Today is Giving Tuesday, and we are giving a heartfelt thank you to the more than 1000 Pilotlighters who have been part of the Pilotlight 360 over the years, helping our partner charities help more people, more effectively.

Headshot of Brian Curwen

Few deserve those thanks more than Brian Curwen, who is stepping down after Pilotlighting for 11 of the 13 years our programme has been running. A property lawyer by profession, Brian (pictured below) has been a Pilotlighter on 13 charity projects and twice been a mentor on our One-to-One programme, as well as a regular attendee at our events.

To mark the occasion, we asked Brian to reflect on his experience as a Pilotlighter:

What has been the most remarkable moment?

Hearing all the different challenges whenever the Pilotlight team meets for the first time with the charities – that has always been thoroughly enjoyable.

The penny dropped for me with one particular project. Typically we work closely with the chief executive of a charity; on this project, the chief executive resigned! I had thought she’d been tremendously resourceful in trying to move the charity on by looking at lots of different things, but we realised when she left that what she had been doing was moving away from the core focus of the charity. In that respect, her resourcefulness had taken away from what the purpose of the charity was. Our Project Manager – Gillian – felt we should talk to the trustees who were persuaded to go back to first principles, and from then on it seemed to me that the charity went from success to success.

That was a turning point: on previous Pilotlight projects, I had been in awe of the chief executives, who seemed to have tremendous drive and were extremely bold in what they were doing, creating things from almost nothing. I realised on this project that this awe can be misleading.

Although obviously every organisation is different, is there one key piece of advice you would give to any charity?

Concentrate on your USP! Focus on what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and what you’re good at. Unless one goes back to that basic set of principles, it is difficult for that charity to get finance, to pitch for money or to motivate the staff. They need to get back to what are their core beliefs. The charities that come to Pilotlight all have a problem or they have hit an obstacle in their expansion, and often they have lost sight of what they really should be doing and why they should be doing it.

What advice would you give to someone considering becoming a Pilotlighter?

Go for it! The experience – at least on my part – was so removed from my everyday practical existence, and it provided very interesting new insights into the struggles and the enthusiasm that people found in forming and running these charities. I would say to them that they should grow their experience in these fields where it’s quite common for many Pilotlighters never to have been exposed to these sorts of things. They may also have been exposed to many big and important projects, which gives them a great deal of insight into the problems these charities face, but they have to really roll that back and go to first principles.

What is the most important thing that you have learnt?

No Pilotlighter has all the experience. They have good experience: maybe they are HR specialists, maybe finance; maybe if they have helped restructure businesses then they would be perfect for Pilotlight, but maybe not. I think everyone has a strand of expertise that they can bring to bear on a project, but they will learn a lot more by helping a charity along its journey.

It is extremely rewarding to help someone in building something from what may be very little. There has been a whole range of charities I have worked with, from prisoners and ex-offenders to recovering alcoholics, from community transport to survivors of child sexual abuse, all the way through to my most recent one with a YMCA supporting young people. One sees a whole range of people. I realised from my own personal perspective that my 35 years of legal practice did not really give me the same degree of insight and information about life, the struggles people have on a day-to-day basis, as working closely with people who are leading charities.

On behalf all of the staff and trustees at Pilotlight, and the many charities and social enterprises that make up our community, I would like to say a huge thanks to Brian for the wisdom, humility, commitment and good humour he has brought to all the work he has done with Pilotlight.