Category: Culture

A case that may both demonstrate the reason for budget overruns and the general lack of controls within the IOF is the story when Brian Porteous, the President at the time, decided (apparently single handedly) to spend money over the anyhow loss making IOF budget on the SportAccord convention in 2013.

Brian decided to ignore the 2013 budget that was approved in July 2012, just 6 months before. A budget that he himself proposed as Vice President at the time of budget preparation.

The Council members, according to the Council minutes, did not blink, as in many other cases when the President made interesting decisions. The member federations had no meaningful mechanism to react.

As a result of the extra €14,100 spent on the SportAccord Convention the budgeted loss  of €52,400 for 2013 has become a loss of €66,600.  There was still some reserves left to spend.

Before we get into details of this story, I think that it would be useful to introduce some theoretical background.

The Agency Problem

The core issue around the IOF is what business literature calls the Agency Problem. This is an unavoidable feature of large organisations where owners  (shareholders, or in our case 70 member federations) entrust an agent (CEO/President, Board/Council) to run the organization on their behalf.  Unavoidably, the two parties will have different interest and the agent will run the organization in a way that is not optimal for the owners. Conflict of interests and moral hazards are frequent problems. The lost value to the owners is called the Agency Cost.

Continue reading “The Agency Problem – Part 1”

Over the past month I was too busy to deal with much more entertaining things than documenting the mismanagement and slow motion crash of the IOF. But now I have some time to continue with this gruesome task.

The Council had a meeting on 13-14 October. The published minutes (#186 here) provide additional information and data on the Council attitude to IOF finances.

The Council minute looks like a good old Soviet party communique: all good news, as long as you do not scratch the surface. It reinforces the feeling that the IOF leadership considers finances as their little internal business members should not get involved in.

The 19 page long minutes do not even mention the IOF – Letter to members July 2017 sent by the IOF President after the last Council meeting. The one that was carefully sent after the Presidents’ Conference regarding financial issues and the major revision of the budget. It was a “no event” that the IOF leadership apparently prefer to forget about and erase it from publicly documented history.

The key message of the minutes that revenues are up and expected to rise, while costs are largely under control. The funny bit is that the additional costs mentioned (regional event medals, higher overseas event advising costs, SEA for the World Games) are ones that should have been known when the 2017 budget was prepared. The fact that IOF Leadership uses them as an excuse for higher costs just underlines the feeling that the 2017 budget submitted to the General Assembly for approval was – mildly speaking – not thought through.

Yet, with all the improvements 2017 is still expected to show only a small positive result estimated at around €9,000 (85% below the €66,000 budget), and the updated forecast for 2018 was €30,000, that is over 80% lower than the €169,000 presented to the General Assembly. As expected, the GA approved original budget numbers were carefully not mentioned in the Council minutes.

Now it is official that Council expects to underperform their own budget by a 10 year combined gap of over €500,000 as a result of not meeting their own targets in any year since 2009.

It is also interesting to zoom in the (2016-18) budgets presented to the General Assembly 2016. The gap between Council promises and delivered results has exploded.

Continue reading “Ten Years of Underperformance – Update”

The decade long erosion of the financial stability of the IOF discussed in the previous post did not come as a result of a sudden event. It was the result of continuing underperformance of the IOF leadership who missed the budget target for 10 years in a row.

Please see updated numbers to this post here.

This post has turned out to be longer than expected. I had little time to write it, so I could not make it shorter. Here is the summary if you are also pressed on time:

• The IOF Council has missed the budget target every year since 2009. The target set by themselves, and rubberstamped by the General Assembly without change.  It would take a miracle to achieve the targets for 2017 and 2018. That makes 10 years of missed targets. 10 years of continuous underperformance.
• It is unlikely that this was due to lack of skills: the leading figures of the IOF during this period (Ake, Brian and Leho) all prided themselves with business background.
• Looking at recent events one may get a feeling that the IOF leadership just did not care about the budget approved by the GA, hence they could not possibly deliver it:
  • In a letter to member federations about the difficult financial status of the IOF signed by Leho and Tom, the “GA Budget 2017” is different from the 2017 budget published as approved on the IOF website in the minutes of GA 2016.
  • In the same letter they claim that in October 2016, 2 months after presenting the 2017 budget to the GA, they already started to modify it “to get costs in line with expected income”. There was not a hint of an unexpected event that could have modified expected income in the 2 months after the GA. This gives the feeling that the Council presented a 2017 budget to the GA that was not realistic, but the GA approval gave the Council free hand to modify it to their liking.
  • The outcome of budget modification(s) started in October 2016 was not shared with member federations until 14 July 2017, nine days after the  Presidents’ Conference in Tartu. This gives the feeling that the IOF leadership decided to avoid any open discussion about budget modification with the member federations who approve the IOF budget.

Here are the details of the story that may make you wonder how long IOF member federations will put up with being treated like this.

The numbers

The Council missed their own target every year since 2009, for 8 consecutive years. They already conceded that 2017 will be missed (€66,235 surplus was budgeted, but only €9,767 was expected in July 2017). It looks also highly unlikely, that in 2018 the budgeted €169,010 surplus, that is 2.5 times(!) higher than ever achieved in the IOF’s 56 year history, will be delivered. That gives a solid 10 consecutive years of missing the budget as shown on the chart below.

For updated data please see this post published after the October 2017 Council meeting. 

 

This level of  underperformance is most remarkable under any circumstances. It is even more remarkable, because
a) the IOF was run by experienced managers according to their CV, and
b) the budget was set by the Council themselves, only rubber stamped by the General Assembly.

Officially it is the General Assembly who sets the budget, but in practice it simply approves the one submitted by the Council. I could not find a case in recent memory when the GA modified the budget. I could not even find a case in recent memory when the GA has even debated a line item. There were some high level remarks now and then, but everything was approved as suggested by the Council. So we are not talking about some stretch targets not being met. No, simply the IOF leadership could not deliver for 10 consecutive years on their own promises made with no external pressure. Remarkable.

Skill or Will?

Seeing this level of underperformance one should ask whether it was due to missing skill or missing will. Could it happen that the leadership of the IOF did not have the basic skills required to prepare and deliver a budget for a quite simple small operation? Or was it due to lack of motivation or intention to deliver on their promises, and follow the budget approved by the General Assembly? Or was there something else behind all this?

Let’s try to find some pointers that may help us decide.

Continue reading “Ten Years of Underperformance – Skill or Will or Something Else?”

I am just getting curious, if there will be any questions on the Presidents’ Conference in Tartu regarding the critical financial situation of the Federation.

The IOF finances have deteriorated to a point where normal business variation may result in bankruptcy, not to talk about the impact of an unexpected event.

The presidents of IOF member organisations will meet the President, the Council and the Secretary General on Wednesday, 5 July, during WOC 2017. The Presidents’ Conference is an advisory body to the IOF, typically meets every second year in between General Assemblies. Yet, all key participants are the same as on a General Assembly, hence it gives the opportunity to discuss all important IOF questions with the members.

The agenda for this years Presidents’ Conference was sent on 24 April

Let’s try to understand why the International Orienteering Federation has been losing substantial monies over the past 8 years. On the face of it, it should be easy: the IOF is an international sport federation, a not-for-profit organisation that publishes annual accounts. These are presented to the General Assembly every second year in the Congress binder and in the Biennial report. You can find the latest one here.

It should also help, that the fundamental values of the IOF clearly state that

“Orienteering is committed to the highest standards of governance and transparency in the conduct of its business”

Unfortunately, practice is always more complicated than declared values.

Continue reading “Highest standards of transparency”