trustees

I believe too that the managerial experience we were able to bring to bear on the development of the charity was vital. Many charities have developed expertise in fundraising but often fall short of professionalism in other aspects of their activities. We identified our vision and stuck to it, staying focused. We put as much effort into refining our objectives, ensuring what we did was effective, paying attention to the quality and motivation of our staff.

We harnessed as trustees the contribution of experienced managers from the rail industry - in particular, general management, financial, public relations and human resources skills and experience. We augmented this with two senior programme directors with years of experience in a large international children’s NGO to give us a full balance of skills and experience in the Board.

We selected a Chief Executive, Terina, who shared our vision and supported her as the charity grew rapidly with top management training at Ashridge – expensive but a valuable investment. I was fortunate from the start in having the skill of a colleague, Stan Judd, in applying his experience to the setting up of sound and robust administrative and financial procedures, areas in which I had less time and inclination to focus. This was later further strengthened when we appointed Keith Strickland as our Company Secretary, a man whose professional life was in such activity and David Brookes as a full time accountant, supported by dedicated administrators, Wendy and later Kaye.

The trustees decided as a priority that we would pay the right level to attract the best staff and spent time and used the human resource skills that we had trying to get this right, attracting people like our key programme staff - Mrinalini, Pete, Andy, a researcher, Emilie, with a high reputation and fundraisers with a range of interests and skills, people who were motivated by the cause as well as an ambition to succeed in their roles. When we advertised for a specialist in marketing and communications we attracted a person, Rob Capener, who had been handling our account in a commercial firm, and was quick, with our other fundraisers - Dave, Ian, Katie, Lindsay, Wendy and our most recent recruit as Head of Fundraising, Karen - to seize the opportunities presented even though at times these caused a workload that stretched them to the limit.

I found key people in India I could trust - especially important in the early days before we had staff there and thanks are especially due to Tim Grandage, Edith Wilkins, the late Matthew Norton (‘Manihara’) and Gopal Dutia, all of whom were invaluable as we developed our India project portfolio. Then Mrinalini was able to build up a respected local team in India that found and maintained real and equal partnerships with strong local Indian NGOs, ably assisted at present by Navin and a team based in Andheri in north Mumbai. Again, in the early days I was able to draw on the experience of colleagues in the CSC and use their skills in partnerships with overseas NGOs and their monitoring facilities.

Turnover of staff has been remarkably low, especially in the UK. Katie Mason has been with us almost from the beginning and Terina, Mrinalini and Pete joined us in key roles at an early stage and are with us, still highly motivated for the cause ten years or so later, developing with the charity. Perhaps our location, initially in Crewe and now just five miles away in Sandbach, is a strength. In London where so many charities are based, the competition for good staff is intense and costs are high. We are able to attract good staff who value the lifestyle outside London and have local commitments and interests which perhaps is one reason for the higher staff retention rate. And here I should pay tribute to railway companies, particularly Virgin Trains, who have provided us with free train passes and car parking facilities which we have used innumerable times for the necessary meetings we have in London, making the establishment of the base in Cheshire very practicable.

3. Motivation

As mentioned in the previous paragraphs above, one reason for attracting and retaining good staff and trustees is motivation for the cause. We try to ensure all staff and trustees wherever possible get a chance to visit our projects overseas and see for themselves the work we are doing with our partners. No-one has yet come back without further fire and determination to work for these vulnerable children. Again, we have another travel company to thank, this time British Airways who make free flight tickets available to us outside peak periods every year which we use for both staff and trustee visits and bring our overseas staff here. This not only enhances our motivation but enables us to experience the stories of the children at first hand and make the more effective our talks and contacts with friends, colleagues and speaking opportunities at clubs, schools and churches. We need the heart as well as the head to be effective in what we do - not just for the founder but for other staff and trustees too.

4. The Railway Industry Partnership

Having a niche market of donors from a relevant industry – rail – was also crucial, allowing awareness of the charity to build quickly with the support and push from senior managers in the industry several of whom became trustees. 50% of the estimated £15 million raised since the founding of the charity has come from individuals, companies and events within the UK railway industry.

The obvious link between the first focus for intervention, the railway station and other transport terminal outreach locations, the charity’s name and the railway industry made it natural to seek support first from colleagues and people I knew within the privatised railway, while most of the people I’d known from my British Rail employment were still around. Early on I’d had the vision that perhaps I could link interested companies with specific projects that they would adopt, leaving me to act mainly as a coordinator and referral point, but I soon realised I would have to play a more active role as support started coming from individuals within the railway family rather than organisations, as we were then not mature enough to provide the credibility necessary for a company’s CSR programme.

One clear advantage of the railway link was the support I had from several senior managers with considerable experience between them in the range of skills necessary to manage any organisation, commercial or voluntary. Many of these not only brought their own contribution but, through their contacts, enabled the charity to benefit from pro bono or reduced cost services such as legal help in setting up and registering the charity with the Charity Commission, the auditing of our annual accounts, the provision of free rail tickets to staff when on charity business and the sponsoring of gifts and prizes at our various fundraising events.

The latter was particularly valuable for the annual Railway Ball, the first at the National Railway Museum in 1998, then at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London from 2000 when income from the Ball tickets augmented by the sponsorship of the costs realised a profit averaging a quarter of a million pounds, a third of our income in the earlier years. This event had the effect of raising awareness of the Railway Children throughout the privatised industry and its suppliers with nearly a thousand guests being present on each occasion. Many companies also sponsored various fundraising events, the most important being the ‘Three Peaks Challenge’ which not only benefited from total sponsorship from the rail industry but excited the interest of teams of individuals from the various railway companies, with places for 200 participants being filled nearly every year.

Stemming from attendance of their Managing Director at the Railway Ball, we linked with Select Service Partners, benefiting from their continuing partnership and the resultant collection boxes at station food outlets which raised awareness of the charity further, as did the decision by London Underground to display our name and strap line on posters throughout the system giving the phone number of our partner, the Runaway Helpline, to assist youngsters at risk. Author and transport journalist Christian Wolmar gave book launches and lectures to support us and various railway magazines and heritage railways joined in the public relations and fundraising programmes.

Finally, because of the historical contacts between British Rail and officers of Indian Railways, I was able to gain access to the top managers of the Indian railway and police organisations and facilitate cooperation and regular communication between our Indian programme partners and the railway authorities on a more regular and official basis.

5. Marketing and Communications

The distinctive and famous name helped. It was recognisable and quite different from many of the other children’s charities many of which had variations including the word ‘hope’ and ‘children’. It appealed to people in the railway industry although it did need frequent explaining outside the industry where people mainly associated it with the children’s novel and 1970 film – but at least that got us noticed. The contact with Dario Mitidieri and his fabulous photos of street children in Bombay and his permission to use them widely in our promotional materials was very valuable and the offer of experienced journalists – Bert Porter from the York railway press office and Christian Wolmar – to edit and produce our early newsletter ‘Action Stations’ was important. The professional work of Jane Simpson and Rob Capener in upgrading our ‘brand’ and Rob’s overhaul of our website were further key elements of our success. Lastly I cannot omit the contribution made in raising awareness among a wider audience of our range of Christmas cards, many from original water colour paintings by David Charlesworth, railway artist and Chairman of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Society, which also produced a significant annual income.

6. Fundraising

Many factors which enabled us to grow our income at an astonishing rate have been already mentioned, especially our relationship with the railway industry. The initial start-up was helped enormously by a Railtrack Board Member, Christopher Campbell, who helped us acquire a trust grant to fund our first project. The availability of part time international railway safety consultancy work and involvement in a panel of retired BR officers to chair UK Rail Accident Inquiries produced an early source of income for the charity as retirement at the privatisation of Railtrack and the resultant ‘golden handshake’ left me and my family sufficiently provided for. The early decision to work for street and runaway children in the UK as well as overseas was popular with many donors as well as providing cross–project learning for us.

We were fortunate in getting a substantial lottery grant at our first ask – although I would emphasise that the focus and hard-headedness of our approach as indicated above in section 1 of this chapter obviously was a factor. This was followed by substantial grants from Comic Relief and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, and the professionalism of our Chief Executive, programme and fundraising staff clearly gave us a great advantage. All these factors have a wide ripple effect, especially when the Sport Relief BBC telethons showed clips of our partner projects in India with the name ‘Railway Children’ used very clearly. When the Girl Guide movement chose to support Railway Children (one of nineteen national charities) as part of its centenary celebrations, the awareness of the charity was raised with a new and younger generation of potential donors.

In the last eighteen months Railway Children has been fortunate in attracting major corporate partners outside the railway industry, starting with Tesco following the dramatic success and publicity surrounding the ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ film and then Aviva when that global company decided on street children as the subject of its CSR programme and decided to partner Railway Children influenced considerably by the evidence in our ‘Off the Radar’ research.

7. Networking

Networking with other street children charities through the Consortium for Street Children was important too, as it meant we had experienced personnel with whom to share ideas and test our concepts, learning fast as we progressed. In fact, I had a network of colleagues far wider than that – through Amnesty International UK’s Children’s Human Rights Network and the Methodist Relief & Development Fund. Being a trustee of a number of charities and learning from the different styles of operation I saw was valuable experience and I always found colleagues very open and willing to help. Through both Amnesty and the CSC, I had the opportunity to be part of the child rights advisory bodies to both the Foreign Office and DFID where I mingled with senior staff of some of the largest UK based national and international NGOs and as a result got notice of, and invitations to, many major conferences on children’s rights and welfare, widening my contacts to include a number of eminent academic and international agency experts and specialists.

Because Railway Children always worked through partners both overseas and in the UK, we benefited from the knowledge and experience of people in those organisations and had access therefore to their contacts and sources of knowledge and research also. Railway Children has always made it an important part of our principles that we are open and willing to share our knowledge with others, so we find this reciprocated. The work in the UK has undoubtedly grown through our initiative in forming a coalition of NGOs working at the grass roots level here and in consequence acting as the secretariat to the APPG on English Runaways in the 2005-10 parliament.

8. Governance

Railway Children’s trustees were well versed in the routine business practices of setting up robust procedures, financial and management accounting systems, most of which we’d learned during our apprenticeship for this in the management of British Rail. Several were also involved in voluntary sector or local government management and had experience of larger NGOs. After an initial period when first Stan Judd, then our Chief Executive acted as Company Secretary, we encountered a professional Company Secretary who volunteered to act in that capacity for us as his contribution to the charity and became a valued and permanent member of our Governance Committee as well as attending all Board meetings.

The robustness of the systems and procedures we had put in place was well tested and found fit for purpose in the Charity Commission review in 2005. The financial understanding of the Governance Committee, which was chaired by the Managing Director of HSBC Rail and included two very senior line managers (of South East Trains and the Waterloo – Channel Tunnel high speed line) and a former non executive Board Member of London Transport, was at a very high level of competence and ensured the decisions we took were financially prudent and rarely gave us cause for concern.

We were very clear that our decisions at all times were intended to be in the best interests of our children and required that we partner the most effective local NGOs irrespective of religion – we were and are a secular organisation prepared to work through faith groups if they are effective and rightly motivated.

We were found to be worthy of corporate funding through various due diligence investigations undertaken on behalf of potential CSR partners such as Aviva and major trusts such as Comic Relief.

9. Being a Learning Organisation

We said we were a learning organisation and meant it, prepared to accept things don’t always work, but learning from our own setbacks and the experiences of others. Through my own networking and that of other trustees we had moved quickly from motivated novices in child protection and development to becoming credible as advisors to both Amnesty International UK on children’s rights, trainers on child protection systems within the CSC and to the Methodist Church. When the Lottery International Grants team visited one of our Indian projects in 2000 and was concerned that we were not using the experience of some of our more mature partners to share with other partners, we quickly learned from this and used the implied criticism to review what value we could add to our partners, becoming true development agents and not just grant-makers.

We learned from our evaluation of the first Comic Relief grant that we had to consider moving closer to the communities from where the children were running. In our second grant programme we obtained the intervention of the Joint Police Commissioner of Delhi to train our partners in the requirements and obligations under the Indian Juvenile Justice Act 2000 and learned the successful methodology of another partner, Sathi, in reuniting children with their families and used them to train all our Indian partners transforming the number reintegrated successfully from 200-300 a year to around 4,000 – approximately 25% of children we engaged with there. We learned from the struggles we had to set up a successful federation of our Indian partners and although we were under pressure from our grant makers to empower such a body, learned and persuaded the funder that in that particular culture at that time we were likely to be more successful by using local Indian Railway Children resources to share good practice, train NGO staff and conduct advocacy at national government level.

Above all we learned that successful implementation of programmes had to be based on hard evidence of both the issues and the impact of different tested solutions and saw the need to institute our own research when the data needed for policy and strategic decision taking was lacking or weak.

10. Luck

At the end of the day we have to admit that luck always plays a part, although you have to be ready to identify opportunities that arise and seize the moment. Just two recent examples – the publicity surrounding the ‘Oscar’ awards to the film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ which both raised awareness of our work in India (we actually worked with such children featured in the film on the station where much of it was shot) and provided over £250,000 of unrestricted income in the middle of the recession through our partnership with Tesco and the release of the DVD under a special deal with us.

And then the partnership with the theatre touring company that put on ‘The Railway Children’ play at Waterloo International that again raised both cash and awareness. The opportunity may have come by chance – the decision to pick it up and exploit that opportunity despite limited resources was a risk we decided to take as the staff and trustees felt that this had potential we could not afford to ignore. Being in the right place at the right time may be luck. Taking full advantage of it is one reason why Railway Children in 2011 is seen as a successful and growing organisation by many of its peers.