Big interview: We must not go cap in hand - Nick Wilkie, chief executive, London Youth

The answer is Nick Wilkie, the new chief executive of the Federation of London Youth Clubs (London Youth). The 31-year-old has been at the helm of the federation of 400 youth clubs for only eight weeks, but already has clear ideas about how to release its potential.

Since arriving at London Youth at the end of June, Wilkie has been asking some "pretty hard questions" about how the organisation can help clubs become more effective and self-sufficient.

He says he is irritated by special pleading for the voluntary sector, insisting that funding should be based on proven value. He is particularly enthusiastic about a quality assurance framework that the organisation will be piloting over the next year at a club in east London, with support from the Jack Petchey Foundation. Its aim is to develop a replicable structure for good practice. "If you go back to when people came out of the caves to hunt woolly mammoths, they decided to go and hunt one before they decided to write a Directive for Woolly Mammoth Hunting," he says.