Trading Up Newsletter Number 2. Spring 2008
[also available in PDF format - click
here]
Trading up is an initiative that addresses the needs of organisations
developing trading functions, launching trading subsidiaries or operating
a “mixed economy” of commercial and charitable activity.
Training Up
Delivery of Training Services has begun in earnest with the first of a
series of four-day Social Enterprise Start Up Programmes
(SESUP) plus a Workshop on Market Research under way for Croydon
Voluntary Action ( www.cvalive.org.uk ). The courses are a vital component of CVAs Commonsse Project which is providing development
support to Social Enterprises and Voluntary and Community Sector
organisations developing trading activities in the Borough. The reaction
by clients to the first SESUP in 2007 was most encouraging and has led
to this re-order.
Meanwhile delivery has also begun of a series of bespoke one-day
workshops for Community and Voluntary Service Mid and North
Bedfordshire ( www.voluntaryworks.org.uk/cvsmidandnorthbeds ). These focus
on the potential uses of social enterprise approaches to achieving the
objectives of the local voluntary and community sector organisations and
have attracted full houses of participants.
Stepping Up
Trading Up is providing two of the experts for the Brains Trust panel at
an The “Step Up” event organised by Hillingdon Association of
Voluntary Services ( www.havs.org.uk ) for the Voluntary Sector of West
London to examine how VCS should and could “step up the game”
Up to the Challenge
We are not going to name the client for obvious reasons of commercial
confidentiality but the following report from one of our consultants gives a
flavour of the sort of work we have been involved with.
The organisation was awarded a ‘core’ grant which covered part of the
management and overhead costs. However the funding specification
was for specific activities tied to service level agreements. This meant
that all management and overhead costs had to be charged across all
the activity and project budgets with each funder contributing part of the
expenses. Moving from being a ‘core-funded’ organisation to a totally
project funded organisation presented a number of challenges.
The cost of delivering the service level agreements against the
funds awarded did not necessarily mean that a given project was
able to pay it’s share of management and overhead costs.
Different projects may be at different stages in their funding cycle,
and as such, the income may already be fully committed and may
not be able to absorb any additional costs.
A project may come to an end part of the way through the new
funding cycle, and the former costs may need to be reallocated to
the remaining projects. If this is a large project, then this may not
be possible without reductions to projected service outputs.
After analysing their particular requirements we developed a budgeting
tool that provided their management with:
Workable budgets with all the management and overhead costs fully covered
Flexible apportionment methodologies so that budgets could be
easily and quickly revised in the event of internal or external changes
A mechanism to ensure that when projects came to an end, the
management and overhead costs were automatically allocated elsewhere
The client was a lot more aware of the risks - able to identify areas
where fund-raising or re-structering was needed.
Out-turn information was regularly and quickly available so that
these risks could be monitored and avoided.
An end to crisis management and time and energy available for
strategic management.
To find out more visit www.can.coop/tradingup.
To contact us:
Email: chris@can.coop
Or telephone the Trading Up team on 0845 3733616 (local rate).
We look forward to hearing from you.
Trading Up is a joint initiative by Co-operative
Assistance Network Limited (Registered Office: The Coach House, 2 Upper York Street, Bristol BS2 8QN, Co. Reg. No.: 2454057, VAT Reg. No.: 550 0276 78) and Ealing Business
Services Ltd. (Registered Office: 7 Drayton Avenue, London W13 0LE, Co. Reg.
No.: 2359500)
