The BBKA – a manifesto for change
Introduction
All that follows is my belief of how the BBKA has gone wrong, and how it could be fixed. This is based upon my observations and experiences as an ordinary member for many decades, six years on the Examination Board, and five years as a BBKA Trustee.
The BBKA has lost its way, morally, spiritually and functionally. It is self-serving, arrogant, and secretive. The current leadership believes that it should no longer be accountable to the Area Associations. The BBKA is broken and needs urgent repair. The Area Associations need to assert themselves and put matters right; it is not too late for them to regain control.
This document is intended to be a positive statement of how the current BBKA failings could be addressed. Recommended actions are highlighted in bold for each failing.
Ambitions
‘Big Charity’ image
The old ideas of service to members, first and foremost, have been subjugated by the incumbent leadership and replaced with ambitions to make the BBKA a grandly self-important environmental campaigning body, along the lines of Friends of the Earth, and funded wholly out of corporate and public sponsorship money.
These are ambitions of fame and fortune that the BBKA could never sustain, being without the personnel, competences, skills or expertise to compete with the likes of FoE.
Action: the BBKA needs to refocus on its members’ needs alone.
Losing focus – charitable aims
We have been brainwashed by the BBKA leadership that the BBKA has to have a service to the public. We are told that we must do this to meet our charitable aims. This is not so.
The BBKA can legally function as a charity byserving a defined community of members,such as beekeepers, providedit does not exclude anyone who wants to join. To widen that to having to serve the whole population is mere political spin in pursuit of sponsorship money. Big public impact of course attracts big corporate sponsorship.
The BBKA’s stated charitable aims have been massaged to this corporate sponsorship aim, soprominent now is the new emphasis is on “informing the public”. Not so long ago it was wholly “to further the craft of beekeeping” - to support beekeepers with training and education, to defend them in the face of authority, UK or European. Yes, we need the support of the public but that work is undertaken all the time and very successfully in the Area Associations. It should not be the sole or even the main focus of the BBKA.
Action: the BBKA should abandon these misleading aims of public service.
Action: The BBKA revert its charitable aims to “furthering the craft of beekeeping”.
Public fundraising
The public fundraising schemes so far have been a costly failure: donation income is largely swallowed up byfundraising costs, particularly with the new dependency on costly PR and Fulfilment type companies who reap the profits. 'Friends of the Honeybee' and 'Adopt a Beehive' come with good headlines to try to convince members and the public of their success, but the reality is that both are costly failures propped up by capitation income.
For example, donors to ‘Adopt a Beehive’ give £30 to support honeybee research, according to BBKA advertising. In some years the scheme has returned less than £2 of this £30 to the BBKA Research Fund. This is immoral, ineffective,and deeply embarrassing and should not be how the BBKA operates.
Action: cease these misleading and ineffective public fund-raising campaigns.
Corporate paymasters
The great white hope of receiving loads of corporate sponsorship money is as evasive as ever, the projects are failing and costing more to maintain that they actually earn.
Corporate sponsorship comes withobligations, liabilities and risks.There is no such thing as a free lunch. Look atthe long term damage that has been done to our environmental reputation with the misguided pesticide company sponsorship money - money so controversial that had to be secreted in ‘BBKA Enterprises' to avoid a revolt by the membership.
Corporate sponsors want something in return for their money besides the veneer of green credentials. The BBKA should not be balancing such obligations to corporate sponsors against the obligations to its members.
Action: cease corporate sponsorship activities.
Democracy
Transparency
BBKA EC meeting minutes are heavily skewed, unrepresentative of the meetings they purport to record, and not circulated to Area Associations.
The Area Associations need a much closer view of the actions and decisions of the elected trustees. It is the Area Associations who should decide BBKA purpose and direction: the trustees must implement this, and be seen to be implementing this.
The technology exists to readily record meetings; any audio typist can transcribe these verbatim. Such transcripts would enforce accurate minute-keeping and democratic debate and decision-making. It will be difficult for aTtrustee to lie and then deny when it is on tape!
Action: EC meeting minutes must accurately reflect the conduct of meetings.
Action: audio recordings,verbatim transcripts, and minutes of EC meetings must be accessible to Area Associations.
Accountability to Area Associations
The needs and wishes of its Association members have been cast aside, and key democratic functions such as Annual Delegate Meetings are seen as an irrelevant nuisance, to be stage-managed and misled in order to achieve the BBKA’s desired outcome.The tail is wagging the dog.
The Associations clearly instructed the BBKA in January 2015 that it should support a continuing moratorium on the use of neonicotinoids, yet very recently the BBKA has publicly stated that it is undecided and “sitting on the fence” on the matter. The BBKA is now clearly and publicly refusing to accept the wishes and instruction of its member Associations.
Action: audio recordings,verbatim transcripts, and minutes of EC meetings must be accessible to Area Associations.
Two-tier Trustees & Executive Powers
An unhealthy ‘inner clique’ of trustees has arisen during the successive chairmanships of David Aston and Doug Brown. This ‘inner clique’ comprises trustees who have assumed executive powers, who operate largely without reference to other lesser trustees, and who veto or override those lesser trustees.
Our constitution would have it that all trustees are equal and that democracy should prevail. The so-called ‘BBKA Chairman’ should be merely the man or woman, one amongst equals, who simply chairs the EC meetings. It is not so. David Aston and particularly Doug Brown assert themselves as CEO’s, making the decisions and taking arbitrary actions and then expecting the other trustees to ‘rubber stamp’.
Many things happen without the knowledge or agreement of most of the trustees. The recent BBKA Survey is just one such event: written by Doug Brown with out reference to the trustees, and published in BBKA News. The trustees only found out when it appeared in print! Similarly the costly and wasteful June SDM was bullied through against much resistance from the trustees, and achieved nothing.
Action: the BBKA must revert to a proper democracy where all Trustees are equal, and all Trustees can participate freely in decision making.
Delegate Meeting Conduct
The recent practice of issuing a tailored set of Standing Orders before each and every Delegate Meeting constrains and undermines the full and democratic involvement of the Area Associations.
Fiddling with the Standing Orders smacks of manipulation. It has been clear at the recent ADMs and SDMs that the tailoring of Standing Orders was an obstructive tactic on the behalf of the EC to exclude or silence dissenters.
There is no reason why a single set of Standing Orders(applicable to all Delegate Meetings) should not form part of the BBKA Constitution, where it would be safe from such opportunist manipulation.
Action: incorporate a single set of Standing Orders for all Delegate Meetings
into the BBKA Constitution.
Management & Operations
General management of the BBKA needs radical overhaul. It is a big subject and it needs a big review. It is clear that we are failing our ladies in the office, on whom we rely for so much of the day-to-day operation of the BBKA. To have lost five office managers in less than five years should sound very loud alarm bells.
Action: Implement a Human Resources committee with AA representation
Plainly, day-to-day management of the BBKA is failing, and we resort to continual crisis management. We need to revert to the situation where we had an actively-involved General Secretary who oversaw the day-to-day operation of the BBKA. It is not good enough that Doug Brown has assumed the position of Chief Executive, directing and mis-directing staff without accepting either query or direction from the other Trustees.
Action: A wholesale review of BBKA management and reporting practices.
Policies & Procedures
The BBKA has enough policy documents to paper all of the lavatory walls, most of them downloaded from the internet merely to tick Governance boxes. Policy documents are of little use if they are rarely referred to, and if no corresponding procedures exist to implement those policies.
The recently instigated Whistleblowing Policy is a case in point. It offers nothing that the BBKA is not already obliged by law to provide for its formal employees, and extends no protection to either volunteers or trustees. It is mere tokenism, paperwork for paperwork’s sake.
Likewise the Procurement Policy; so many purchases are still made, and contracts still signed, without reference to this Policy. Expenditure authorisation? Tendering processes? All are ignored. Why then have a procurement policy? No wonder the BBKA cannot keep costs under control.
We do not want to see the BBKA drown under policies and procedures, but the current failings are so extensive that a major overhaul is required now in order to correct them. This should be followed by periodic reviews to ensure the governance remains fit for purpose. A Governance Committee should comprise representatives of the Associations, and should not include any serving Trustees or Officers of the BBKA.
Action: establish a Governance Committee populated by
Area Association representatives.
Action: establish procedures to enforce agreed policies.
Action: establish periodic policy & procedure reviews.
Finances
The finances are opaque yet failing. There has been no functioning traceability or accountability for monies received or expended. Budget forecasting is mostly creative fiction, and ongoing budget controls are ineffective, leading to a regular annual deficit which eats into BBKA reserves. Most money raised by Capitation is not spent on services to members, yet the BBKA regularly increase it.
There is little attempt to control costs, indeed very few trustees have the necessary skills or experience to manage a business of this size. Consequently, the BBKA is bloated. What it should do (but seems incapable of) is to implement a serious and robust management plan to cut unnecessary expenditure and hence force the BBKA to live within its means. Instead we just get the usual cry of “increase capitation…”
The BBKA lacks financial expertise, both in short-term management and long-term financial strategy. The BBKA urgently needs the professional input of a Chartered Accountant co-opted onto the Finance Committee.
Action: co-opt a Chartered Accountant onto the BBKA Finance Committee
BBKA Enterprises
BBKA Enterprises was set up in order to conceal the pesticide sponsorship payments, and it continues to obfuscate monies received and spent by the BBKA. Spurious justifications for the continued existence of Enterprises are given: “it is needed in order to trade” (wrong: a charity can trade) and “it is needed in order to recover VAT” (wrong: a charity can be VAT registered).
BBKA Enterprises is a separate company, with a separate board of directors and separate accounts. The current Enterprises Directors are: David Aston, Doug Brown, Tim Lovett.
BBKA Trustees cannot exercise any controls over Enterprises unless they are also Directors of Enterprises. The BBKA Treasurer does not have access to review Enterprises accounts. The Area Associations cannot exercise any controls over Enterprises.
BBKA Enterprises has a stranglehold on all BBKA finances and inhibits proper management and financial controls.
Action: Wind up BBKA Enterprises.
Accounts
Transparency
Area Associations see a massaged view of the accounts once a year. A good accountant can present those accounts to support any of a number of outcomes. Area Associations are not given sufficient information to investigate the detail of income and expenditure in order to inform decisions and directions which they make regarding the BBKA.
Action: provide monthly summary accounts, accessible to the
Area Associations on demand.
Action: full accounts should be accessible to the
Area Associations on demand.
Financial year
The BBKA accounts are only presented to the Associations part way through the BBKA financial year because the BBKA persists with a bizarre and illogical September – August financial year. The June 2015 SDM (called to effect an equally illogical change to the financial year start/end) was a waste of time and money, and a distraction from the real problems within the BBKA. Using a standard April start to the financial year, the ADM in January would be well placed to decide financial priorities.
Action: align the BBKA financial year with the standard
April – March financial year
Capitation
BBKA income relies heavily on capitation received from Area Associations – yet only 45% of this income is spent on services to members. The BBKA leadership hope that, in time, corporate sponsorship and the sales of branded trinkets would free them from the reliance on income from the Associations and the burdens of accountability and services that this brings.
Capitation expenditure
Where is the other 55% of capitation spent on? The Trustees do not know, such is the lack of transparency of the accounts.
Action: increase the amount of capitation spent on services to members.
Action: identify clearly all other expenditure of capitation.
Capitation increases
Capitation has just been increased by £1 (5.5%) and now the BBKA is asking for another £2 (10.5%) This cannot in anyway be justified by inflation or increase in services to members. In essence, I think, it is to underwrite the costly and failing corporate and public sponsorship campaigns.
Action: freeze capitation until cost controls and transparent accounting
are in place.
Conclusion
I hope that my observations have been food for thought. It is my sincere desire that the BBKA can be put back on the right track – serving its members.
Ken Basterfield, BBKA Trustee
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