Bernie Dolley
Director
Not many people enjoy the privilege of looking forward to work each morning. Bernie Dolley is such a person, who, after many years in the trenches of community development, is still excited to go to work each day.
At the time the idea of Ikhala Trust was born, Bernie was working for the Catholic Church and was head of the NGO Coalition in the Eastern Cape. She found herself feeling frustrated with the NGO world’s lack of engagement with grassroots development and began to think differently about the role of NGOs in communities. With four other passionate women, Bernie began to nurture an idea which was to become Ikhala Trust. In the beginning it was called a delegated fund and emerged from the Southern Africa Bishop’s Conference with seed funding support from Misereor, the German Catholic Bishops’ Organisation for Development Cooperation and closely followed with support from the CS Mott Foundation. Both these organisations still support Ikhala Trust’s work in the Eastern Cape.
Sarah Hugow, the founding and current chairperson, envisioned an octopus-like organisation, organic and responsive to its environment. This vision later changed to represent an Aloe which is indigenous to the Eastern Cape. Theresa Edlmann, one of the passionate friends and colleagues gave us the name Ikhala (Aloe) Trust for its resilience, hardiness and ability to heal. Ikhala hence germinated into a small support fund that thinks independently and acts quickly, continuously connecting and engaging with its environment. Its growth has been a vehicle for Bernie to explore ideas about development, capacity building and leadership and it has taught her many valuable lessons.
Some of the key lessons Bernie has learnt are:
- It is easy for women in leadership to default to the mothering role. This set her up for unrealistic demands and high expectations that were hard to live with.
- Life, including organisational life, is seasonal. There will be good times and bad times, learn to live with it.
- Failure is not easy. Just the idea of it is not comfortable but it is an opportunity to learn to do something better or change what you are doing.
- Don’t patronize your staff, journey with them and your partners.
- Choose your team well. Choose people who are passionate, with common sense and the right mindset. Skills can always be learnt.
- Don’t be glib about partnerships.
- Be brave, stay with what you belief in.
- Renewal is important, step back and learn from others. This is where the Forum plays a valuable role.
- At its core the work is really about relationships. Your board needs to trust your judgement as a leader, your staff need you to lead well and you need to choose who you want to work with and understand why you made that choice.
Bernie does not have too many worries about financial sustainability. She admits she may be naïve and careless not to worry, but she is occupied with more specific concerns. How does Ikhala Trust stay grounded, relevant and resilient? How does she keep attracting the right people to the cause? If Ikhala Trust can be all these things, she believes it will be sustainable.
This year, Bernie is spending a month at the graduate school of the City University of New York as a Senior Fellow with seven other participants. Some of these women work in foundations based in countries like Nepal, Brazil, Canada, Vietnam and the Ukraine. Her interest and hopefully her research will explore the theme: “Community Philanthropy – much more than money”. She hopes that this will shine a light on the range of other assets that grassroots communities draw on to drive their own development.
Bernie is always reading more than one book at a time. The three books currently occupying her free time are:
• John Maxwell’s “Great Leaders Make Great Listeners”
• Michael J Fox’s autobiography
• Adam Kahane’s “Power and Love - A Theory and Practice of Social Change”