Kate Hawkesby: When did Starship forget they're about sick kids, not PR?

A good lesson emerged out of yesterday – don’t forget what you're really about. Starship Foundation, in rejecting half a million bucks because it came from horse racing (which by the way is not illegal, nor is gambling) made a big mistake, and one they should have fessed up to straight away. Their remit is sick children and helping them and their families however they can, not spending time and money on public image and branding. Starship knew exactly what they had done a whole day before the story broke. Not only that, they knew Mark Chittick was going public with it. They knew because several media outlets frantically chased them for their response, giving them several opportunities to respond and offer up their side of the story. Nothing. They went to ground. A small written statement making not a lot of sense did them no favours, no one fronted on it. So the story ran and ran and ran.. it ran all day. It filled talkback shows, it filled newspaper comments sections, it filled up text machines and emails, Starship took a pasting. All the while, sick and dying children and their desperate parents were probably sitting there in shock that, a) the money was turned down in the first place, but also b) that no one was talking about it from Starship. No one was stemming the tide of vitriol coming the Foundation’s way; no one was stopping the terrible publicity and threats from people to withdraw donations. What did the Foundation do? Went into meetings with comms teams and a PR firm. And this is everything that’s wrong with charities these days – so bogged down in bureaucracy, BS, imaging and branding, that they can’t see the wood for the trees. Again, at the heart of this is sick kids remember. That should be the focus. But no, money was spent on PR consultants drafting responses for the media. An internal comms team, an external PR firm, media advisors, managers.. are you kidding me? And still all day nothing in response. So they knew the night before the story broke, had all night, all morning, as it ran endlessly on all media, all afternoon, and still no response. After 6pm last night, the finally issued another written statement, this one contradicting the previous one, yet with no explanation as to why. And that took all day. All those people. What's that costing? Remember the sick kids? The nub of this is Starship got it wrong. The person who told Chittick they couldn’t take donations due to the association with gambling was wrong. They made a mistake. That’s it. That’s how simple it needed to be. Front up, in person, apologize, we made a mistake, the person Mark spoke to got it wrong, we are sorry, we happily accept all donations, including from horse racing. End of story. Why did they make it so hard? And arguably so much worse for themselves? And at what point did a charity for sick children lose sight of the fact they’re about sick children, and not PR?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.