A servant of two masters

I've mentioned previously that I sit on the board of a West London charity that has provided numeracy, literacy and IT education to adults in the area for over 25 years. More recently we've started offering Information, Advice & Guidance (IAG) and Jobsearch services. Given our success as providers of job skills it seemed like a natural fit: -

Not only will we get your ready for work, we'll take you to the next step and actually help you find that job

We were (strongly) encouraged to expand in this way by the various funding bodies that pay our bills and for a while we thought we congratulated ourselves on achieving a happy balance between education and IAG. Alas, charitable funding is as much beset by the vagaries of fashion as any sector I've ever encountered and IAG is the flavour of the moment.

The focus-on-the-individual ethos that served us so well as an educational provider since 1983 is far less suited to the throughput-driven IAG sector. Especially as IAG funding comes with a much more rigorous benchmark than we're used to: does the client have a job?

To maintain funding for our educational operation we've been forced to link courses directly to IAG. Whereas previously our IT training was open to anyone who walked through our door, nowadays it must be attached to the job market. So our ability to help, say, a mother who doesn't need paid work but rather just wants the IT skills to email her family in Somalia, has diminished to almost zero.

Our passionate, hardworking staff are servants of two masters. As indicated by sick leave and absenteeism amongst our volunteers, the stress levels are now worryingly high. We'll keep fighting to maintain our ability to serve our real customers, the people who walk through the door but too often this puts us in conflict with those who write the cheques.

I worry for our future.