It is a familiar tale. A small charity is started by a band of dedicated individuals. Word gets around and the charity is swamped with requests for help. It needs to grow to keep up with demand, but business strategy, planning, IT or administration lag far behind the immediate challenge of helping families desperate for help.

Where do charities like this turn? Many muddle through with help from trustees or friends with a business background. But a lucky few are able to tap the expertise of senior executives from some of the world’s most successful companies through Pilotlight, a charity that tries to inject business acumen into the voluntary sector.

It has helped more than 100 charities since it started up a decade ago, and has just conducted an audit of its own success rate. The results are impressive. Charities that go through the Pilotlight process have an average annual growth of 22 per cent compared with a voluntary sector average of under 3 per cent.

So with results like that, why is business expertise not tapped in a far wider and systematic way by the voluntary sector? The main reason is that business high-flyers are busy people and many fear that getting involved with a charity will eat up too much of their time. Pilotlight gets around this problem with a simple guarantee. It strictly limits the amount of time a businessman or woman has to devote to the cause to three hours a month.

Sally Cohen is a case in point. Managing director of Elizabeth Arden in the UK and Irish Republic, she wanted to do some voluntary work when she relocated to London from the US, but was realistic about how much free time she had. She heard about Pilotlight and jumped at the chance to be a member. “What appealed to me was the time commitment. Pilotlight requires three hours a month and I thought if I can’t find three hours then that’s really sad,” she said.

Pilotlight can make that offer because it backs up the member’s time with project managers to make sure decisions are followed through and detailed preparations are made for the next meeting, so no time is wasted.Members are also prepared for the cultural differences in working with charities. Businesses have very specific goals and timetables, and are focused on hitting targets. Charities, especially small, new charities, frequently find it hard to prioritise, or say “no” to any fundraising opportunity or chance to raise its profile.

This was one of the problems facing Unique, a charity that supports families with rare chromosome disorders and the first project given to Sally Cohen. Unique wanted to do a lot of things at once. It had grown from helping five families to helping more than 5,000. But when it approached Pilotlight two years ago it wanted to provide a range of new services, build awareness about the condition, improve its funding base and establish a national office instead of running out of a series of kitchens and living rooms across the country.

“It was a clear case of prioritising,” Ms Cohen said. “They wanted to do a lot of pretty meaty things. We don’t fundraise, but we can look at the budget and establish that there is money for some things and not for others. In particular, we were able to tell Unique that it had enough money to hire some staff. A dedicated fundraiser would take the pressure off the frontline staff who were very weighed down by having to apply for grants.”

With her marketing background, Ms Cohen was also able to advise Unique on how to get its message out and raise awareness of rare chromosome disorders most effectively. A plan for a national ad campaign was quickly abandoned as too costly and not sufficiently well targeted. Instead, medical staff and pregnant women going through the routine antenatal tests were identified as the target audience, so leaflets and other materials were drawn up with them in mind.

Beverly Searle, chief executive officer of Unique, admits her background as a microbial geneticist did not prepare her for the rigours of running a fast-growing charity, but she knew that the organisation had to restructure to prepare for future demand and get a five-year business plan together.

“We needed to know how best to raise our game so we approached Pilotlight,” she said. “We submitted our own ‘blue-skies’ strategy document which they reviewed, and we set out our mission and objectives, plus the issues with staffing and marketing. One of the most important things we learnt was not to jump at every opportunity that comes along, no matter how attractive it might look.” At the end of this year Unique will start a new project to seek out “hidden” families, many of them socially disadvantaged, who have not yet come across its services.

“Now that we have our business plan the relationship with Pilotlight is more of a mentoring one. That’s great too. We can revise what we have planned and see where we want to go next,” Dr Searle says.