The Canal and River Trust doesn’t yet exist, but it’s already got a partnership with Google.
What’s more Google, who’s agreed a partnership to display the towpaths on Google Maps, is one of three major organisations who today agreed to put their support behind the new CRT, which will next month spin out of government with responsibility for managing over 2,000 miles of waterways.
It’s the sort of exposure that most charities would kill for. But then most charities don’t have the profile of the CRT: a cast iron guarantee of £800m funding from government, as well as the third largest portfolio of historic buildings in the British Isles, and a collection of natural assets guaranteed to bring in visitors by, well, the boatload.
The keenness of corporate partners to come on board at this early stage suggests they think this new charity is a guaranteed winner. Their involvement is also an early indication of how much further a government organisation really can stretch its brand if it moves into the voluntary sector.
Google offers the perfect example. After all, the towpaths have always been there. Google could have updated its maps at any point. But it’s only doing it now they’re run by a charity.
It’s an early indication that Robin Evans, chief executive of the waterways, was right in his initial gamble. He guessed that moving out of government can make his organisation much more attractive to volunteers, donors, charitable grant-makers, corporations and probably also to government, local and national.
It seems he was right. And it seems, too, that there’s scope for a lot more of this sort of spin out.
The Forestry Commission, English Heritage and other quangos with the same sort of obviously marketable portfolios are the obvious candidates to follow suit, but the model could potentially work for many more government assets than those few.
Before I get too rapturous about it, however, we’ve also seen attempts to move assets out of government into charity and social enterprise turn out pretty badly. So – assuming this does work, of course – why has it worked where others haven’t?
One reason, of course, is how marketable the canals and rivers really are. But there’s a lot more than that.
First, this spin out hasn’t been seen as a way of saving cash, but of making greater use of resources. The CRT is still getting a huge amount of grant funding from government, and it won’t become self-sustaining for a long time, if ever. Other spin-outs will need the same sort of guarantee, or they will face the accusation that they’re just ways of ditching unwanted assets on the cheap.
Second, this has benefited from years of work and careful planning, from a group of individuals who were keen to do it. The CRT has had to navigate many legal and technical tangles, and has been enormously careful to get buy in from every stakeholder, including its staff. Evans has admitted that getting everyone signed up, particularly his own workforce, was far harder than he ever initially envisaged.
If, as it now appears, the CRT is going to be a success story, we can expect others to try and follow in its footsteps. But it remains to see whether they will take the same path or try to cut some corners, and stumble on the obstacles that the CRT avoided.