Building Effectiveness Programme 2017 enters Implementation phase

Launched in January 2017, Building Effectiveness Programme is an innovative project aimed at providing a supported tailored improvement programme to local Hertfordshire charitable organisations to empower them to run more effectively and efficiently. This programme supported by the Garfield Weston Foundation and Will Hobhouse (High Sheriff in Nomination for 2017) and delivered in partnership with the Cranfield Trust; is steadily gaining momentum.

Our participants this year include representatives from trustee boards and senior management of these 10 selected charitable organisations: Crossroads Care Hertfordshire North, CVS Broxbourne and East Herts, Grove Cottage Bishops Stortford Mencap, HACRO, Headway Hertfordshire, Herts Inclusive Theatre, Herts Young Homeless, Home-Start Watford and Three Rivers, Rennie Grove Hospice Care and Watford FC Community Sports & Education Trust. The programme offers them a tailored, supported development plan to solve pressing issues they face in the voluntary sector and to help achieve their strategic objectives.

We are right in the midst of the first year and our participants are working hard implementing their Development Action Plans in their organisations. Having completed their baseline assessments and finalised their Development Action Plans by early April, they are now meeting regularly with their assigned mentors, five of whom are from the Cranfield Trust, the other five are experienced local business people from Hertfordshire Community Foundation (HCF) and Will’s network of contacts. We appreciate enormously, the time and effort that the mentors are investing in the programme to support these organisations.

When conceptualising and designing the Building Effectiveness programme our team at HCF led by Project Manager, Sarah Elliott looked at the various initiatives available around the country. We retained some of the key components but also introduced some of our own new ideas which we think make the package rather innovative:

Participating organisations initially work with one of HCF’s experienced advisors to undertake a comprehensive baseline assessment

This entails using our own online tool – DevelApp to analyse all key functions

The advisor also supports them to produce their Development Action Plan – identifying their own tailored improvement programme for the next 9 months

Each organisation is assigned a business mentor – with the right specialist skills to advise and support their key strategic area for development

Participating organisations attend a programme of workshops hosted by Will and supported by Sarah Elliott (HCF) and Dawn Harrison Wallace, the Cranfield Trust Project Manager. These provide a great opportunity to come together and explore specific issues around leadership and change management.

The HCF advisors maintain regular contact as well to ensure that everyone is on track with their plans and respond to any questions/issues if necessary

They will revisit the organisations at the end of the programme to conduct a follow-up analysis. There will be High Sheriff awards for those with the best development journeys

Full details of the programme are on the HCF Training and Development Website.

Seeing the progress and early outcomes of the programme, our vision is to offer this as an annual programme to help as many groups as possible.

We have received some encouraging feedback from our participants:

“In our situation a broad approach to the strengths/weaknesses of the organisation was the only way to get clarity of the key issues and scale of the problems we need to resolve.”

“Found DevelApp very useful and the report produced was excellent”

“The process has been useful in focussing the Trustees of our organisation.”

“Thank you for the opportunity to be part of the Building Effectiveness Programme. It is providing me with a great opportunity to take some time away from the day to day work, review where we are at as an organisation and learn from some other wonderful charities.”

“We are very pleased with Super Steve - all going well; we are very focused”.