One of the themes of these jottings over the past few months is the strange places you end up in as CEO of somewhere like Shelter. The main stage of the RSC at Stratford. Doing five minutes at the Comedy Store. Warm-up act for Tony Benn to 6,000 people in a tent at Glastonbury. None of them mentioned in the job description when I signed on.

And now another one. If you look in your Radio Times (does that still exist? I haven’t seen it for years) you will see that the main Saturday night show on ITV this week is something called Star Traders, where two celebs take something of minimal value and swap it for something else, hopefully of higher value, and so on until they have something worth auctioning off on prime-time TV in aid of charity. A nice idea and the sort of heart-warming stunt which may persuade people to turn over from the Strictly Come Dancing final on the other side.

And guess who the beneficiary charity is? And guess what awkward-looking Chief Executive is going to have to clamber on stage to collect the cheque? That’s right.

Not that I’m complaining – far from it. It’s clearly a fantastic bit of exposure for us, the first time for many years that Shelter has broken through into the mainstream media in that way. The money will clearly be substantial too and one cannot but feel humbled by the effort that all of those involved have put into it. We really are incredibly grateful.

But, again, it is the details that obsess. What should I wear? What is my thank-you speech? How do I greet Coleen McCloughlin (the presenter) and Christopher Biggins (the auctioneer): kiss their cheeks, shake their hands, or give them a big hug?

But, sod it - after that, it’s Christmas. Have a good one and see you in the New Year.

It is easy to blame the recent rash of stories about rough sleeping on Ed Mitchell.  Which is not to deny that the spectacle of a former millionaire news reader reduced to sleeping on a bench in Hove has, for reasons I can’t possibly fathom, spurred other news readers into a sudden upsurge of sympathy for those who have fallen on hard times.  There is nothing like a mixture of prurience, sympathy and schadenfreude to get the media moving.
 
But that is to confuse cause and effect.  The fact is that Christmas has become synonymous with homelessness.  Partly, that is deliberate: Crisis, Centrepoint, the Salvation Army – all are currently running their annual Christmas appeals, using images of people sleeping rough to gain public sympathy and, of course, cash.  Partly it is because Christmas is a time when we are hard-wired to be charitable.  While we are busy spending money we don’t have on presents we can’t afford for people who don’t need them, or sending cards which are immediately thrown away to people we barely know, it seems natural to think about people who aren’t getting anything or can’t afford to celebrate with us.
 
And I am always genuinely moved by the level of generosity people show at Christmas.  While we don’t do much specific fundraising at this time of year (although we do do some), we nevertheless get a significant proportion of our income during December.  Not only that, we get a huge uplift in enquiries about how people can help us and a vastly increased level of media coverage.
 
So I am not complaining about the Christmas/homelessness linkage – far from it.  I just wish two things.  First, it would be nice if that level of interest went beyond the two weeks either side of Christmas.  And second, it would be good if people understood that homelessness is not just about rough sleeping.  However sympathetic one feels towards Ed Mitchell (and despite some recent publicity one has to feel sympathy to anyone reduced to sleeping on a bench), it would be nice if the media chose from one of the hundreds of thousands of people homeless but not rough sleeping as a symbol of why we need to care at Christmas.

Looks like the new Services’ strategy is beginning to pay off.  With one set of results still to come in, it appears as if we have won a significant amount of new business from the Legal Services Commission, picking up cases (“new matter starts” in the argot) in different areas of law and in different parts of the country from those in which we have been traditionally working.  And with the cases, of course, comes money to pay for expanding our work.
 
Of course – and I’ve said this before – growth is not an end in itself.  Shelter’s mission is not and cannot be merely to grow as a business.  Whether or not taking on new business is the right thing to do depends upon two judgements: will it benefit the end users using the new services, and will it help to put Shelter in a stronger position to help other end users?
 
In this case, it is the latter which is our primary driver.  Yes - by taking on the new contracts, we will be providing good quality legal advice to vulnerable people in desperate need.  But, let’s be honest: if we did not do the work, other providers would.  Not as well as we will, of course – we are still one of the quality providers in the field.  But if we had decided not to bid, the service would still exist and people would still be getting help.
 
What is critical about these new contracts is how they cement Shelter’s future in an increasingly uncertain world of legal advice.  The matter starts we have won are not new; they have been returned by existing providers who cannot deliver them or have decided that the changes the LSC is making are too much for them to stomach.  The provider market (how easy it is to slip into business-speak!) is polarising into those who can flourish and those who cannot.  For Shelter, dependent upon legal aid income for a significant proportion of our services, the equation is simple: adapt or exit.  We have decided to adapt.  And these wins show that it has been the right choice.

A lot of interviewing recently for new Board members for various charities I’m connected with.  Actually, I’m on far too many Boards at the moment – eight at the last count – and am really not doing justice to any of them.  Bluntly, in one of two cases I have a private agenda in the interviews: if I can make sure the Boards are topped up with decent new people, I can step from them away myself with a clear conscience.  And I must stop saying yes to anyone new until I can fulfil my obligations to the people I’ve already said yes to.
 
But what comes back repeatedly to me in all of this is the sheer size of the pool of talent and commitment that is available.  Just today, we interviewed three people: an academic, a former journalist and a community engagement specialist.  All of them highly skilled and respected in their fields, all passionate about the cause, all eager to make a contribution.  It didn’t take the panel too long to decide that all three would be huge assets to the charity concerned.
 
But all too often, the issue is not the talent but how to deploy it.  If I think of the Boards I am part of, few of them are really functioning to their full potential.  Knowing from past experience what it is does to the staff when the Board is not working, the importance of getting Boards right cannot be overstated.  Many of the concerns about charity effectiveness voiced by Martin Brookes at the RSA a couple of weeks ago would be less resonant if more Boards got it right.
 
So what do we have to do?  Some of it is training – of both Trustees and staff – about the respective roles of each.  Some of it is cultural: communicating that being a Trustee is a serious business which demands professionalism and hard-work (which is why today we were holding interviews even where we had spaces for every candidate who had applied).
 
But the problem stems largely, I think, from the very enthusiasm and commitment of the Trustees themselves.  We all want to help, to make a contribution, to make a difference – that is why we volunteered to help.  But when we realise that much Trustee activity is actually a bit mundane - agreeing the accounts, settling management questions, scrutinising performance – and we discover that the real work is being done not by us but by the staff, who know much more about the business than we do.  When that happens, there is a danger that our initial burst of enthusiasm gets choked off and replaced by a vague sense of disappointment and detachment.
 
But Boards matter.  For all that bad ones can suck the life-blood out of even the best charities, good ones can help drive them on to undreamed heights.  And, just this afternoon, I am really excited about the Board that started to form in the interviews this morning.

It’s that time of year.  Sitting here on a Monday night looking at the madness that is my diary for the week – that’s when I see them again.  The Christmas events: two this week, five next, three the week after.  And that’s before we ever actually get close to Christmas.  When I was a kid, my parents wouldn’t even let us put any lights on the tree before Christmas Eve afternoon, let alone anything else.  Now, 24^th December feels more like the end of Christmas than its beginning.
 
God knows, we could all do with the break.  It’s been a bit of a slog, the past few months.  The pace of external change has been so huge that it has been a massive effort just to stay on top of the constant barrage of new announcements and initiatives coming out of Government.  That has also been reflected in the vastly increased level of demand from the media, with interviews, articles and instant quotes a constant feature.  And within the organisation too it has been incredibly busy, what with the rolling out of the new casework system, the internal debate about the proposed changes to the way we work, and the preparation for moving away solely from providing help with housing to giving users a more complete service, including advice on the related topics of debt, benefits and community care.
 
The result is that we’re simply a bit knackered.  You go to meetings and there is little sign of the usual zing or pizzazz; instead, people are simply grinding on through the work.  Inspiration has long since gone – perspiration is the order of the day.
 
But that is not necessarily a bad thing.  The voluntary sector has traditionally favoured inspiration over perspiration, passion over effectiveness.  Both of needed of course – the last thing we need to be is mere functionaries mechanically carrying out tasks in which we have no emotional investment.  But all too frequently we mistake words for deeds, debate for decisions.  We may be tired.  But that doesn’t mean that we’re not getting the work done.