Would you ever 'work with the devil'? A look at one charity's experience of working 'with the devil', and what we can learn from it.

Content warning - this email discusses themes of suicide/ gambling.

I don’t know about you, but watching Trump return to presidency has been rough. As a queer man, watching him roll back the progress that has been made for the LGBT+ community is devastating - let alone the wave of other changes and reversals he’s making.

As always, it’s got me thinking - what can we do about this, and who can we do it with? At Fireside, the four of us share a fundamental belief that we can change the world - but it’s also core to our values that we can’t do it alone.

It’s brought us to the question of who we would, and wouldn’t, be willing to work with for ‘the greater good’. I spoke to our Prospecting Lead, Lucy about the difference between personal and organisational values - and she told me about the due diligence processes she’s often doing - often as simple as googling the company name and the word scandal, or relevant negative key words… But we also then spoke about what happens when this due diligence isn’t followed. 

We want to provide a trigger warning that we’re about to talk about a mental health charity, with reference to suicide - while the mentions are brief, it’s useful to know.

When partnerships go wrong 

How would you feel if you woke up to a wave of social media comments saying your charity had ‘sold itself to the devil’?

The team at Samaritans (the charity that provides emotional support to anyone in emotional distress or at risk of suicide) had just this in August 2019.

Paddy Power BetFair had announced that they’d chosen Samaritans as their Charity of the Year - and service users had taken to social media to complain.

You can read the BBC article here

Gambling is one of the major causes of suicide in the UK, and there was a sentiment that accepting such a public partnership was ‘throwing yourself to the devil’ or ‘legitimising the business’. 

With a wave of negative press and comments on social media, this partnership is sure to have done harm to the Samaritans corporate partnerships team - with their colleagues and potential customers. This brings us to a natural question:

Is it ever okay to work with ‘the devil’?

I’d love to hear your answer on this - because the Fireside team are split. I’d argue it’s okay to work with the devil if you’re working to improve their practices (even a little bit), but I understand not everyone feels that way.

Either way, see you by the Fireside soon,

Andy

PS: This email isn’t intended as a slight on Samaritans at all. As well as this issue with Paddy Power, they have some of the best corporate partnerships in the sector - their ‘Better Phone Friend’ campaign with Three Mobile and the ‘Small Talk Saves Lives’ campaign with Network Rail are truly inspirational. If you want to talk about how companies can truly change the game for your cause, you’ll occasionally have to take risks - it’s great to see that most of these have paid off for the Samaritans.