Impact Report SPREADS 121223 - Flipbook - Page 3
Increasing support, increasing need
Celebrating our 35th anniversary in
2023-24, the Trust has provided more
support than ever before.
We started 527 new consultancy
projects and mentoring assignments
in the year, and had an extraordinary
919 projects active in the year in total.
In challenging times, frontline welfare
charities have needed support, and our
volunteers and team have responded
to their needs.
We are truly concerned that many charities – and their
vital services – are at risk, and we have seen a number
of charities close in the last 12 months. We ask charities
about their main concerns and challenges, and of our
1,665 responses in the year, 49% of respondents said
that generating income/fundraising was their most
pressing issue, far ahead of the next concerns which
were ability to meet demand (15%) and recruitment of
staff and volunteers (14%).
Cran昀椀eld Trust exists to support welfare charities, and
we focus on the small to medium size organisations
which provide critical services on a local or regional
basis. They have limited management resources, and
little opportunity to invest in organisation and personal
development, but are experts in the services they
provide. They inspire us every day by their commitment,
expertise and resourcefulness.
Over the last year we have received excellent feedback
on all our services, with mentoring and peer group
support helping to build personal resilience for leaders
and managers, and consultancy helping to address
organisation challenges and to bring direction and focus
through strategic projects. Telephone advice, webinars
and information resources have all offered lighter touch
support, addressing particular issues or bringing new
ideas and approaches to participants.
A notable feature of the year has been the high
proportion of organisations which have returned to us
for further support after working with us previously. 46%
of our new consultancy and mentoring activities in the
last year were with returning clients. While we seek to
maintain a balance between reaching new organisations
and continuing support for previous clients, we have felt
it necessary to step up support for existing clients at
such a challenging time.
In the year, we have continued to develop Journey to
Excellence, our impact framework, and have started to
use the data we draw from it in more depth, to enable
individual charities to benchmark their management
capabilities against our whole sample, or to explore
different sectors. We launched a Journey to Excellence
Recognition Badge for charities who have worked
with us, using the framework, to acknowledge their
commitment to organisation development. We are
proud to have awarded the badge to 48 charities in the
year, and report on Journey to Excellence on page 18.
We are deeply grateful to our volunteers, and to our
funders and donors, all of whose generous support
makes our services possible. We are committed to the
small to medium size charities we support, and which we
believe are a vital national asset, making an enormous
contribution to our society.
It is our pleasure to present our Impact Report for
Cran昀椀eld Trust’s 35th anniversary year, and to share
the stories of some of the great activities we have
worked on, and great charities we have worked with,
during the year.
Dr Charmaine Grif昀椀ths
Chair of Trustees
Amanda Tincknell CBE
Chief Executive
We are delighted to help these charities continue their
development ‘journeys’ or to offer mentoring support
to individual leaders and managers after providing
organisation-focused consultancy.
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