Stop being so reasonable and give me a chainsaw…
Howard Lake | 15 March 2009 | Blogs
The long deep call of an orangutan male echoes across the valley. The sun is slowly burning off the mist to reveal the lavish forest. Tap, tap, tap goes my keyboard. And I’m wondering if half of what I write from Borneo will have anything whatsoever to do with fundraising. I think it will, so please bear with me.
All fundraising starts with a need. This ancient truth was brought home to me this morning when Darek, an inspiring volunteer at the sun bear project I was visiting stated: ‘I really need a chainsaw’. So tomorrow we head off into Balikpapan to buy a chainsaw, and some logs, and bamboo, and 22 large sacks of dog food. And honey. Bears love honey.
I confess I never thought I’d find myself sitting in the middle of a rainforest and planning to buy a chainsaw.
Darek is an Australian animal behaviourist who has given up weeks of his time in the past year or so, to come here to Samboja to help transform the welfare of 52 sun bears. The bears, like orangutans, are threatened by logging to create palm oil plantations. Here at Samboja they find a local team, led by Hery, and a stream of volunteers, led by Meike, striving to turn mere survival into a model of best practice. There are plenty of orangutans here too, but more of them another day.
The buzz word for the bears is enrichment. This means not just keeping them alive, but creating large enclosures where they can be active as they would be in the wild. For an orangutan, enrichment may mean ropes to swing on. For bears it can mean not just dumping their food in the corner of an enclosure, but hiding the food up trees, under log piles and so on so that they need to forage for it as they would in the wild. The foraging uses up excess energy, ensuring that testosterone-rich male bears don’t get too aggressive with each other. (Try making people hunt for the chocolate biscuits next time you have a client-agency meeting and you might see a similar effect).
It’s a joy to see bears hunting for the juicy treats you have hidden in their enclosure. And it takes you to the sharp end of annual budgeting! Because the bears need more stuff. A chainsaw to deal with logs to build them more climbing areas… A new quarantine area to ensure the effective isolation and assessment of newly recued bears… A refrigeration room to store vast amounts of fruit in this intense and humid climate… the list goes on. It all translates into increased expenditure. Maybe 40% increased. And standing here seeing the real need, I am determined we will go raise it.
But not everyone has the good fortune to stand where I stand. In distant lands someone may not agree a 40% increase in expenditure… someone will certainly resist a 40% increase in targeted income… and may refuse to squeeze another appeal into the annual programme… and someone may say there is an alternative and equally pressing need elsewhere. And who is right?!
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.