Jenni Seton has been CEO of Redkite for 18 years. Redkite is an Australian cancer charity supporting the emotional, financial and education needs of young people up to the age of 24 with cancer, and their families, from diagnosis to treatment and beyond.
Jenni spoke at the Macquarie University Women, management and work 27th annual conference last week. Her topic was particularly relevant after World Vision CEO Tim Costello’s comments to the ABC about non-profits needing to collaborate if they are going to survive
This is an edited version of Jenni’s speech.
There’s a wise old saying: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. At Redkite we believe in the importance of going far and together. We strive to ensure this by being collaborative and inclusive.
Redkite receives no government funding, so without multiple corporate collaborations we couldn’t provide our essential support to young people with cancer and their families, some of whom are our most vulnerable and marginalised in our society.
Our support is as real as ensuring a family has fuel to get their child to treatment and food on the table, we help with counselling in hospital and at home, and hopefully we end up assisting with education or career needs for a child or young person, or sadly if not, we will be there if needed with bereavement support.
We are quiet achievers in cancer care and for decades we have operated in every children’s hospital oncology unit across Australia and where young people with cancer are having treatment.
I notice the Community Council for Australia stated this week that charities should be collaborating more to prevent duplication and ward off charity fatigue. I definitely agree with this statement. I would also acknowledge that our own experience has shown us that collaboration is not easy. Are we constantly learning? Yes. Are we experts? Absolutely not. We certainly skin our knees occasionally.
Getting the fundamentals right is essential to successful collaboration. In reality, 20 years ago, real collaboration between charities in the children’s support sector we are closely linked to was rare. However, to be fair, we weren’t all experiencing the rapidly growing collaborative economy back then either. Uber, Air BNB and Lending Club didn’t exist. The thought of such peer to peer activity would have been pure fantasy.
Today we are part of a collaborative economy that is challenging our need for ownership, and changing how we trust and how we use what was idle. Not for Profits are part of this collaborative and largely digitally-driven transformation, and we are seeing and driving changes in how we access or engage with services, with all its advantages, challenges and pitfalls.
At Redkite, as a result of listening to our clients, we are now focussing on how our services can be more accessible; how we can be more available where, when and how they need us. This includes their need for more peer to peer support.
But collaboration is not just about service provision to clients, it’s also critical to the way we lead our organisations. Personally, I believe in the importance of an NFP leader having a network leadership style that fosters collaboration internally and externally. This includes enabling collaboration through your structure, culture and even recognition.
I’m pleased that the seeds for potential collaboration within our children’s charity support sector were sown 12 years ago when as CEOs of national organisations Ronald MacDonald Children’s Charity, Starlight, Camp Quality, Make a Wish, CanTeen, Variety Australia and Redkite, we all met and started sharing.
Together we established the Children’s Charities Leadership Forum and it has grown from year to year. Today thanks to that initiative and the commitment of our respective teams, particularly from our leaders in services and programs, there is less duplication, more communication, greater mutual respect, trust and collaborations in place that are benefitting our clients.
Overall there is a greater sense of unity and community, however, I suspect today we would agree that along with our progress there is still even more we could achieve.
A recent collaboration between Redkite and Camp Quality is a great example of what can be delivered together. A 2011, a Camp Quality report identified that parents of children with cancer at camps needed some parent-only time to share and be able to express their thoughts and concerns together.
Through sharing this research with us, it was agreed that Redkite social workers attend camps to hold facilitated parent groups.
The pilot was such a success that we’ve provided this support nationally for three years, with hundreds of parents attending. For Redkite this collaboration demonstrated our willingness to be flexible and mobile, to go where our clients needed us, and it demonstrated real openness and collegial respect from Camp Quality.
This collaboration worked due to determined professionals from both organisations coming together and being willing to:
- Openly communicate;
- Share ideas, resources, influence and power;
- Develop clear operating guidelines; and
- Invest real time and ensure proper evaluation.
Collaboration isn’t easy. Despite the challenges Redkite remains committed to the saying “if you want to go far, go together” as we believe it’s in the best interests of the children, young people and families we walk alongside.
Six Tips toward a successful Collaboration:
Some of these simple and basic tips might be useful in the early stages of forming a potential collaboration.
- Go to meetings with a willingness toward lots of listening, not telling (I often remind myself that I have two ears and one mouth).
- Be patient, as both parties might not have the same level of priority for the potential collaboration or capacity in the initial stages.
- Be willing to let go: it’s not all about power, control and winning – it is about building foundations of trust and mutual respect.
- Choose a collaborator wisely. Have the same approach and aspirations that we aim for in a personal relationship. Select wisely, as you’ll invest a lot of time, reputation and possibly money together. You want it to be a marathon not a sprint. And like being in a relationship, when you are in a wrong one, you are not making space for the right one.
- Understand what success looks like for the collaboration, make it clear and measure it.
- Last but not least, you need commitment to the three Cs of clarity, consistency and communication.