Excellence

There are various ways in which we can help in the running of charities and churches:

CHARITABLE STATUS

We can help you in preparing to register as a charity. We will help you prepare a suitable Constitution if necessary and also lead you through the registration process, helping you to show that you provide ‘public benefit’ and therefore deserve that registration. We can also help with the information that needs to be sent to the Charity Commission on a regular basis.

LEGISLATION

We can help you keep up to date with various pieces of legislation that as charitable organisations, we need to be complying with. Examples include Child Protection, Protection of Vulnerable Adults, Food Safety and others. We can advise you on what you need to build into your processes to meet your responsibilities under various pieces of legislation.

POLICIES

We can help you in preparing suitable policies to help to meet your obligations under various pieces of legislation.

EMPLOYMENT

If you are already – or are thinking of – employing staff, we can help you to prepare job descriptions, advertise, undertake interviews, and advise on managing staff. We can help you in preparing various policies relating to employment issues.

EMPLOYMENT

If you are already – or are thinking of – employing staff, we can help you to prepare job descriptions, advertise, undertake interviews, and advise on managing staff. We can help you in preparing various policies relating to employment issues.

ORGANISATION REVIEW

We have experience of both setting up a new Service Centre and of auditing offices against standards for both Investors in People and ISO9001 Quality Assurance. We would welcome the opportunity to look at how your organisation is structured and the processes that you use and suggest changes that could be made to improve how the organisation is run and to help to achieve its aims.

FREELANCE CHARITY ADMINISTRATOR/PROJECT MANAGER

If you need some administrative support but are not looking to employ a member of staff or need someone to manage a particular project or event that you are planning, we would be happy to talk about how we could help.

COMMUNICATION

We can help with your communication needs, whether internally to staff and volunteers, or externally to supporters and the general public. We can help set up newsletters/publications, email messaging, website set up and maintenance and other social media advice for use of Facebook, Twitter etc to get your message out.

SOCIAL MEDIA

We can advise on running a website, suitable content, use of social media etc to assist you in putting your message across to others.

For any of these services, charges will be agreed with you in advance during the discussions about what you require and what we can offer.

A SERVICE SPECIALLY DESIGNED FOR CHURCHES

THE VIEW FROM THE PEW

We want to help the church leaders to better understand the views of their congregation. This can provided in two ways:

1. General Advice -We have the experience of several roles within churches. From being a member of the congregation, to a member of the leadership team, to an employed staff team member. Those roles have given various ways to understand the thinking of people in the congregation and their position on issues that the church is discussing. Very often, leaders think there is far greater understanding than is reality.

Where a church is planning major change e.g. change to service times, building development etc, we can provide advice on the types of issues that people will be thinking about (often misunderstanding), and how some of those issues and difficulties can be dealt with. It will help to ensure that as many viewpoints – and ideas – are considered as possible, and that as many people as possible can be brought along with the leadership as possible.

2. Gathering Opinion – There may be a major issue facing the church that the leadership wish to gather the views of the congregation on as they seek to deal with it. It could be major redevelopment, an issue of theology/policy, or a problem that the church is facing. The leadership could undertake a series of meetings or a survey to gather those views, but some people may not feel free to share their view for fear of “repercussions”. Even an anonymous survey, if analysed by the leadership, may be clear who has given a particular response (e.g. handwriting recognised). We can provide that opportunity, as a neutral third party, to prepare and analyse an anonymous survey, presenting a report with results and comments to the leadership and/or run some focus group meetings (not attended by leaders) and gather views from these to pass on. This may give the leadership a more honest picture of where the church is at in relation to the issue in question.