Way Over the Top

In Getting The Most of The Pie I demonstrated how the GRBA's Facebook page leans toward favoritism, showcasing a mere handful of its members, over and again, while neglecting most others. I identified a Top Five who are the beneficiaries of this bias. Well, things just went way over the top. In just a few days, one of those traders was the sole subject of five posts, four publicising its campaign to raise funds for charity by donating all the proceeds of coffee sales on a particular day. The fifth was a re-posting of a favourable online review.

Raising funds for charity is great. If you want to publicise your charitable fundraising as a way of attracting customers, that's fine. You are entitled to be competitive. But the Goodwood Road Business Association has a responsibility to not one, but ALL of the cafes within its bounds. It does not do for an organisation obligated to all of them to beg the public to get their coffee at this one, favoured, cafe. It is not the role of a business association to divert custom away from any of its members. It's a betrayal. It destroys trust.

Favoritism not only breeds resentment, it makes everyone worry about whether its okay to criticize the organisation or its office-bearers; whether there's a price to be paid; whether you'll get pushed even further down the list of favourites and your turn to shine will never come. The result? Silence. Stultification. Lacklustre performance. The organisation gets an exaggerated idea of its overall success and its level of acceptance because no one's prepared to say what they really think.

We traders pay a compulsory levy and we would all like our share of the benefits. It looks particularly bad when a recipient of this sort of disproportionate exposure is on the Committee of the GRBA.