EMPATHY IN THE DIGITAL AGE: THE ROLE OF TECH IN HUMAN CONNECTIONS

Barrie Hodge, Head of Fundraising & Communications for St Basils 

Barrie started his career working in radio. Moving into charitable work, he often asked himself why St Basils had employed him of all people. Now he realises the charity sector is all about communication and engagement with people to form human connections. That’s why broadcasting and technology are so pivotal to driving both fundraising and supporting the young people St Basils work with.

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Transcription
Prefer to read along? No problem. We've transcribed the episode below for you:

Dom:
Hello, I'm Dom Wetherall, your host of the F5 podcast, brought to you by Intercity.
Today I'm extremely privileged to be joined by Barrie Hodge.
Barrie is the head of fundraising and community over at St Basil's.
Barrie, welcome.
Barrie:
It's a pleasure to be here, Dom.
Thanks very much for having me on.
Dom:
Can you tell us a little bit about St Basil's, please?
Barrie:
Of course, yes.
So where do you start about this charity that I'm fiercely passionate about?
We're a youth homeless charity, and we've been operating for the last 50 plus years.
We were founded in a church building called St Basil's by a man called Les Milner, who used to run a youth club in the city.
Came out one night, found two young men who were bedding down for the night, and they were going to the club.
They said, "What's going on?"
He said, "Well, we're homeless, we don't know where to go."
So he put them in the back of his Mini Clubman, which are not quite as posh as they are now, clearly.
Drove around the city.
He found a Salvation Army building for them to go to, but thought, "Is there any provisions for young people who are homeless in this city?"
There weren't.
He said someone needed to do something about it, realised it was him.
But from there, we have grown into this charity, this housing association, this organisation that supports between 4,000 and 5,000 young people every single year.
We'll accommodate around about 650 in any given night.
We provide what's called floating support, so support to young people in their own tenancies, to around about 250 to 300 in any given day.
And our whole thing is about preventing youth homeless, that's preventing it from happening in the first place, we hope, or at least preventing it from happening again.
And it's done through a multitude of things, like life skills workshops, employability programmes, mental health support, generally just being there, you know, that's what we do.
And it's something I'm really, really passionate about.
Dom:
Amazing charity, and I'm thankful and privileged that it's a little bit warmer than last time we met.
Barrie:
Yeah, a little bit, yeah.
The last time we were doing the sleepout, weren’t we?
Dom:
During the big sleepout, back in December.
And we'll touch on that in a bit more detail.
Tell us a little bit about your career, please, Barrie.
How did you get into doing this charity work?
Barrie:
How far do we go back?
How long have you got?
OK, I'll try and sort of give you the abridged version.
So I hold my hands up, I had no desires to work for a charity, you know, when I was in my career phase or before I got into it.
I'm clearly not from around the Midlands, can't sneak my French accent past anyone, apologies, terrible joke.
But I had always wanted to work in radio when I was growing up, and radio is a medium that I absolutely love and still, you know, so passionate about, there's nothing more powerful than a one-to-one conversation about, like what we're doing.
Dom:
You're feeling at home now, then, yes.
Barrie:
I feel at home, this is my happy place.
I love podcasts now, you know, I mean, and when I was in the radio industry, it was sort of before podcasts, I was, I think I was about 18.
In fact, go back before that, I would, you know, even though I'm quite a confident individual, now it sounds like I am, I was someone who spent a lot of time at home, I was quite withdrawn, and the radio was my friend, you know, so I'd listen to these radio presenters of where I'm from with names like Tiger Tim Stevens, Scottie McClue, you know, these were like guys, characters that they had in the radio, and they were amazing.
And then I was 18, I started university, was studying social sciences, realised one day when I was looking around that there were like 200 people on my course, they were all going to graduate with the same degree, they were all going to have the same experience, how was I going to get a job?
And then I was like, well, what do I want to do in my life?
What do I really want to do?
And I remember having a CV in front of me, I was like, I'm at uni, I work part-time in Sainsbury's pushing the trolleys, can I get a job in radio?
Because that's what I want to do.
So I wrote to all these radio stations in Scotland and sent it off, and one got back to me, which was a radio station in Fort William, so near Ben Nevis.
Dom:
Everyone else’s loss.
Barrie:
Yeah, yes, everyone’s loss.
You know, at that time maybe not.
But the guy there was a man called Willie Cameron, he ran this community radio station called Nevis Radio, and Willie was an amazing man, sadly no longer with us, but he was, you know, instrumental in giving a lot of people opportunities, and nobody realised at the time just how powerful it was.
So he said, "’Yeah, come up, can't pay you any money.’ I'm from Glasgow, bear in mind, I've just passed my driving test, I've got this beat up, you know, Vauxhall Corsa, and I drive from Glasgow to Fort William to do little radio shows."
And the thing that I loved about it was that one of the people before me was this seven-year-old girl that he'd given an opportunity to, to present in the radio.
And it started from there.
I realised that this is what I wanted to do in my life, but I did need to make money at some point.
An element of chance, opportunity, I'm always one of those people that believes that you create your own opportunity.
But one of the people he was working with on this community radio station was David Treasurer, who was working for one of the big radio stations in Glasgow.
And Willie, David had asked him about me, and Willie had lied, and said I knew how to work a radio desk when I didn't.
But I think Willie just liked me.
I've made an entire career out of it, in fact, arguably, I'm still doing that.
And he, yeah, David called me and says, "Look, do you want to come in and do what was called a Tech Op shift and basically work the mixing desk?"
And from there, it grew.
I ended up working on the biggest breakfast show in Scotland at the time.
Decided to move for opportunities, moved to Newcastle, because I wanted to work for Galaxy, which was one of the cool radio stations.
Although I have to say that if I hear Stronger by Kanye West, or 50 Cent, again--they were on repeat.
Ended up moving back to Glasgow to work there again for the radio station I worked for, basically because of circumstances in my life that had family members who were unwell, so I wanted to go home. 
And while I was there, I decided to be a good idea to do a stunt that went horribly wrong, which I got fired for. 
I will tell you what it was. I streaked in front of Ed Miliband, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time. 
And, yep, got fired for that, which was probably the best career move I ever made. 
Dom:
Wow. Did you put that on your CV?
Barrie:
Funnily enough, I hadn't put it on my LinkedIn profile. Maybe I should. I remember being asked about it in the job interview that I had for St. Basil's. Well, they asked me a question when they said, "Have you ever done anything in your career that's went wrong, and have you learned from it?" 
And I remember, they know what I've done, haven't they? That is loaded, that one. But I thought, I quite like poker, so I'll go all in. 
And so I just told them what happened. And I remember months later, the guy who was then company secretary for St. Basil's, he said, "We knew about that." 
Anyway, I did that, moved here to Birmingham. I thought I would have been here for six months, if I'm honest. But the whole way I ended up working for St. Basil's, it was a gradual thing, if I'm honest. And I think it happens to a lot of people in their lives, where you start in your early part of your career, maybe not so much so with the current generation. 
And maybe I'm generalising, and that's not fair. But when I was younger, it was, "Get a job, make as much money as you can." That was it. Improve your quality of life, right? 
But then, as I go into my early thirties, it was like, "What's important to me? What am I passionate about?" 
And I kept coming back to, I come from Glasgow, I come from a fairly poor part of Glasgow. I think about the people I grew up with, the opportunities they had. And I can probably count on one hand the amount of it as I made it, or made it out. 
And I'm not being over-dramatic by saying that. Many people I grew up with are, sadly, no longer here. Some have ended up with serious mental health, substance abuse issues, some are in prison. 
So I've always been passionate about fairness and opportunity. And regardless of your background, you have a right to be able to succeed. 
And as this was happening, I'm working on this breakfast show, BRMB as it was, it became free radio now, as some of you might know who have heard it. 
And I was working with two really good mates, I mean, Foxy and Juliano on that breakfast show, and we're having a great time. But on breakfast shows, it sounds quite glamorous. 
You get to interview the stars of the day, and yeah, we got to, you know, through various things, you know, interview all these pop stars. 
And David Cameron came in for an interview one time. I remember interviewing Tony Blair when he was prime minister, but actually, you're getting up at five in the morning, and you're working right through to sometimes like seven o'clock, eight o'clock at night. 
Dom:
What's the briefing process like for interviewing the prime minister? 
Barrie:
Oh, gosh, that was the most bizarre experience. See when the prime minister's coming to see you. The day before, they will send like, you know, their agents, and there's like, you know, people arriving suits with glasses on and literally doing a massive security check. 
The actual interview itself was the easy part, the discussion, because, you know, politicians are very, you know, well, most of them are, at least those ones, I think it's very safe without getting too political. You know, they're very amenable, you know, they're very, they'll talk about anything, you know. 
But yeah, the whole process before it, the whole security thing is absolute, it's an absolute nightmare. I mean, if you should try and get them in and see what happens, you know, you'll find helicopters flying above, you know, and all that stuff. 
But yeah, I was working on this great show, but at the same time, I'm getting up at five o'clock, about four o'clock in the morning to go to work, and I start to notice people on the streets. 
You know, I’ve noticed them before, but it sort of, it doesn't, you're so used to seeing these things become sanitised to, you're desensitized to it. And eventually, there was a particular moment when I'm going to work on a Tuesday morning, half four, quarter to five, I'm walking to the office and where the car park was, you had to walk down Broad Street in Birmingham to get to it, and I noticed a guy at the Sainsbury's, near the Sainsbury's where the office was for free radio, and went to my work, left the office about half two, and I'm walking back and he's still there. 
And it just clicked at that moment. Literally that moment, I thought, man, we need to do better than this. 
This guy, maybe he's moved and he's came back, but right now I'm looking at someone that I saw literally ten hours ago, and this is the best that we can do as a society, really. 
So that started to really weigh on me. By this time, I realised I knew my career in radio was starting to end. 
I mean, there was only so many daft, stupid stunts you could do. I was getting older, I wanted to settle a bit. 
Dom:
Trying to avoid prison with less streaking. 
Barrie: 
Trying to avoid prison. There was definitely near-misses. 
And then this job at St. Basil’s came up, and I'd never been a fundraiser before. I knew a lot about communications and audiences and stuff like that, and how you appeal to certain audiences and things, but I had no belief that I would get the job. 
But the other recruitment agencies were doing it, and there was this bizarre sort of twist of faith, I guess you would describe, where I saw the job and I saw the number, and I called the number, and a guy from Scotland answered the phone. 
And we must have spent about 45 minutes talking about Scotland, and we didn't talk about the job at all. And at the end of this 45-minute conversation, he says, "Well, I think you'd be perfect for this." I mean, we haven't even talked about this, Ken. 
We've been talking about Dundee and Glasgow and St. Andrews and all that. 
Dom:
How do you feel that early career then in radio has influenced how in your fundraising and your charity work at St. Basil’s? 
Barrie:
Massively, absolutely massively. As I say, I didn't realise at the time, I thought, "Why have they appointed me to the role?" I've never fundraised before. 
I've got a place in a half marathon or a marathon and done it for whatever charity I'd got the place for, but how do you become that head of that strategic lead where you're going to... You are given the task... I mean, I was given the task to turn us into a £1 million charity. 
And St. Basil’s is funded through a variety of ways, but the fundraising element, and we always say that the fundraising element is there to prevent future homelessness. 
So all that work around employability, workshops, life skills, workshops. And I'm like, "How am I going to raise that amount of money and get us to that next level?" 
And I remember the previous incumbent in my role had said this, that she'd got to the point... She wanted to move on to another career area, but she said, "I just felt I couldn't take it any further." 
So I was like, "Well, why have they taken a punt on me?" When I knew that there was really qualified fundraisers, heads-off, and that had been interviewed for the role. 
And the reason I think they appointed me, and Jean might completely disagree, and the board may completely disagree, was that I understood people, you know, communications. 
You know, is that I know how to... In radio, you know, when you're coming up with radio content, you're coming up with radio content to suit the audience. A lot of radio stations, you know, when I was working at it, you literally have a cardboard cutout of someone who represents your audience in the corner of the room, you know? So literally you don't forget who you're talking to. 
Using that skill set of, "Okay, well, how are we going to appeal to corporates? How are we going to appeal to the general public? You know, how are we going to appeal to faith groups or schools?" Or all that. We recognised really quickly, actually. I recognised really quickly. That's why they brought me into this role. 
So, yeah, when I go and do, like, the other day there, I was at a primary school, you know? And what did I do when I go to a primary school? I'm not going to start talking about the intricate details of housing policy. 
What I'm doing is I'm actually wanting to talk to those young people about homelessness and stereotypes of it. So what did I do? I get them to draw a homeless person. 
What does that look like? You know, get them to interact, to think about it. And then I'll challenge that stereotype by showing a video of what homelessness is really like. 
Dom: 
How does technology play its part in this sense? How does it support you as a business to operate? How does it help with fundraising? And also, how can it enable and support the people that you're trying to help as well? 
Barrie:
Technology is absolutely vital, especially the speed that it develops at. And the thing about the charity sector, I think some things we're a wee bit guilty of. Because, I say guilty, and I don't mean it in a horrible sense, but we have this tendency to always be, because we have to be thinking about the front line, thinking about the immediate. 
And you do a lot of firefighting in the charity world, you know, because you're trying to get the money in to do whatever you're going to do. But also, when you look at a charity like St. Basil's, like two thirds of our staff are frontline, you know? 
And the importance of our work is the human connection. That's what it is, you know? 
So technology, and I've always said this about any sector, is it's got to improve that. It's got to aid that. 
So if you look at, for example, I remember I did this exercise a little while ago with some of our staff at St. Basil's where I said, "Okay, right, you know, bit of a provocative question some people might say it is." But I said, "What do you do? What is it you do?" And they go, "I'm a support worker." "All right, okay, right, you're a support worker." 
"Okay, that's what I said. What's a support worker? What does that job description entail?" And they would write it off, and, "Okay, all right, let me ask the question a different way. What have you done today?" 
And they're like, "What do you mean?" I could see them going, "Oh, I'm panicking." And I said, "No, no, just tell me about what you did today." And I remember one of them saying to me, he says, "Well, I helped one of the young people who were supporting write a letter to their parents." 
I say, "That's what you do. That's the human connection part of it." 
Obviously, a big part of what we do is like support plans, you know, researching the best ways in order to improve lives, you know. 
So you're using tech for that. 
And the thing is that we are still at the early part of our journey, I think, about how we use like some of the new technology that's coming our way. I mean, one of the big things is artificial intelligence. 
Obviously, it's massive. It's massive for us for two reasons. It's obviously like every business, it's going to change the way they work, you know, potentially. 
So how do we use that in order to free up? Because one of the big things about a charity like St. Basil's is that because we're working with vulnerable people, it's a lot of time spent on paperwork, you know, doing that stuff. 
How do we use this tech to... 
Dom:
It's the opportunity to augment it and scale up efficiency. 
Barrie: 
Yeah, exactly. That's a big thing for it. But the thing is, how do we free up the time so that that support worker or that progression coach, as we call them at St. Basil's, we use the word progression a lot because we progress people from a point in their life to another point and hopefully things are better. 
How do we get them to spend more time with, help them to write that letter? To be that person that's actually supporting as opposed to filling in paperwork. But that's the first thing. 
The second thing as well that's important for us at St. Basil's is that we work with young people, you know, and a big part of our work is preparing young people for independence and preparing young people for the world that they're going to live in. So if we're working, you know, to get young people into employment, what's that going to look like? 
Are we preparing young people correctly for the types of opportunities that are going to present themselves as they come up? So it's going to be massive. 
When I look at things like, you know, from our own perspective in terms of fundraising, we use tech to inform our decisions. And the olden days, that would be someone spending a lot of time researching, doing all that sort of stuff. But when we've got the tools that we've got at our disposal now where we can get all this information really, really quickly, process and then be able to make decisions, you know. But it's like everything. This tech is only as good as what you give it, you know, the data you give it. 
Dom:
I assume sort of data security is paramount for you guys as well. 
Barrie:
Oh, huge. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, in terms of, you know, when you think about the type of data that we capture, you know, it's information on vulnerable young people. That has to be secure. 
That is, you know, so we are, I mean, we are so big on this whole thing about ensuring, you know, every other day, you know, you'll see a message on our Facebook workplace. It is like, remember, you know, even just simple things like lock your computer, you know, lock your computer. 
Because obviously there's a lot of information there that's stored about young people, about, you know, plans, you know, information about circumstances, you know. 
That has to do with all the really sensitive information. It can't just be, you know, left on a desk or anything like that, you know, or people can, you know, get access to that. It has to be absolutely on point because, you know, it's people's lives. 
We're not just talking about, you know, data that, you know, I mean, people talk about personal data. 
They talk about it like analytics and numbers and things. But this is people's lives we're talking about, you know, and a lot of this is the sort of information that it can't be made public for obvious reasons. 
Dom:
So, yeah, hugely important for charities like yours. We touched on at the beginning, you know, my personal involvement also Intercity’s with St Basil's. We've worked together before. We've supported some fundraising activities. We were at the big sleepout in Birmingham. I've done that a couple of years now. Millennium Point and then previous to that it was the cathedral. And also we had you at our charity golf day. Do you want to give us a bit of a rundown? What does this year look like for St Basil's? 
Barrie:
I mean, we've got a lot of events coming up and just before I get into that, I mean, the support you guys have given us has been incredible, you know, really lovely. And I remember even at that golf day, the thing I loved about it, obviously a lot of money was raised and that just allows us to be able to do what we do. 
Dom:
The card machine and the beers. 
Barrie: 
Yeah, it does help, you know, and you can't help but notice. I've been doing this a long time now and there's no getting away from it when people have had a couple of beers and in a space where they've had a great experience. 
And someone once said to me, a guy who did my job before the previous person, he says, always remember Barrie, the first three letters of fundraising are fun. Right. So if people are having a good time and fun and they engage with the charity, then they're going to want to support it. 
But the thing I really loved about that and I love about events like, you know, like that charity golf day is that it gives us an opportunity to talk to people we probably wouldn't get in front of, you know, we wouldn't, you know, it's yeah, it's a great networking tool. 
There's no getting away from it. You bring your clients together, your customers, brilliant, you know, everybody has a good experience. But I just love that bringing together of people from different worlds, you know, and that's why I love the sleep out. 
You know, I love the fact that at the sleep out you will have, you know, the chief executive of whatever company doing it and they'll be sleeping next to, you know, one of the teachers from one of the local schools. Yeah. You know, I love that. 
I always kind of hark back to the reason why things are founded in the first place. I mean, if you look at something like Facebook, you know, it wasn't founded to make Mark Zuckerberg and the shareholders tons of money. It has clearly, right? But it was founded as a connection to, you know, and, you know, there's various arguments about the journey that is taken. 
Dom:
I've seen the film. 
Barrie: 
I mean, we've all seen the film. The thing about it is it started as a tool to bring people together. So yeah, we run a whole load of events. Our next one is probably my favorite, if I'm honest. It's the Woof Run. 
I'm not even going to deny it. And I'm probably, if anybody from this particular company is listening, we'll probably get a phone call from. But there's something called the Woof Run, right? And it's a plain word. 
The Woof Run, it's an obviously cause for dogs. That's what it is, you know? But the whole point of it was... 
Dom:
Sounds barking mad to me. 
Barrie: 
It sounds barking mad. There's my tagline. You can tell you're in marketing. Look at that. You've got that coming up. We've got our Canal Cycling challenge in May. 
And then we've got the Hike event, which is our hike for homeless. That takes place in June, June the 8th. 
And that's in Abba Gaveni over in Wales. We do this in a different place every single year. 
And then we start to move into the Sleep Out events and stuff like that. We do also the big Sleep Out at Millennium Point. It'll be happening on the 24th of November, I want to say. And we also have lots of places and running events, which, you know, I'm going to be biased. I'm a runner. 
You know, I like to make sure that, you know, if people want to do like a London marathon or they want to do like a great Birmingham run, we've got lots of places for that. 
People can come and do that for us. We really can't do it without those people, so we're eternally grateful to them. 
Dom: 
Fantastic. Thanks, Barrie. We look forward to continuing to support you and I'll see you at the next Sleep Out. 
Barrie:
Well, we really appreciate that. And as I say with Intercity, you know, you guys, it's not just that though, you know, like the fundraising's been a massive thing for us, but the opportunities that, as I say, you know, to speak to people we would never have spoke to is huge as well. And the advice and counsel that we get from yourselves as well. We always say this in our line of work that we're not an island, you know, and the charity sector's not an island. You know, we all work together, we all work collaboratively. 
Dom:
Thanks, Barrie. One final question for you. Finally, yeah. If you could see, and hopefully you're going to subscribe to our podcast now. 
Barrie:
Oh, big fan, big fan of it. 
Dom: 
Who do you want to see on the next episode of the F5? 
Barrie:
Do you know, it's a really good question, though. I'm thinking about it, and I've been really fortunate to meet a lot of great people. But if I was to narrow it down to one person who's really supporting me since they thought, like literally my first day since I came into charity, into this sector, it'd be a woman called Fidelis Navas, who is the community director now of Edgbaston. 
And I mentioned Fidelis because it literally was my first day, and we were part of something called Five of Hearts, which was a coming together of, I can't remember exactly all the charities that were involved in it, but we were one, children's hospital, acorns. 
There was a couple of others, and apologies that I can't remember who it was, because it was nearly nine years ago, and I can barely remember what I had for breakfast this morning. 
But Fidelis was at the children's hospital at the time, and she'd reached out, and we met, and we just hit it off. And she's been my go-to person since then. I think she'd be a great guest. I think she'd be really good. 
Just the way that Tech is really advancing in her role would really, really add value to this, you know? Which is already a brilliant podcast, but nothing to do with me, I should say, is all yours. 
Dom:
Amazing. Thanks, Barrie, for your recommendation. Barrie, it's been an absolute pleasure hosting you on the F5 podcast. It's been really interesting to hear about how Tech enables St Basil’s and also how that sort of supports everyone that you're supporting as a business and your story and your background in radio. It's been incredible to hear about the events and your career. So thank you very much for joining us today. It's been an absolute pleasure. 
Barrie:
Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. So thank you for having me on.