In this episode of Executive with a Cause, host Tammy Ven Dange chats with Bill Patrick, CEO of The Outback Car Trek.
How has a self-proclaimed ‘Chief Excitement Officer’ help raise over $30 million for the Royal Flying Doctors, all with minimal staff? In this week’s episode, Tammy hears from Bill Patrick about the importance of recognising volunteers’ skillsets, the mammoth logistical challenge of the Outback Car Trek, and how they support remote communities.
Attracting participants from all walks of life with a sense of adventure, the annual rally through outback Australia focuses on taking the ‘road less travelled’ and forming connections with the communities the Royal Flying Doctors serves.
The logistics of this event are immense, with Bill explaining the task of managing with a minuscule workforce. From this, Bill offers the advice of delegation and utilising the strengths of volunteer skill sets when tackling limited resources. For other leaders of small teams, Bill highlights the importance of a support network and the need to consider succession planning.
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IT in Plain English
In this week’s segment, Tammy answers, ‘What is a no-code platform’?
Designed to allow users to create apps without a technical background, these no-code platforms may help internal operations such as automating processes. However, are they as simple as their marketing messages claim?
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Topics from this episode:
- 0.00 | Introduction
- 01.25 | Outback Car Trek
- 02.43 | The Royal Flying Doctor
- 06.00 | Logistics
- 08.50 | Guiding Principles
- 11.00 | Life before Outback Car Trek
- 12.43 | Serving remote communities
- 17.00 | Other initiatives
- 19.24 | Staff and volunteers
- 30.00 | Tips for other small organisations
- 31.07 | Succession planning
- 33.03 | Closing thoughts
- 35.05 | IT in Plain English
Quotes from Bill Patrick in this episode:
“That came out of a group of husbands and wives sitting around in a lounge room back in 1990…thinking about a way that we could do more for charity and give something back to our country cousins.”
“So, we find that 51 weeks of preparation, hopefully provides us with one week of trouble- free motoring or reasonably trouble-free motoring.”
“I think the one common theme or a couple of common themes is the fact that people with a thirst for adventure, and people who have enjoyed in the past and want to continue to provide into the future, the ability to have a positive outcome on people’s lives who live in remote locations.”
“Point number one is make sure we have fun. The optimum amount of fun and make sure it’s not at anybody else’s expensive course but our own. The second point is twofold, really it is to have a strong social impact and a strong financial impact on the communities we visit and the introduction of what we call outside capital or outside money into these locations. Another principle is to visit locations via roads and byways that the average person simply wouldn’t go there or wouldn’t choose to take those tracks or take those roads, they would stay on the main highway and do the safe but boring stuff. And we find that if we nail those first three things, we ended up with a pretty exciting weekend and a very fun-filled week that enables people to become extremely generous in their support of the Flying Doctor, where the Epic Car Trek now, on average, raises about $1.8 million each year for the service.”
“We will have local people catering for us. So, 1200 meals a day in the middle of nowhere, breakfast, morning to lunch and an evening meal. And we pay commercial rates for all of that. We’re not out there asking people for a discount because we’re raising money for charity, kids schools. We try very hard to work closely with the kids’ schools or community groups. If there are schools and raffle tickets. It’s not unusual for a school that might have an annual fundraising budget of, say $3,000 to sell $5,000 with raffle tickets in one afternoon. That’s incredible. And things like that just flow on.”
“One of our larger telcos here in Australia, Telstra provide us with a vehicle and staff with communications between all four-wheel drives, so they’ve got satellite technology. And they also provide us with satellite phones for free for the officials. That vehicle is very important in the sense that, sure, we can upload our social media and talk with our grandkids each night. But more importantly, if we do have an issue, which touch-wood happens very, very rarely, we’re able to get in contact pretty quickly with anybody that needs it.”
“But really, part of the objective is to run as lean and mean as we possibly can. Basically, within reason, every dollar we spend is a dollar that we don’t donate to charity, so we’re pretty fine with that.”
“We changed a little bit of the structure of the volunteer committee. That helps us because there’s an awful lot of intellectual property wrapped up in the people that come along. And we probably don’t make as much use of that as we could.”
“There’s this new beast on the block in the last couple of years called social media that I’ve tried to get my head around, but I’m a cranky old man that doesn’t fully understand it. So, I’m talking to one of the younger volunteers who is progressively starting to take over the social media side of things. And again, that gives me a bit of bandwidth that I didn’t have before but also puts somebody under that task that has got the right skill sets, rather than me trying to acquire a set of skill sets that I’ll probably never be good at.”
“So pretty textbook sort of stuff. But as you know, when you’re in the swamp, up to your armpits, you often forget that you should be trying to drain the swamp before the alligators get here. That’s one of the big battles.”
“I’ve started to think it’s about time we started to look for a safe pair of hands to pass the legacy across to, and that’s not formalised in my head yet. And I’m not in any hurry to do it, but I recognise it needs to be done. And it might be something that might take two or three or four years to pass across. So, it’s something that I’ve put up on the whiteboard in the back of the office to start thinking about.”
“Make sure you’ve got a good set of core values. Make sure you’ve got a strong social and family network because times do get tough sometimes. And it’s pretty lonely, sometimes..”
Links & Resources
- Connect with Bill on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/billpatrick/
- Visit the Outback Car Trek website https://www.outbackcartrek.com.au/
Credits
Thanks to our Producer, Nick Whatman, and the entire team at Lonsdale St. Studio. Thanks also to our Digital Content Creator, Laura Kleinrahm.
Tammy Ven Dange is a former charity CEO, Not for Profit Board Member and IT Executive. Today she helps NFPs with strategic IT and data decisions with her business, Roundbox Consulting.
