the $600,000 question

NKF is getting majorly skewered in the local news reporting about the ongoing trial of NKF vs. SPH. Have never seen such full at verbatim reportage of court exchanges before. NKF is not coming out looking good from this at all....several times, Davinder Singh was quite cutting and straight for the jugular in his line of questions towards the NKF CEO.

But yup, the big $600,000 question is: is it right stewardship of public funds for a charity to award its CEO a $600,000 a year pay package, 12 months bonus, business class privileges and access to 2 cars? Is it right for the same charity to not make more of an effort to reveal the actual figures of its expenditure? Is it right for a charity to not correct a significant mistake in figures of actual people helped? I accept the NKF's acknowledgement that some things ought to have been done better. But the fact that all these mistakes only came to light in court is pretty damaging to their integrity.

The NKF is one of the non profit sector's biggest success story, its controversial adherence to business sector values and methodologies has been a big reason why they have come so far.
But one cannot help but wonder how far can a non-profit charity play by for-profit rules and not come out looking slightly murky. It's just like how religion and politics cannot mix - religion inevitably comes out looking dodgy. I do find it disturbing when a CEO of a charity starts talking like a corporate, focusing on corporate language like "branding", 'privacy" etc. For the same reasons why I find it disturbing when preachers on the pulpit start adopting the talk of a top sales man or self-help guru. The juxtaposition is just too....jarring.

I wonder how NKF intends to salvage its reputation after this. They need to do something fast and significant to recover from this. It will be pretty sad if they did not even attempt to explain themselves more clearly to the public who has supported them so earnestly. For their sake, I really hope they come out better from this.