On Monday members of Global Action Plan's International Board visited our new office in London. The words ‘Global', ‘International' and ‘Board' usually conjure up images of power players rocking up in chauffeur driven beamers.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Our international presence is sustained by a small group of dedicated volunteers perpetually struggling to sustain their own small organisations whilst at the same time realising that Global Action Plan would be much stronger if we had a co-ordinated set of international activities.

The UK is the largest Global Action Plan organisation and this places an onus on us to help move the international organisation to a different level. The arguments for doing this are strong. The knowledge and skills we have developed could make a significant and rapid impact in countries like China and India. 

A truly international presence could demonstrate to our partners in the UK that they are part of a significant change movement. As an organisation we could learn more and be more effective by building international relationships and finally many of the companies we are talking to are seeking international solutions.

The question I have to address is how can we help? We have limited cash and everybody is incredibly busy. Despite this I think that we need to provide the International Board with a member of staff to help them deliver on their hopes and expectations, persuading people that this is the right thing to do could be interesting!

Thinking ahead

Charity Boards come in many shapes and sizes. They are often crammed with ‘the great and the good' whose prime purpose is to raise funds and have quiet words in the right ears. Our Board is different. 

We have a range of trustees selected for the specific skills and knowledge they can bring to help the strategic development of the charity. The benefit of this approach became apparent at our Board meeting on Wednesday. We discussed what impact a change of Government might have on the charity. 

On the positive side we believe that a Conservative Government would stick to the Low Carbon Transition Plan and would be fully behind a localism agenda which would match our ambitions and aims. On the negative side, significant cuts in public expenditure could massively impact upon our activities. This could be a two-phased recession. 

For us, public sector spending is currently hard-wired into the system until March 2011. The Tories might decide to review all current expenditure as soon as they come into power or they could keep to existing spending plans and then make cuts after that. 

The worse case scenario could be a period of uncertainty around the start of the new financial year when grants are not renewed leaving us with difficult decisions about many of our on-going activities.

Courage and caution

On Thursday, I was asked to talk at an event organised by Common Purpose around the leadership themes of courage and caution. Personally, I never think of any decisions I make as being either courageous or cautious. My managerial lingo normally ends at ‘good' or ‘crap'.

However, the discussion did give me cause to reflect on a couple of things. The first is that it is easier to take courageous or risky decisions when organisations are small and the impact of bad decisions will not impact upon too many people. The second is that to be successful charities like Global Action Plan have to constantly make courageous decisions. If we stay still we get subsumed by the mainstream and will not fulfil our mission which is to drive change.

Falling carbon

The International Energy Agency calculated this week that the global recession and a range of government policies are likely to bring the biggest annual fall in carbon emissions in 40 years. They calculate that emissions are likely to drop by 2% during 2009. They estimate that that the recession is responsible for about three-quarters of the fall. The remaining quarter of the reduction comes from policies designed to curb CO2 production.

The overall cut in emissions is exactly what is needed and it is fantastic that policies are starting to have an impact. What is unknown is whether the cut will reduce political pressure at Copenhagen, whether the recession is reducing investment in much needed low carbon technology and whether people will revert to old carbon wasting habits when the economy improves.

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