Small International Aid Agency Cedes Operations to Larger Organisation
5 June 2017 at 5:13 pm
In a bid to save costs, increase efficiency and ensure donors get more bang for their buck, International Christian Aid Relief (iCARE) has ceded its operations to ChildFund.
In a joint statement, released Monday, ChildFund and iCARE announced that as of 1 July 2017 iCARE will be a subsidiary of ChildFund.
iCARE chair Julian Fewtrell told Pro Bono News the “take-over” was voluntary and a bid to secure the best outcomes for iCARE donors.
“We have a very loyal donor base and we were looking for someone who could provide better outcomes for them that comes with having greater scale,” Fewtrell said.
“In an environment that is pretty tough for small not-for-profits to secure funds and donations, we were sub-scale fundamentally, we went to the market looking for groups that we felt potentially could take over our operations and the donations we were receiving.”
He said after 18 months of scoping the market and just under a year of negotiations, the iCARE board decided ChildFund was best placed to takeover their programs.
“We are very similar organisations both culturally and in terms of our heritage,” Fewtrell said.
From 1 July 2017, ChildFund will oversee the completion of all of iCARE’s programs, including their education projects in Kenya and Philippines.
Fewtrell encouraged other sub-scale charities who were struggling to secure funds in a “pretty crowded marketplace” to consider taking a similar path of action.
“I think this provides a great model for some of these sub-scale charities who are doing fantastic things, but given the governance that exists around charities now, it is expensive to run,” Fewtrell said.
“I think organisations like ChildFund just have so much more scale compared to us, they manage the compliance side much more effectively that we could ever hope to do.
“My view is that today in the sector there are way too many people operating, all doing fantastic stuff, but all not having enough scale to do it in an effective and efficient way.
“As a board we are very confident that this is the best thing we could have done and that it was the right thing to do.”
ChildFund Australia CEO Nigel Spence told Pro Bono News that any opportunity for organisations with a shared vision to join forces was a positive.
“It is important that organisations be as flexible and efficient as they can to get the dollars where they are needed most,” Spence said.
“We have a great amount of respect for the work that iCARE undertakes and the support it has secured from the Australian public. So we are excited to see how combining our strengths will bring positive change to even more children in a way that is innovative, effective and cost-efficient.”
