🛑 STOP Being Stupid: Week 7 of 40
The Cousin Contract: How Ignoring Conflict of Interest Kills Trust

Janice is a trustee. Her nephew Gary runs a landscaping firm. The charity needs its grounds maintained, Gary submits a quote, it comes in lowest, and Janice votes yes without a second thought.

Gary does a decent job. The price was right. Nobody loses money.

And yet Janice has just handed anyone who wants to damage the organisation a loaded gun.

I’ve had two CIC directors sit in front of me after funders clawed back grant money because of exactly this scenario. Neither of them had done anything wrong in the way they understood it. The connected party was cheaper. They were reliable. They were trusted. In a world where small organisations struggle to find suppliers who show up when they say they will, that matters. These directors were trying to do right by their organisation.