Corporate Social Review Magazine 1st Quarter 2013 | Page 45

it, use it to build capacity and improve
performance.
Ultimately this is about people. We have to
convince them that we are honest, that we
have integrity. We have to demonstrate to
everyone that we really are fair & equitable.
That person buying their lottery ticket needs
to know that the money they are spending
is, in turn, being spent responsibly. They
need to know that it is being used to
improve lives and make South Africa better
life for everyone. We have to make sure
that all our processes have integrity. We
don’t want to be telling people what a good
job we are doing, we want the public to tell
us that we are doing a good job.
In SA we don’t have a CSR strategy that
encompasses everyone; civil society,
corporate spending, government spending?
Is that something the NLB can drive?

MABOGO DINKU A THEBANA
tickets. But all the man in the street sees is
the NLB, not the lottery operator? How are
you communicating to the public where
the money is going?
Obviously we’re accountable to the DTi
and all our activities are audited by them.
But what you say is true. When I got
here there was a reputational problem. I
immediately realised that this organisation
needed to look at how we communicate
and construct our messages. I think that
many of the issues that people had with
us were not about what we were doing
but how we communicated what we were
doing.
But are you effectively telling the stories
you could be telling?
No. Not well. But we have to remember
that when the NLB was started the
pressure was on delivery and getting
the model right. We had to deliver, we

needed to deliver. I think that now
the challenge is to communicate that
delivery so that it is sustainable. Recently
our teams have been going out and
empowering people with information.
How to secure funding, how to manage
their processes. But we also need to
manage that communication so that it
is a two way street, so we’re listening
to people while we’re talking to them.
And that’s part of what the Indaba was
about. We have to tell people our stories
and they have to tell us theirs. But this
feedback mechanism I’m talking about,
it must result in real change because we
all have to work together if we’re going to
make a real difference. And that’s a key
strategy for us now. We want to take the
people who have received NLB funding
and done exceptional things with it and
we want to create case studies so that
we can replicate those successes. We
want to take that knowledge and share
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Magazine Final.indd 43

This is so important. It is so very important
that we take a lead as the biggest partner
in funding across SA. We need to find
ways to encourage everyone to be active,
to get involved. After all, we’re the ones
funding hospices and frail care, we’re
the ones trying to alleviate poverty and
create jobs. We are sometimes the only
thing that stands between a community
and tragedy. I think it’s time this dialogue
happened. We’re constantly interacting
with our stake holders and beneficiaries.
But more recently we have also been
entering into partnership arrangements
with people that can help us to achieve
these goals and I think we do need to
expand that process. I think we need to
engage with the widest possible cross
section of civil society to the benefit of
everyone. Right now, our most important
mandate from the board is to try and
engage in constructive discussions, to
remove the conflict and seek solutions not
problems. But it is also vital to remember
that, no matter how much money we might
have, demand always outstrips supply.
Which is why we need to be so careful
about how we allocate the limited funds
we have … so that we can achieve the
best possible results.
Finally, do you have a last message to
your stakeholders …
We have values in this organisation, they
are what drive us. The National Lottery
Board’s vision is to be partners in socialupliftment. We’re also committed to
honesty and excellence in everything we
do. I’d like everyone to know that we are
committed to being ‘customer focused’ (in
broadcasting we say ‘audience centric’).
In our case we want our beneficiaries to
know that they come first in everything
that we do. Everything.
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